Chapter 26 - Down Beneath the Counter

(This is part of a book length piece on Chuck Berry.  You can find the prologue and early chapters to the right.  The later chapters are down below this one.)  

If Chuck Berry is your imaginary friend you might experience a certain degree of chagrined embarrassment.  Before I left for Africa, he went to prison for tax fraud.  I cringed a little.  A few years after I got back the tabloids published discretely masked Polaroids of him standing naked with various young women.  I cringed again.  I saw a couple of them.  They were not sexy.  They looked like American Gothic, without the pitchfork or the overalls, Chuck and his girls standing straight and staring at the camera.

In his book he says he makes a big mistake every 15 years.  He calls them his “naughty naughties.”  Add the occasional grumpiness, some personality quirks, a few urban legends and internet rumors, and you find yourself with a hero who makes you blush.  No one remembers John Lennon’s foibles but they know about Chuck Berry’s, both real and imaginary.  One night a charming and refined 70 year old woman had dinner at our house.  At some point I was forced to admit that “I am a big Chuck Berry fan.”  The woman lit up.  “I love Chuck Berry!” she said.  Then she leaned closer and whispered.  “I hear that he likes to watch women shit.”

Chuck Berry (and Jim Marsala!) perform at Lompoc Prison

I don’t know or care about that or his fetishes, real, imagined, or mythical.  I didn’t care about the taxes.  If they tried and convicted all of America’s tax cheats our prisons would burst with corporate giants.  I was vaguely pleased to know he owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes because it meant he was doing well.  As for the bizarre documentation of his life on the road, it made strange sense to me.  In the late 1950s he had been arrested twice, put on trial three times, convicted, and had served more than a year in prison for violating the Mann Act by consorting with young women.  I figured the Polaroids were just photographic evidence these women (1) looked old enough, and (2) were consenting participants.  

The Mann Act was originally called The White Slave Trade Act.  It made it a crime to transport women across state lines "for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose."  Convictions under the Mann Act are historically rare and were often politically or racially motivated.  The African American boxer Jack Johnson was convicted under the Act for travelling with a white prostitute.  Charles Chaplin, labeled a Bolshevik by J. Edgar Hoover, was arrested under the Act for having an affair with a young actress from another state.  And then there is Chuck Berry.  It’s clear that various powers in Missouri were irritated by the success of a young black man and wanted to teach him manners.  One of his arrests was for crossing from Kansas to Missouri with a white girl in his car.  At trial, the girl testified that she loved him, and Chuck was acquitted.  He wasn’t so lucky the next time.  He brought a girl from El Paso, Texas to work in his club.  The consensus was that she looked like an adult and claimed to be one.  Chuck said he wanted to help her out and learn Spanish for his songs.  Whatever.  He gave her a job as a hat check girl.  Later he tried to put her on a bus home to El Paso, but she jumped off and was arrested for working as a prostitute elsewhere.  Down went Chuck Berry.  The judge at his first trial was so openly racist that the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reluctantly tossed the conviction, but they got him the second time and he went to prison for more than a year.

It wasn’t the first time he was incarcerated.  In his book he writes about a youthful crime spree.  Berry and his friends used a broken gun to rob stores in Kansas City, and then, when their car died, took someone else’s.  Being young and dumb they let their victim escape near a pay phone.  They were arrested a couple miles down the road. 

The teenaged Berry went to jail, became a trustee, did some painting work, formed a musical quartet, and tried amateur boxing.  When he went to prison in 1961 he studied business, typing, business law and enough general subjects to complete his high school degree.  He must have practiced, too.  He wrote a couple of great songs and came out bigger than ever.  When he went to prison in the late 1970s for tax evasion he used the time to finish his Autobiography, thus bringing to pass what had been written:

Blond haired, good lookin’

Tryin’ to get me hooked

Wants me to marry, get a home,

Settle down, write a book.

(The first sentence of his Autobiography acknowledges his gratitude to Francine Gillium, the blond haired, good looking secretary who was, at times, mistaken for his wife, and encouraged Berry’s efforts with the book.)

Although Berry has never relished talking about his criminal convictions, he wrote extensively and honestly about them in his Autobiography.  The author Bruce Pegg documented the trials in his book Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry.  Between the two books, you get a sense of what happened.  It’s clear that he “deserved” jail twice, for robbery and tax evasion, (whether he deserved the long sentence he got as a youthful first offender is a different story), and didn’t deserve to be prosecuted or convicted under The Mann Act.  

The crimes don’t particularly bother me.  He was a kid when he committed the only truly serious one.  He paid his taxes.  He did his time.  

More problematic, for me, is the story about his restaurant in Wentzville—the probable source of my elderly friend’s remark that he likes to watch women on the toilet.  I don’t know if it’s true or not true, but it’s disturbing.

It starts as a wonderful thing.  

Way back in 1944, on the way to his teenage crime spree in Kansas, Chuck and friends stop at the Southern Aire Restaurant in Wentzville.  They aren’t allowed inside.  They eat from paper plates at the back door.   Then, decades later, he buys the place.  I see him on the Johnny Carson show inviting the world to his restaurant.  He seems happy.  He promises to be there most nights.  I want to go.

But something awful happens.    There’s a confusing string of allegations from a couple of disgruntled former employees.  They say he’s a drug dealer.  Cops descend on Berry Park and tear it apart looking for drugs but find little of consequence, and certainly no signs of drug dealing.  No charges are filed against Berry, but a lawsuit emerges charging that Berry hid cameras in the women’s room of the Southern Aire Restaurant.  The principal plaintiff is a woman who used to work there.  There are no criminal charges, and the lawsuit is eventually settled. 

I’ve read Bruce Pegg’s account with as much attention as I could manage.  The affair is so tawdry I find it difficult to read.  I’ve never figured out whether or not the allegations have a basis in truth.  I don’t want to know.  In my heart of hearts, I assume the worst.

I don’t care much about the private life of my imaginary friend.  But I remember an old interview where he used Berry Park as the setting for a parable.  If you are alone in the Park, he said, you can do what you want, but if there are others there, you have to respect them.  They key, he said, is not to infringe on others.

If those hidden cameras in fact existed, they were obviously an infringement.  So who knows?  Without evidence, I go ahead and assume the worst.  It’s the worst I know of him, and it’s basically just pathetic.  

