Chuck Berry in the '60s: 1967

When the Greatest Hits ruse didn't work, Mercury offered a new album which became Chuck Berry in Memphis. I couldn't find the album (if you know how I can get hold of it, cough), but here's what's on YouTube.

'I really do love you' - a hornladen ballad, but just a little too comfortable to catch fire. The horn charts are too repetitive and wear the listener down. There seems to be some fine piano playing buried in the mix.

'Check me out' - attempt at some rock'n'roll. A nice sound, cool drumming, nice piano, great guitar solo... and yet, there don't seem much dynamics to it. The horn charts are too repetitive again, but this is a good band.

On to the next stop of Mercury's program catching up with the zeitgeist - the fabulously covered Chuck Berry With The [Steve] Miller Band Live At The Fillmore Auditorium (also 1967).

Imagine being transfixed by that cover at the record shop, wondering at the drugs that went into making this record, getting it home and hearing a trad electric blues record! It took me a while to get over it. This record does not sound the way the cover promises that it will.

But I like the album more and more. Far from a greatest hits set, this is rocking, (somewhat) dirty, electric blues. Sure, right at the end they tag on two hits, 'Reelin' and rockin'' and 'Johnny B. Goode' and in between those two you get the first appearance of the dreaded albatros, the live 'My ding-a-ling' experience (fuck, those were different times). But that's not what the record is about.

Before that you get 45 minutes of the blues: 'Everyday I have the blues', 'CC Rider', 'Driftin' blues', 'Hoochie Coochie Man', 'Good morning little school girl' and some semi-improvised instrumentals 'Rockin' at the Fillmore' and 'Fillmore blues', plus the more familiar 'Flying home'. The reissue adds two more blues tracks to this part of the show, 'It hurts me too' and 'Feelin' it' (a fourth instrumental!). Good job! I like these two tracks a lot and they really add to the flow of the record.

Good blues it is. I like the Steve Miller band. They're not Chuck's late '50s, early '60s band. They're not the elastic rock'n'roll band that played on the unreleased 1963 live record. But they've got feel and they've got the feel for this material. They're right there behind Chuck (and sometimes Steve Miller's harp is playing right beside him). And Chuck is in a better place than on the last two studio albums, playing long solos, great fills and generally bringing the material to life.

God knows what the crowd made of it - though Chuck thanks Bill Graham at the end as the greatest promotor he's ever worked with. And I gotta say, the charms of the record are not right at the surface. I might've been disappointed if I'd seen it. Come on, Chuck, why don't you play 'Come on'? But with time and repeated spins it's growing on me.

Never count out an original.

By the way, searching the web for Chuck-discographies, I chanced upon a bootleg of Chuck's March 19, 1967 show at the Fillmore. This is not the same as the record. A greatest hits set -though 'My ding-a-ling' overlaps-, it shows a seriously unprepared backing band stumbling through the changes. The sound isn't great either, but good enough to hear the fluffs. I'd be seriously surprised if this is the same Steve Miller band that gels so well on the official record. This is either a good band having a really bad night or a bad band having a...bad night. Chuck, ever the professional, shows all the disdain he can muster, short of actually stepping to the microphone and calling out the band. He phones it in.

Reissue labels, we don't need this one! Thanks.