What do you think about the song Jonny B. Goode?

Man it's great! Nowadays people seem to want to condescend to Chuck, but the way he played, wrote, and sang are so foundational. His lyrics are fun and concise, and his rhythmic vocal delivery is another very important instrument in his band. His delivery on a song like Maybelline or Nadine or Johnny B Goode is key to the song. He has a feel for vocal rhythm unlike most of the artists in the field at the time.

Remember that time he farted in a hooker's face?

I saw Chuck Berry in concert when I was a teenager with my dad he was drunk and getting in fights with the guys working at the theater. It was jank yo
On the plus side, Little Richard, BB King, Keb Mo, and Taj Mahal were all great.
Fuck Chuck Berry he's a rapist and a drunk

Just up, idiot.
Hs best tune is YNCT

That has a lot less to do with Chuck and more to do with the intersection between blues, hillbilly music, and other early American music types. A lot of American blues standards, folk standards, and other music both secular and religious grew out of the same tunes and progressions. There are probably a couple dozen early American standards that spread across the landscape, picking up, dropping, and swapping verses as they went. There's nothing new under the sun.

It is interesting that he didn't seem to care about his craft or backup musicians after his prime. Although, his TV appearances in the 70s and his star-studded show in the 80s are marvels. He could really rise to the occasion when he wanted to.

wow you really shut me down with your razor sharp wit

Got any reccs for good stuff in that genre?

I'm really interested in repetitive, hard and fun 12 bar rock and roll like Chuck Berry

Is there any modern stuff that plays on that format well?

I just really like how manic and pure it is, the whole sound is way more heavy and mutable than people assume

The razor is up your ass.

yea it feels that way sometimes after your mom eats my asshole. I tell her to quit chewin but she's such a fat cow...

>Got any reccs for good stuff in that genre?

The Rolling Stones did some songs like that one. From top of my mind: Star Star, Rip This Joint, Silver Train, Midnight Rambler, Ride em Down, Hang Fire, She's So Cold, Little T & A, Before They Make Me Run, Parachute Woman, Stray Cat Blues, Jiving Sister Fanny (listen to the live version), It's Only Rock And Roll and Dance Little Sister.

Johnny B. Goode predicted big anthemic rock songs.

Unfortunately looking for that mean-sounding, high energy rock is kind of a wild goose chase. A lot of early rock performers have the songs but there's not one record I can point to.

Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis all made compelling rock music during their tenure at Sun Records, but they didn't continue to make rock music afterwards. Elvis was the only person to leave Sun and continue to make rock music, really.

Johnny Cash's first two LPs are very good, and you can find some of that manic coke energy in his later work, but a lot of those songs just buckle under the load.

All of the singles that Elvis cut at Sun are great, but a few of them are hampered by amateurish playing on behalf of Scotty Moore and Bill Black. His RCA debut is incredible. Really, everything Elvis made up until 1962 is excellent.

The best and most direct way to understand Elvis charisma and energy as a performer is probably to listen (or see) to his house 1968 comeback special, his accompanying record From Elvis in Memphis, and the live records he put out in the same time frame.

Howlin' Wolf is also an extremely raw, powerful performer and he had the good luck of having an extremely talented (and weird) guitarist in Hubert Sumlin. The Rocking Chair album and his edition of The Real Folk Blues is a fucking powerhouse.

The Beatles first two records are so manic. There's so much energy, so much fucking fun on those records it's bonkers. Listen to I Wanna Be Your Man and try not to feel the energy in that recording.

If you want that high, high energy, I CANNOT STOP LISTENING to Elvis at Madison Square Garden and Elvis other 10/10 live album, From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis. PLEASE listen to That's All Right from the MSG show or Blue Suede Shoes from the Memphis Vegas album. They're so fucking good. So fucking great.

youtu.be/H6PryLdLZXY
one of the greatest live vids ever, Chuck berry with sone germans in front of a bunch of orange amps
it's a damn shame he tarnished a bit of his legacy with lewd acts but still a legend

That is accurate. His songs had an expansive, sprawling feel to them and also lots of dynamics and melody, they're not a blasting amelodic wall of noise like Jailhouse Rock or Tootie Frootie.

LOL that looks like a 70's video. No way it was shot in 1959.

Obviously it's mislabeled and is from the 70s.

Jailhouse Rock has a lot going on, but, it's boomer revisionism that places Jailhouse Rock and Hound Dog at the center of Elvis canon.

Tutti Frutti is primal and I like it but Little Richard is definitely not my favorite early rock performer.

Considering the slower songs like Heartbreak Hotel and All Shook Up were just as important to establishing his artistic canon.

Chuck had really perfected his studio technique by 1957, if you listen to Roll Over Beethoven (which was from 56) it's still a little fuzzy and doesn't have as good dynamics.

the song. the song is from 1959. those amps and clothes didn't exist back then

I think his last 12 or so years of being a shambling corpse on stage can't have helped either.

youtube.com/watch?v=xxixIbONuCQ

Right. The Beatles have a weird problem where they had two (really, three) distinct musical and visual eras so they're basically always misrepresented.