Once, not long ago, I picked up a biography of Elvis Presley for $3.  As a Chuck Berry fan I always resented the man people called “The King,” but I’m trying to get past it.  I never read the book, but I skimmed bits here and there at bedtime.  And that’s how I see it: 

“Few of the girls knew about the two-way mirror he had installed in the swimming pool cabana that served as a ladies’ dressing room.”  

See, there is the problem.  No one knows about the two way mirrors at Elvis’s place—it’s a short paragraph in a 700 page book—but a similar story about Chuck is all over the internet and was the subject of a major lawsuit.

Do I care?  If it’s true, I do.  

It fits.  He likes video.  He likes technical stuff.  He likes documentation. 

He’s a carpenter, a painter, and does his own work.  It might be true, so let’s assume the worst.  

Does it affect me?  Yes, more than the criminal convictions.

 Does it affect how I feel about him?  I guess it does.  It makes me sorry and uncomfortable—assuming it’s true.

But for me, as stupid as it sounds, he’s family.  I accept him as he is, with any faults and failures.  What else can I do?  He’s a second dad to me.

Which raises an interesting issue: my real father never did anything bizarre or unseemly— he just had a common addiction, and fell apart way too soon.  

So I’ve got work to do.



(This is part of a book length piece on Chuck Berry.  You can find the beginning to the right, or scroll down to find the next chapter.)

25

Chapter 27 - One Last Song?

It’s May 2001—thirty years and three months since I first saw my hero under the bright lights of a stage, and more than 12 years since I saw him perform for “the last time.” My life has changed considerably. The marriage to Ama has ended. I’m a recently divorced single dad and lawyer, raising my two girls and trying cases— too pooped to pop, too old to stroll, a life of botherations and monkey business. Rebecca is still two years away. I’m at the end of a fragile, fraying piece of rope, doing the best I can. And then one morning I open the newspaper and see in a small “what’s happening” piece that Chuck Berry will fill in for an ailing Jerry Lee Lewis at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. It’s a last minute change. He’s playing that night!


A tiny spark ignites. The show is at an all-ages venue. I get tickets for myself and my two little girls, Jade and Gemma. The girls live with me. Jade is ten. She wears her hair in a shaggy afro and dresses like a boy. Gemma is seven, more girly, but with a man-sized rasp to her voice. I decide that, just once, they should see the man their father talks about so often.

The Experience Music Project, more often called the EMP, is a rock and roll museum built by billionaire Paul Allen. The building was designed by architect Frank Ghery. It’s not his best work, in part because of its location in the colorful civic jumble we call Seattle Center. The building is all curves and colors, inspired by the painted bodies of solid body electric guitars. It would have looked better set in the middle of Seattle’s staid downtown, but gets lost in the relative chaos of Seattle Center—or at least it was back when it was surrounded by roller coasters and Ferris wheels. Beyond that there may be something fundamentally wrong about putting rock and roll (or any form of music) into a museum. Rock and roll belongs in garages, clubs and gilt civic centers. But on this day I learn that the EMP is more than a museum—that it has a “club,” a great little hall called the Sky Church where real music comes alive.

We get there early and as we approach the EMP, my girls’ hands in mine, a black Lincoln Town Car exits the EMP’s underground garage and stops right in front of us. I know about the Town Car stipulation and become immediately alert. The driver’s got a captain’s hat, and he’s leaning forward, avoiding eye contact, trying to figure out which way to go. Adrenaline explodes inside me.

“That’s Chuck Berry!” I tell my kids.

The girls (properly indoctrinated) shriek, and we lurch towards the car, but no chance— Chuck is determined to get somewhere. Anyway, what the heck would I say?

He’s with another man. I wonder who it is. I’m guessing it’s some old friend or relative helping him do what he used to do alone—pack a toothbrush and a guitar and head out to one of the hundreds of one-nighters he’s done over the past half century.

The car scoots away. We watch. I’m half way thinking how I can follow it, but he’s gone. I imagine that somewhere in Seattle, some restaurant or hotel lobby is about to be visited by the great Chuck Berry. I try to imagine being in that place when the two walk in.

There is a scene in the movie “Chuck Berry- Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll” where Berry walks through an airport in his red sports coat and bolo tie, carrying his guitar, talking about how each one lasts six months (“Deductible, you know? Tools!”) Heads turn. There are little waves and moments of recognition. On board the plane the flight attendants ask for and receive a tight lipped kiss.

It’s fascinating to me: a landmark of history and culture who walks among us, doing ordinary (and sometimes pretty extraordinary) things.

Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry described once meeting Chuck Berry in an airport. “I was walking through the airport, and someone said, ‘It's Chuck Berry over there.’ Well, I had to go over and shake his hand. But he was tongue-tied. Then he was gone.” (If you get too close you know I’m gone like a cool breeze!)

But we can’t follow the Town Car today. I’ve got two little girls. We have tickets. The show starts in an hour. We want good spots. We get inside and set anchor near the stage. My younger daughter is only tall enough to see people’s butts, so she spends most of her time in my arms.

The guy behind me is an expert. “He’s paid in cash before the show,” he tells his friends.

I can’t even listen. I figure I am the biggest fan there. I have studied Chuck Berry for 30 years. I know more than all of them put together.

When it’s finally time for the show, Chuck comes out in a captain’s cap, a glittering shirt and a grumpy mood. Call it foul. The first thing he does when he gets on stage is pull all the plugs from somewhere around his feet. I don’t know why. A cool 22 year old is sent out to get the wires right while Chuck taps a very large foot.

“That’s pressure,” says the guy behind me. I have to agree this time. The kid manages, though, and the fanatic mumbles knowingly. “It’s all in the contract,” he says. “It’s got to be exactly the way he wants it.”

The second thing Chuck does is kick a dumbstruck guitarist from stage before the band plays a single note. And now Chuck Berry is sounding like the guy behind me.

“It’s in the contract!” he says, coolly. “Drums, bass and piano—that’s it.”

I feel terrible for the guitarist. He didn’t write the contract—he’s just a victim of it. The band is a decent fit—a bunch of old rockers who’ve played together for decades— but Chuck’s evidently in no mood.

Chuck reduces the bass player to three notes and a set rhythm: “ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump” and it stays that way for the rest of the night; he plays a good chunk of the show without accompaniment—silly songs like “South of the Border” and “My Ding a Ling,” and when he gets to “Wee Wee Hours,” the grown up flip side to “Maybellene,” he instructs the pianist on just how to play it, or tries to, anyway, sliding up from E to G, and then from A to C. The piano player could get the same effect with his middle finger, but he doesn’t seem to get it. Chuck shrugs.

This isn’t the Chuck Berry I remember from the 1970s, but that’s okay—it’s an interesting Chuck Berry, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. And he’s playing his first song—the one he originally brought to Chess Records, the one that came in second to “Maybellene.”

In the wee, wee hours
That’s when I think of you.

It’s a suitably sad and nostalgic song. I mouth the words as he sings.

In a wee little room

I sit alone and think of you

Chuck Berry looks down at me with tired eyes, watches me for a while, and says:

“You’re remembering somebody, aren’t you?”

Actually, no. Mainly I’m trying to absorb the music lesson and the moment. But I’m pleased he’s singled me out—that he’s noticed me in a crowd and has spoken to me. He can’t know the connection that I’ve felt since that day in Sacramento, 30 years before, the bizarrely powerful force that once took me half way up his driveway half a continent away.

When Chuck plays “My Ding-a-Ling” I’ve got seven year old Gemma in my arms a few feet from his knees. The song was his biggest hit—a funny but silly ditty full of sexual innuendo. I pretty much hate it these days. Gemma, just three or four feet from Chuck Berry, has never heard the song, but listens a while, then blurts in her uniquely gravelly voice: “He’s singing about his penis!”

Even this doesn’t get a smile out of Chuck Berry on this crabby evening.

I’ve heard he can be ill humored. I never saw it during a show until now. Carl Perkins, who toured England with Berry in 1964, said that Chuck was changed by his early 1960 prison sentence on trumped up charges of violating the Mann Act.

My brother-in-law, a smart man knowledgeable about music once told me: “He doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t even tune his guitar!”

It’s a sentiment I’ve heard often. Keith Richards says something like it in “Chuck Berry- Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

And maybe they’re right—maybe he doesn’t care.

But he keeps doing it—playing for people, playing songs they need to hear, working them into at least a small frenzy before he lets go and heads back to the car.

At the EMP he doesn’t seem to care much about anything except the contract— until, like magic, he perks up, the songs take life and flight, and the notes start flowing. He’s like a surfer who has suddenly caught the big wave. The guitar strings snap, the old licks come alive, he’s grinning, he’s crackling, he laughs and makes faces. The crowd goes crazy, jumping and screaming for this 74 year old in a captain’s hat, inventor of rock guitar and rock poetry, grumpy genius, occasional felon, and father of us all. It don’t take— or last— but a few minutes, but it’s good. And then, before we know it, it’s the closer “House Lights,” the guitar notes as full throated as a railroad air horn or a Ford V-8, ringing familiarly as he backs off stage, still playing, driving us wild with an energy and sound that hasn’t faded at all in 40 years, doing it better at 74 than all the younger folk on stage, and ready to disappear into the night with his guitar, his towel, and the black Town Car, back to the airport or some airport hotel, and ultimately, back to his home, gone.

36

Chapter 28 - On a Jet to the Promised Land (My First Trip to Blueberry Hill)

A sign that you’re well loved is that someone accepts you with all your quirks and foibles, the way I accept my sometimes difficult hero, the way my wife and family accept me, (though Lord knows, I am never difficult. I am easy as trigonometry.)

On Christmas morning of 2008 I felt loved. I was surrounded Jade and Gemma, the “new” kid, Rafferty, my wife Rebecca, a dog, too many cats and mountains of crumpled wrapping paper. We were doing what had become our tradition— eating Rebecca’s fresh baked cinnamon rolls, drinking coffee, and taking turns opening way too many presents. It was a good morning, and Rebecca gave me something unexpected that I’d wanted for years— a $25 ticket to see Chuck Berry perform at a St. Louis bar and restaurant called Blueberry Hill.

The shows are legendary. Once a month since 1996 Chuck Berry has played for a few hundred people in a wee little room in the basement of the restaurant. The rumor was that Berry was happy there, playing for the sheer joy of it, with many people coming from miles around for the experience.

My ticket was for early January, just three weeks away. Rebecca didn’t give me a plane ticket or make a hotel reservation. For the five years she had known me one thing or another always cropped up to prevent me from making the pilgrimage. She didn’t know if I could attend the show. “If you can’t use it, that’s okay,” she said. “But you should try.”

It didn’t take much to convince me. In fact, it seemed preordained. Just before Christmas I’d received a letter from Delta Airlines telling me to use the miles I’d accumulated immediately or lose them forever. It turned out I had just enough miles to pay my transportation to St. Louis— and exactly four days to make the purchase. After that, the miles became worthless.

Unfortunately, to use the miles I needed my “pin” number. I didn’t know my pin number. I didn’t recall having one. I called Delta. The lady said she could mail it to me, but it would take a week. By then my miles would expire. “Sorry,” she told me.

But some sweet little guardian angel wanted me to go. I leafed through my file of mileage plan documents and found four digits scribbled in pencil on a sheet from Delta. Could this be my pin? I typed them into the Delta website, and presto! As the song says:

I got a booking

With the airline

Suddenly I was excited. I booked a motel within walking distance of Blueberry Hill. Then, surfing for information about the shows, I found the official Chuck Berry website. I had seen it before, but I had never paid much attention. Now I felt an urge to post something. I wrote an “open letter” to Chuck Berry’s son, Charles II, who moderated the site under the name CBII. “I wanted to take the opportunity to tell you something you already know, which is how much your dad has meant to the world.” I wrote about the poetry, the guitar, the showmanship. Charles surprised me by responding. A few days later I wrote about stalling my car in Chuck Berry’s driveway. That one got several responses. It was fun, for the first time in decades, to be sharing my secret obsession.

I got to St. Louis on a freezing cold afternoon and took the MetroLink train to University City. The only other passengers were some airport workers. Across the aisle an African American woman about my age was reading a biography of Chuck Berry. When I told her that I’d travelled all the way from Seattle to see him that evening she smiled. I took it as a good omen.