Elvis has that problem even worse. Elvis had multiple metamorphosis before and after his mother's death. He was an active cultural icon for two decades, so trying to define him with one outfit and three songs is an impossible task.

Wanda Jackson is also a little overlooked as the first gril rock star.

>Elvis has that problem even worse. Elvis had multiple metamorphosis before and after his mother's death. He was an active cultural icon for two decades, so trying to define him with one outfit and three songs is an impossible task.
Christgau said that trying to define his pure essence is a fool's errand.

Like, when Elvis signed his big contract at RCA, everybody at RCA was preoccupied with getting this big slapback echo in the studio because that's how he sounded at Sun. So, culturally, Heartbreak Hotel is supposed to be this big watershed moment for Elvis, but it isn't. It's bizarre sonically, because it's a frankenstein misrepresentation of a set-up at Sun Records. Elvis doesn't have a song before or after Heartbreak Hotel that sounds like it. Weirdly, Jailhouse Rock and Hound Dog kind of sound like each other, but even they are kind of anomalies in his catalog.

I didn't know he said that, but he's right. Have any of you guys been to Graceland? I went a couple of years ago and it's incredible.

Fats Domino as well, although it was a little cheap how they sped up his voice on the tape to sound more like a teenager (he was in his late 20s in 1956-57).

It's pretty goode

Elvis didn't record that many rockers compared with ballads and slower R&B numbers, also Hard Headed Woman is one of his rockers that somehow seems to forgotten today.

Music in the 1950s had a gigantic preoccupation for these shrill, prepubescent voices on pop records. Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, Patsy Cline, and Wayne Newton have these kid voices. I love it, but it's weird.

Little Richard wrote exactly one song and recorded it a dozen or so times.

Have you ever listened to his live records from 68-72? They're so fucking raw and energetic, it rules.

Other than Patsy Cline, most of those guys were pretty much teenagers when they started.

I know! But with the exception of young Michael, pop has never really done that since.

Some of it was due to the recording techniques of the time. As soon as Quincy Jones and Lesley Gore discovered double tracked vocals in 1963, Connie Francis became instantly obsolete and nobody has sang like that since.

Good post, definitely checking out some Elvis now.
Any specific Howlin Wolf recs? I've only listened to Moanin in the Moonlight.

Many of those those girl singers from that time like Wanda Jackson and Connie Francis got overlooked because when radio stations started doing 50s oldies playlists in the 70s, the guys making the list were all Christgau's age and they just picked whatever songs they'd liked as teenagers and of course they weren't very interested in their sister's music.

A couple of blues artists have collections with black and white covers called The Real Folk Blues. Howlin' Wolfs's is great, and so is a record (that I think might be self-titled) but has a rocking chair on the cover and people sometimes call it the rocking chair album.

Connie Francis wasn't a rocker anyway, more of a slow ballad singer (other than Stupid Cupid, the one faster song she did) and the Beatles probably would have killed her off in either case.

>Unfortunately looking for that mean-sounding, high energy rock is kind of a wild goose chase. A lot of early rock performers have the songs but there's not one record I can point to.
That's because pop music was singles based and albums were just a collection of hit singles and filler/covers back then.

Right, that's mostly true. It still sucks having someone ask "hey where can I find this?" and having to reply: I dunno, do what I did and dig through hundreds of records, you'll find something you like!

In the case of a lot of early rock artists is that their discography are littered with terrible fucking re-recordings of their work.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_His_Hot_and_Blue_Guitar

For example, the singles on here were all slower numbers and not rockers.

Great song but musically I hate that "guitar shuffle" filling in for the rhythm because almost every fucking rock song from there to now has it somewhere and its persisted because its one of those lazy blues musician practices. As an offtopic rant, will we ever see a day when guitarist stop worshiping old mediocre blues players as an excuse to not learn any theory whatsoever because they got tricked into believing they all guitarist are illiterate?

That's called a vamp, you dummy.

anyone else here /hoc/?

it's kinda scary how amazing guitarists become at songwriting in general even with just knowing enough theory to be able to compose.

Thank you user, I'm going to listen to all of this

Downloading the Elvis live stuff now

I find the hard grind of the
"Jonny B Goode" sound so interesting. It's like being on amphetamines or driving in a really fast convertible. The final verse of JBG is just as epic and sprawling as any Brian Wilson song. Such great Americana. I think it's hard for a lot of people to appreciate this music beyond the American Graffiti nostalgia aspect, which is a shame because it's so raw and unique and singular.

>Remember that time he farted in a hooker's face?
I was expecting a link to the video to be one of the first replies tbqh famalam

Obviously hugely important in Rock music history but heard today it just sounds like any other rock song of the time though a but a bit more quality and more energetic/electric.