I walked through freezing wind to the motel and then to Blueberry Hill. It’s a big place cluttered with memorabilia. There’s a bar in the center, and rooms scattered about. Posters and photographs line the walls. One advertises “Chuck Berryn” at a place called The Crank Club. The poster comes from a time so early in Berry’s career he used a stage name. (I’d find the remnants of The Crank Club on another trip a year and a half later. It had become a used appliance store. The proprietor there told me he used to play with one of Chuck’s daughters.) The most sacred relic at Blueberry Hill is the blond Gibson that Chuck Berry used to record Maybellene, which sits in a glass case near the door. It’s a beautiful guitar, and in almost perfect condition, the only imperfections being some crinkly hairline fractures in the varnish. It was obviously loved and cared for.

I had French onion soup and a cheeseburger. Onion soup is popular in St. Louis, but with its most famous resident. Chuck once told The New Yorker that “France has the worst restaurants of all. They have scrawny chickens in their windows and serve horrible onion soup that tastes like dishwater.” After dinner I got in line beneath a collection of hundreds of photos of celebrities, and then off we went into the Duck Room, where I scrambled to one of a hundred or so folding metal chairs beneath the low stage. The rest of the people would stand behind us.

The Duck Room is tiny, wider than it is deep, with a bar in the rear. It’s mostly brick and black timbers. Ducks of various sorts line the walls. I sit next to two guys a few years older than myself. They are both from the area—or at least were born there. They remember hanging out at Berry Park in the 1960s or 1970s. There is an opening act—a trio of musical prodigies. But they aren’t Chuck Berry.

Then comes Chuck Berry’s band. His son, Charles II, backs him on guitar. Charles has his dad’s good looks, but not his hair. His head is shaved and he wears glasses. This particular night he’s got a Fender Stratocaster guitar. Also on stage is Chuck’s long time bassist and collaborator, Jimmy Marsala. Marsala has played with Chuck Berry for decades. He brought Berry’s Cadillac to Lompoc Prison in California when Berry was released after a stint for tax evasion. I’ve seen him on television and videos. The drummer is St. Louis local Keith Robinson. Robert Lohr is on keyboards. It’s my first time hearing him. He plays like Johnnie Johnson and Lafayette Leake.

This band doesn’t do one of those typical warm ups for the star. They wait, but not long. Joe Edwards, the owner of Blueberry Hill, comes out to make the introduction. And then, to roars, Chuck Berry—tall as ever, unbent at 82 years old, grinning, with a white captain’s hat, and none of the grump I saw eight years earlier at the EMP in Seattle.

And here's why: he's with a group of great musicians who love him— and it shows. He’s happy, trading beats with the wonderful Robinson; sidling up to his son and Marsala; laughing with keyboardist Lohr. It's a great band that knows exactly what to do. And what they do best is make Chuck Berry comfortable.

This night Chuck's fingers don't do quite what they used to do—what they still can do now and then— but his voice and spirits are strong. And whatever he lacks in picking skill tonight he makes up in guitar wisdom, playing with brilliant economy and knocking out the weird rhythm chords that are a much a part of his playing as the double-string leads.

I’m reasonably certain that the guitar he’s playing is the same one I saw him play in Seattle in 1989—a wine red Gibson ES 355 semi hollow body. Unlike the older guitar on display upstairs, which is in pristine condition, this one is battered, scratched, duct-taped, missing parts— and evidently very good. This is the guitar that Thomas from Sweden calls “The Holy Grail.” It'll need to go on display somewhere someday—some place important.

He plays “Memphis,” “You Never Can Tell,” “Nadine,” B. B. King’s “Rock Me Baby,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Around and Around,” “Bio,” “School Day,” and “Reeling and Rocking.” “Around and Around” is fitting. This joint is rocking and the place is packed.

He forgets the lyrics once or twice— notably during School Days. ("I've forgotten the second verse but I can still PLAY the mother!") But when he forgets CBII or Marsala lean in with a reminder and it’s back to the races, with newly modified lyrics rattling out as usual.

My favorite song of the night is a country waltz called “Love in ¾ Time.” I’ve never heard it, and at the time I hope it is a new Chuck Berry song. A bit of googling proves otherwise. But like a couple of others—“It Hurts Me, Too,” and “Mean Old World”— it’s a song he makes his own.

I like enchiladas

And old El Dorados that shine

My best red guitar

And songs about women and wine

When he finishes with “Reeling and Rocking” the usual flock of women and girls jump on stage to dance with the band. A young one does everything in her power to attract his attention. As usual he leaves the stage before the song ends. He doesn’t back off bowing, just steps through the stage door, still playing. The band works its way through another 12 or 24 bars. And then— don't ask me how—Chuck finishes it with the trademark string of guitar notes and descending ninth chords that he often uses to slam a song shut. The tone is unmistakable.

After the show a door opens on stage, and he sits at the threshold on a spindly folding chair to sign autographs. I’ve got a picture I took at the Seattle Paramount 20 years earlier. In the photograph he’s wearing a colorful print shirt and the $8 red pants from La Cienega. His eyes are shut. He’s smiling. He’s playing in the key of G, which tells me it is probably a blues—maybe just after his little dance for my ex. He is blurred by movement. The picture is dark, and before the show I walked all over the neighborhood searching for a park and pay, or someplace to buy a silver Sharpie, but no luck. I don’t even have a pen.

I kneel down and hand him the photo.

I’m nearly speechless.

"You're still my hero," is all can say— not much changed from when I yelled "You're my idol" 38 years earlier. He doesn’t respond. He looks exhausted, eyes glazed by fatigue and by the mind numbing experience of meeting yet another fan. He looks at the dark picture and smiles a bit—it’s definitely one he has never seen—then looks at his dark blue pen, probably wondering where, on this dark shot, he is supposed to sign his name. He finds a place on the shirt where the ink can be seen, if faintly.

I pull out a drawing that my son Rafferty made at preschool. It’s a four year old's vision of his father’s hero in red, yellow and green washable marker, with the name “Chuck” spelled backwards, perfectly, all letters and order reversed, as if he written through the looking glass. Rafferty’s teacher surprised me with it just before I left for St. Louis. “It was Rafferty’s idea,” she said. “He told me you were going and that you might meet Chuck Berry. He wants you to take this to him.”

I talked with Rafferty about it.

“Would you like him to sign it for you?” I asked.

“No,” said Rafferty. “I want him to keep it.”

So I tell Chuck Berry. “This is from a four year old boy in Seattle. He asked me to give it to you.”

Chuck almost autographs it. He might even make that baroque “C” that he uses. Then, with just a hint of a smile, he stops, and says quietly "Oh, this is for me!"


(This is part of a book length piece about how a musician and songwriter affected my life.  If you want to read more of it, you can start over on the right.  The whole thing is organized by chapter below.)

11/13/12 3:39 (22)

Chapter 29 -

(Wherein various people trace their lineage to the Father of Rock and Roll.  And Vice Versa.)

Outside the temperature was below zero with a stinging wind, but I felt energized and elated.  There was a bit of craziness in the air after the show.  Some people I didn’t know offered me a ride—I don’t know why—then changed their minds.  I called my sister Ann and told her where I was and what I’d just seen.  It was late, and too cold to walk, so I went back inside and asked the bartender to call a cab.  

I could feel, already, that something had reignited.  I was in love with Chuck Berry again.  I was 52, but felt like I was 15 or 16, and just as inarticulate.  “You’re still my hero.”  I’d met him again, presumably for the last time, and that was all I could say.  But I forgave myself.  I was happy.

The hotel had a Tudor theme, with oak paneling and armor.  The “tavern” was still open.  There were armchairs and a fireplace.  I got a glass of wine.

One of the things I treasured about the evening was the simple fact that Chuck Berry was still there, on stage at 82, with his guitar playing loud.

About a year earlier my mother had died.  She was 92— 10 or 11 years older than Chuck Berry.  My mother had been an athlete, but in her late 80s her bones dried up and sometimes broke, her body gave out, and she spent her last couple of years sitting or lying near a window.  She was a private person and hated having to rely on nurses and aides at her assisted living facility, but she had to and did it with patience and kindness.  Once I asked her if life was still worth living.  She told me that it was.  We noticed that her focus became smaller but more intense.  She was delighted by whatever small things happened to be available.  In her high rise apartment she watched evening traffic back up on an arc of freeway a mile or so away.  She liked the contrast between the white headlights and the red taillights.  When they moved her to a bleak hospital room she watched filthy pigeons that gathered outside her window.  Happily they found her a temporary place more like an apartment.  It was not in a high rise.  She was on the ground floor.  But it allowed a glimpse of the garden, trees and clouds.  She became interested in a family that lived across the street.  She watched television, too: a goofy long haired violinist from Ireland, baseball, golf.  A harpist came to the room to play for her.  She loved that, too.  When they moved her one last time it probably killed her.  She was hurt and never quite recovered.  But she watched the leaves outside her window while we spoke with visitors from hospice.  I was on a business trip when she began to fail.  The staff at her home reached me at the Detroit airport.  She lived until I got home.  I found her hardly breathing, surrounded by family.

Her death was different than my dad’s.    There was nothing incomplete in our relationship.  She lived until I was middle-aged, with kids of my own.  She met and loved my new wife.  She was fast friends with my youngest, Rafferty.  My girls sat with her at her deathbed.  Even at the very end she’d listen if I had problems at home or with one of the kids.  She didn’t say much, but it helped.  She’d lived through worse.  She’d lost Stevo.  But she’d lived, right to the end.  

So it was powerful and comforting, after her loss, to find my childhood hero on stage at age 82, rocking a small house with the songs that he created.  It was powerful and comforting to find I still had an old person in my life.

I went home and wrote a recap of the trip and the show for Berry’s website.  Chuck’s son Charles, and keyboardist Bob Lohr both responded.  Charles had even seen Rafferty’s drawing.  “I was wondering who drew that picture,” he wrote.  I was happy to know it wasn’t left on the floor next to the folding chair—that it made it far enough to be wondered about.  Rafferty taught me something.  He and his sisters often do.

For a time I was a regular contributor to the Chuck Berry website, but one day I was surprised to find myself locked out.  I couldn’t log on, couldn’t post, and everything I had posted earlier was gone.  Because I’m prone to internal dialogue and paranoia, I first took it personally.  I fantasized that whatever power ran the site had banished me for some misstep.  I imagined Chuck Berry himself steaming over something I had written.  “What does he mean my fingers don’t work like they used to?  His presence is obnoxious to me!”

Delusion is a difficult thing.  There was much gnashing of teeth.

(Years later, a family member told me about her struggles with a computer.  She didn’t ask for help because she feared she would be mocked.  “Most of the unpleasant encounters I have,” she told me in an e-mail, “take place entirely in my head.”)

   

I was so chagrined about my imagined excommunication I figured out how to contact Charles.  “I hope that I didn’t do or say anything to insult your father,” I told him.  He told me that all new members of the “message board” had been accidentally knocked off.  It was an effort to lock out spammers.  It took a while to fix.  But one day my old posts were back. 

By then I’d started something new.

It began simply.  During a trip to Mexico an American family showed us their family blog.  I was impressed.  I’d never really known what “blogging.”   The family showed me words and pictures online and said it was easy.  So one day I spent an hour setting up a site and posted the story of my first Chuck Berry concert.  

The more I typed, the more I had to say.  I found that to write about Chuck Berry I had to write about my own life and my family.  I’d never thought much about Stevo’s role in my life.  I saw for the first time how Stevo’s offhand remark had affected my life on a daily basis for nearly 40 years. 

For a time I was prolific.  I posted two or three times a day.  Blogging suited me.  There is nothing fastidious about it.  I had a lot to say, and I threw up everything I could find— old or new videos, reviews, photos.  And once or twice a week I added a short post or essay that talked about my personal history with Chuck Berry or his significance to me.  It was therapy. 

It was also an education.  I finally looked up the word “calaboose,” used in the song “No Particular Place to Go,” and learned that it’s a small, country jail, and that you can find one just north of St. Louis.  (It also rhymes beautifully with “still tryin’ to get her belt unloose.”)  

I’d get on a topic and flesh it out as best I could.  For a while I got interested in Chuck Berry’s sidemen—the incredible musicians from St. Louis and Chicago who helped him make records.  I’d known a couple names—Johnnie Johnson, of course, and Willie Dixon, Ebby Hardy and Fred Bellow.  But now I started looking deeper and to see what I could learn about musicians like drummer Odie Payne and pianists Lafayette Leake and Otis Span.  

One of my first “interviews” was of boogie-woogie piano virtuoso and lawyer “Boogie Bob” Baldori.  Baldori backed Berry in dozens and dozens of concerts and on the albums “Back Home” and “San Francisco Dues.”  The interview was done by e-mail but read like a thoughtful conversation, with insights about Chuck Berry as a person, a mentor, a showman, and a businessman.

Baldori’s interview was the first of a trio featuring Chuck Berry’s latter day pianists.  Chuck’s St. Louis collaborator, Bob Lohr, another piano playing lawyer, also agreed to an interview, providing equally articulate responses.  My readership bumped up a notch.  

Then one day my brother told me he was thinking about seeing Chuck Berry at B. B. King’s club in New York.  I posted a query on Berry’s website asking who’d be backing Chuck at the event.  CBII responded that it would be “the amazing Daryl Davis.”  I found a clip of Davis standing at an electric keyboard at what looked to be a private party.  Davis weaved history into his performance, telling the crowd how Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey each claimed to have authored a boogie-woogie that was really written by Pine Top Smith and later played by Pinetop Perkins.  (Smith began working on the piece at a house party in St. Louis.)  I contacted Davis and asked if he’d do an interview.  He agreed.  I sent him a half a page of questions.  A day or two later, I got answers that ran a dozen single spaced pages.  

The generosity of these musicians surprised and thrilled me.  Each of them took time to respond thoughtfully.  They seemed to want people to know more about the Chuck Berry they knew—that he isn’t the “truculent” or “difficult” man of so many media stories.  They described a mentor and friend, someone who’s witty, fair, and fun to work for.  “Chuck is the best cat I've ever played for by a long shot,” said Bob Lohr.  “He's always treated me with a ton of respect— essentially like one of his family.”  Lohr added that “Chuck is an extremely funny guy onstage.   He'll come over and start talking to me during the show— he'll get me laughing so hard I've almost fallen off the piano stool a couple of times.  Can't tell you what he said, though.”  Baldori said that “Deep down he's one of the nicest, most humble, gracious guys you will ever meet.”  

Daryl Davis often got past the public man to stories about small moments.  When I asked about an appearance at the Chesapeake Bay Blues Festival in 2010, Davis wrote about a detour through Washington, D.C.  “This guy had not been there in over 50 years but still knew the area and was telling me about what was on which corner and little tidbits of information. Sure enough, when we turned down the street, everything he had said was accurate.  He pointed out the rooming house where he would stay because in those days, Blacks couldn’t stay in the White hotels.  He had named a bar next door to the Howard where the entertainers would hang out.  Sure enough, there it was.  It had since changed names but it was still the same bar in the same building.”

I’d get a chance to meet Davis when he taught at the Centrum acoustic blues workshop in Port Townsend, Washington.  I went to one of the shows that end the workshop and saw Daryl do a powerful performance of boogie-woogie.  For a time he played nothing but his left hand, showing how the boogie part of boogie-woogie sounds when played by Ray Charles, or Little Richard, or Fats, or Jerry Lee Lewis.  That one hand pummeling the bass notes was enough to shake the room.

I got to meet Bob Lohr, too.  I got an e-mail from Lohr telling me he was in town with his wife and suggesting we “kick it.”  I’d only “met” him through short e-mails and my interview.  I wasn’t sure how to entertain a blues musician.  He asked about bar-b-cue, so I told him about good place for ribs and fried chicken and we agreed to meet up later.  Bob wasn’t interested in bars, so we went to my house where my mother’s old Baldwin Baby Grand piano sat like a giant Bob Lohr magnet.  In the wee hours of the morning he began playing “Wee Wee Hours.”  “This is how Johnny Johnson would do it,” he said, then shifted gears.  “Otis Spann might play it like this!”  Rafferty and Rebecca were sleeping upstairs.  Ah well.  My daughter Gemma, who’d just learned her first blues on the piano, came down to investigate.  God knows what our neighbors thought, but they probably heard it.  The house was shaking.  Bob wasn’t playing the mushy, weak sort of “blues” I manage on the piano (I think of Chuck, describing the difference between “blues” and “Ba-lues”)—Bob was pounding the keys at 2:00 am, celebrating that piano’s centennial with the first real music it had felt in more than 40 years.  He kept apologizing that he wasn’t “used to” acoustics anymore.  He fooled me.  CBII says that the performances at Blueberry Hill are like having Chuck Berry play in your basement.  A key part of that show happened right in my living room.

As I drove back him across town to the house where he was staying we talked a bit about Chuck Berry.  He told me about a show where Chuck had introduced his son, Charles, and then his longtime bass player, Jim Marsala, who is white.  “He’s my other son.  Don’t know what happened!”  It was an old joke, told often.  But then Chuck looked at Bob.  “You’re my son, too, Robert.”

Lohr is a huge guy, too tall to fit in my car, a hardened, white-haired, no nonsense blues musician who grew up “dodging bullets” in East St. Louis and who has hung and played with more blues greats than most of us will see in our lifetimes.  But when he tells this story he is a kid, and solemn.

“You’re my son, too, Robert.”  

That would do it.  That’s what, in my heart, I wanted when I stalled my car on private property. 

I’ve seen it bring a man to tears.  

Three years and a month after my first visit to Blueberry Hill, when Chuck Berry was 85 years old, I had a chance to stand with him in a hallway and discuss a picture taken of him when he was a child.  I was totally absorbed in the drama of my own brief contact with the man.  When he and his party pushed through the door for the parking lot I turned to see a middle-aged factory worker from Iowa push a tear from his eye.  

“What a softy!” I said.

Doug and I had met for the first time two days prior at Blueberry Hill.  Although we hadn’t met in person before that, Doug and I knew each other from chuckberry.com and through e-mails.  Call us “pen pals.”  Doug was one of the first people to whom I sent the link to my blog, and he became one of its most loyal readers.  We arranged to meet up, and then to drive to Memphis together.  Although we’re as different as can be in many ways, and though I sometimes have trouble bringing new people into my life, I had no problem spending hours on the road with Doug, talking about families, jobs, and, of course, Chuck Berry.  After touring a couple of the Memphis studios, eating ribs on Beale Street, visiting the Lorraine Motel and catching a set at B. B. King’s, we drove back in time for a second Chuck Berry show at a casino just across the river from St. Louis in Illinois.  My wife Rebecca came for the casino show.  Bob Lohr had arranged backstage passes for the three of us, and thus my brief interaction with Chuck Berry in the hallway, which I wrote about on my blog.

A day or so later my wife and I were driving.  I think she wanted to point out a flaw in my reporting.

“Doug seemed really moved when Chuck Berry said that.”

“Said what?” I asked.

“When he called Doug his son,” she said.

It turns out that while I was lost in my own reverie, or perhaps talking to one of the other people in the room, Charles had introduced his father to Doug.  They talked, and then Chuck turned around, pointed to Doug, and said “This is my other son.  Don’t know what happened!”

I remember driving towards Wentzville with my silly childhood fantasy somehow still partially and irrationally intact—that deeply seated, poorly understood desire to enter the world of my hero, to see him in a more private moment, to be recognized as his child.  

Turns out it’s Doug.  And Bob.  And Jimmy Marsala.

And maybe, in some small way, that’s what we all are, whole generations of us, and Chuck Berry knows it.  “All my beautiful children,” he used to say.  

Just like my mom.  

(This is part of If You Get Too Close, a book length piece about how one life was affected by the Art and Rock and Roll of Chuck Berry.  To start at the very beginning, click HERE.)

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Chapter 30 - Such a Sight to See

Until my first Blueberry Hill show I’d been in a sort of remission.  After that show I was infested again, stage three.  But now it had little to do with the music.  Even though he’s got a better band now, Chuck Berry can’t top what I saw and heard in the early 1970s.  But as I sat at Blueberry Hill and waited for him to appear I realized that I was waiting for just that: an apparition.  I knew that my imaginary friend and idol would take human form, that he’d walk on stage with a scratched guitar and frayed pants and stand just a few feet away, as real as anything.  He might even gaze at me for a time, or speak to me, or acknowledge me.  And in fact, he did.  It was reassuring to remember that the person who loomed so large in my thoughts and imagination was also flesh and bone and wears ancient polyester.

There is something almost religious about it, and Chuck Berry knows it.  “I’m not an oldies act,” he said when he turned 75.  “The music I play, it is a ritual, something that matters to people in a special way.  I wouldn’t want to interfere with that.”

So in October 2010, I go to St. Louis again.  There will be two shows, one at The Pageant, and one at Blueberry Hill.  Rebecca, an actor, is in rehearsals and can’t join me.  My two younger kids wouldn’t be allowed into Blueberry Hill.  My elder daughter, Jade, is about to become a mom, so she’s not going anywhere for a while.  But my brother Paul and his wife Liz agree to meet me in St. Louis.  Paul spent time in Missouri as a kid.  Liz grew up bopping to Jimmy Reed.  I find it odd but wonderful that they are willing to join me on my eccentric pilgrimage.  I have plans to tour St. Louis looking for the landmarks of my hero’s past.  I want to see the houses and neighborhoods where he grew up, and the clubs where he played.  Paul and Liz are game, as long as they can get in a few games of golf between times. 

We arrive on separate flights.  I text Bob Lohr that we are in town and he invites us to a 3:00 pm sound check.  It’s already 2:00 when we speed off towards The Pageant in the rental car.

We’re staying at the Moonrise Hotel, next door to The Pageant, and a few blocks east of Blueberry Hill.  All three establishments are owned by Chuck Berry’s friend Joe Edwards.  We check in and head quickly to The Pageant, but it’s locked up tight, so we stroll up Delmar towards Blueberry Hill, thinking the sound check is not in the cards.  Then I check my phone and find four or five voice mails from Lohr beginning with a polite tone, then increasingly emphatic.  (The last is something like “get your asses down here, we need to start!”)  We hurry back and find Bob waiting on the east side of the building.  He hands us passes and we follow him through a side door and onto the stage.

The interior of The Pageant is stunning— a simple but beautiful space with a dance floor in front of the stage, raised seating at tables all around that, and a U shaped balcony.  Every seat appears to be a good one, and there’s a dance floor in the front.  That’s where I intend to be.

As we stand there, I begin to realize that my blog, which at times I feel silly about, is bringing me closer and closer to where I wanted to be as a child.  A few months before Lohr was in my living room.  Now I’ve got a backstage pass.  It’s possible that later in the evening I’ll be able to meet Chuck Berry again.  This time I’ve learned from Rafferty.  I’ve got a gift for him, a copy of the drawing I made when I was 17, the one of him as a child from the cover of “Bio.”  It’s framed.  I don’t want an autograph—I want to give something back.

I feel pretty lucky.  

I wave at CBII.  I’ve never met him in person, but we’ve communicated a bit.  He’s busy but waves back.  Chuck’s long time bass player and de facto musical director, Jim Marsala, comes and welcomes us.  I’m surprised to learn that he remembers an e-mail I sent him.  I introduce myself to Keith Robinson, telling him that he’s the best drummer I’ve seen play with Chuck Berry.  

Most of the sound check is done individually, but before they finish they invite Thomas Einarson, a musician from Sweden, to fill the spot Chuck Berry’s guitar will take later in the show.  Einarson is a committed Chuck Berry fan.  His band, “Bad Sign” has opened for Chuck Berry at Blueberry Hill.  He is also one of the rare individuals to be trusted with Chuck Berry’s guitar.  I’m hoping he’ll pull it out, but instead he uses a Fender to play some very authentic licks.  It’s a nice moment.

Lohr tells us that the “all access” passes will get us into the hall as soon as the bar opens at 5.  We get back early and enter through the stage door.  It’s a curious feeling when the guards wave us through.  

The Pageant is empty.  We find places at a bar about 30 feet from center stage with a direct sight line over the dance floor.   A waiter or bouncer approaches.  He seems annoyed.  

“I don’t know how you got in, but we’re not open,” he says, with authority.  

We flash our “all access” badges.  “I’m sorry,” he says, and leaves us in our majesty.  

And then, finally, it starts.  I’m not at the bar anymore—I’m up front, as close as I can manage to get to the center microphone.  The man next to me has brought his son from Georgia for the show.  To my left, at a table near the dance floor, is a large contingent of Berrys.  (I see Chuck Berry’s wife, whom I recognize from her brief, stunned appearance in the film “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll.”)  I like that the hometown audience is more racially mixed than the other Chuck Berry shows I’ve seen over the last 40 years.  

Two girls too cute to be a minute over 17 are craning their necks, searching the wings for Chuck’s grandson.  I suspect they are cousins or school chums.  A lot of young hipsters are there, and a lot of old folk.  A mother pushes two other high school girls—sweet little sixteens— into a position next to me.  

Joe Edwards and a co-owner of The Pageant come out to make the introduction.  There’s a giant birthday cake, but it’s for the theater, not Chuck.  (The Pageant is ten years old this evening; Chuck will be 84 the next day.)  The band stands ready.  And then here comes Chuck Berry, black slacks, a glittering red shirt, an admiral’s cap and that scratched up, taped up old guitar.  He grabs Edward’s hand and pulls him close.  Edwards walks off, grinning, and a Chuck Berry show begins.

How often has this happened?  There’s no authoritative or complete listing of the shows he has performed in his 60 years as a professional.  Author Morten Reff lists as many of the international shows as he could find and it is a bigger number than I care to count—well over 500.  But I can make some reasonable (and I think reasonably conservative) estimates.  Let’s assume that from 1955 until 1961 he did an average of 200 shows a year.  That makes 1200.  Let’s say that from 1963 until 1971 he worked a little harder—say 225 a year.  That’s another 1800.  Then comes his “Ding a Ling” and even more work—let’s say 750 shows over three years.  We’re up to 3750.  Then let it cruise at 125 shows a year for the next 10 years.  That’s probably conservative, but it’s now 1986, and we’re at 5250 shows.  But he’s only 60 and still going strong.  Let’s assume 100 shows a year until he turns 70, 75 a year until 75, 50 a year till he turns 80, and then slow him down to something like 25 shows a year when he enters his 80s.  By my reasonably well educated (and carefully manipulated) fantasy count we’re at 7000 shows and counting.

It’s guesswork on my part, but you get the idea.  The man worked.  This isn’t someone who plays golf 300 days a year and then regroups for a tour every ten years to refill the coffers.  If there’s nothing else you take from this reading, take this: the man worked, and still does.

So here I am, at show 7001, and I know, from the first notes, that it will be special. Tonight, on the eve of his 84^th birthday, Chuck Berry is young again.  His eyes shine.  His look is devilish.  His guitar intros are perfect.  He is hitting all the riffs, hitting them on all cylinders, and he knows it.  He looks almost surprised, and absolutely delighted.

The view from stage must be fine.  The Pageant is full.  The people are happy.  He starts with "Roll Over Beethoven," hitting every note of the introduction, showing us his “blue suede shoes” twice, moving back and forth across the stage and nailing every guitar part.  He chugs straight into the chords of "School Day" and we all “hail! hail!” the music he invented.  He plays "Memphis," singing about a lost daughter, with Ingrid on stage to back him.  When he starts "Carol" he must not like the first few notes, so he stops and starts again and gets it right— and then starts doing what Mr. Richards thought impossible exactly 24 birthdays earlier, playing both lead and rhythm.  For a time “Carol” becomes “Queenie," and he’s “still thinking” (“I do that sometimes!”) but then Carol’s back, and he’s frantic, thumping on the strings of his guitar like the head of a drum.  The night’s emotion works on him.  There’s a moment he sings "oh" to Carol so long and plaintively you think he might cry remembering when that girl was hard to get even for him!  Then he gives his 84 year old body a break and gives us all an education in the blues with “Wee Wee Hours.”  Ingrid bends at the waist and blows her harmonica.  Bob Lohr does the riff that Chuck tried and failed to teach a piano player in Seattle and trills and flourishes that hearken directly back to Johnnie Johnson.  If Chuck Berry had written and recorded just this one song he would have a place the blues encyclopedia.  But he wrote dozens, and after opening the floor for requests he responds with "Nadine," chugging away at its familiar bass riff as the girl slips into her macchiato Cadillac.  During "Rock and Roll Music," he gives a lyrical twist to the lines about modern jazz.  His singing is youthful tonight.  He’s not just shouting the lyrics rhythmically, an interesting style he’s adopted in recent years.  He’s singing, bending notes the way he bends the notes on his guitar, savoring rhymes he invented so many years ago he sometimes forgets them, grinning devilishly at the double entendres.  He ends “Rock and Roll Music” with a powerful cha cha cha of strummed chords, then starts a blistering rendition of "Let it Rock."  He takes another breather by trying  a verse of a stage rarity, “La Juanda,” but lets go of it quickly to finish with "Reelin' and Rockin'," which doesn’t last till the break of dawn, but goes on a long, long time and includes the closest thing to an encore that I've seen Chuck Berry do.  He gets most of the way off stage, then returns to sit on the drum riser and play a while longer.  Then a bit of "House Lights," and he’s done.

I don’t take notes but there are moments I can remember without them.  He does his famous scoot twice, then starts a third time to coax his grandson into trying it.  Charles III, is playing the third guitar.  Daughter Ingrid, in tight, black leather, is singing harmonies and wailing on harmonica.  Adopted “son” Marsala seems pleased, grinning cheerfully throughout the night.  Chuck’s extended family is hooting and hollering from the dance floor.  It’s an all ages show, and the Berry family contingent includes little kids.  His “rock and roll children” are there, too, some nearly 70, some still sweet, little and sixteen.  The night belongs, in many ways, to Lohr, who plays at least a half dozen extended solos on his digital keyboard.  There’s a special moment at the end when CBII and CBIII move to the front of the stage and play together, heads bent in concentration.  There’s another special moment when Ingrid finishes a solo then walks towards her dad on stage.  I see him lock eyes with her and mouth the words “I love you.”  

And that’s how I feel, too, not just about Ingrid, but about her dad, about his music, about his band, about the night we’ve just experienced, the whole spectacle and ritual and this amazing rebirth and rejuvenation of my old hero.  I’ve experienced it again— an apparition, like the Virgin of Guadalupe or the Lady of Lourdes—our Father of Rock and Roll, young again, at age 84. 

(This is Chapter 30 of a book length publication about how Chuck Berry turned my life upside down.  The next chapter is HERE.  To start reading from the beginning, look for the Prologue and Chapter One HERE.)

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