Chuck Berry

Ob das Album nun was kann oder nicht kann ich nicht beurteilen, Fakt ist aber daß es eben kein posthum zusammengewürfeltes Werk ist, sondern eines dessen Erscheinen der Künstler nicht mehr erlebte. Das ist ein Unterschied.

Neulich hab ich eine kurze Einschätzung des Albums auf dem SmileySmileMessageBoard geschrieben. Falls es interessiert, kopiere ich sie hier (auf Englisch) rein:

Well, just a short summary. The record is full of classic Chuck Berry music. All in all it's much better sounding than I thought it would and the songs are not as embarassing as you could expect them to be with such a project (like for example Mike Love's way of name-checking the same Beach Boys songs again and again in new songs).
Chuck's guitar playing is fine and thankfully not as terrible as during live performances during his last ten years or so. His son also tries his best to fill in with his guitar playing but you can tell from the style and sound that it is not Chuck himself (and I don't think they were trying to fool anyone).
Two cover songs appear on the album. The Jazz song "You go to my head", a. o. sung by Ella Fitzgerald, and "3/4 time" (live performance), a song written but never recorded by Tony Joe White, which was a hit for Ray Charles.
As mentioned, Chuck's new music sounds like Chuck Berry, although I don't think there's a new classic. He re-records "Havana moon" as "Jamaica moon", after already having done a new "Havana moon" version on "Rockit". His vocals sound good and seem to have been recorded years ago, except for a couple of the first tunes on the album which show his voice in more recent sound.
I have to say though that some of the songs are just too long imo. From the classic Rock'n'Roll singers, Chuck was certainly the weakest singer. He did a great job on his songs but he can't keep it interesting after a song is going on for a while. So, instead of 5 mins. I'd have tried to cut the song in half, although that means of course that you'd have to get rid of a couple of lyrics and a songwriter might not want to do this.

In the end, this is a record that is a strong end to a legendary career in music (it was planned to be his last album even when he was still alive). It is not an album that shows a new side of Chuck that wasn't known before. We've already heard the kind of songs he offers us here. But that is what Chuck Berry (and all other stylists in his/her own case) was about: he plays Chuck Berry music.

filmforum.org/film/chuck-berry-the-original-king-of-rock-n-roll

Charles schrieb:

filmforum.org/film/chuck-berry-the-original-king-of-rock-n-roll

Ah ja, die Doku lief auf Arte, nachdem Chuck gestorben ist. Ich meine, dass sie ziemlich gut war/ist.

New Chuck Berry Recording Released: “Let It Rock”


Fans of rock ‘n’ roll and of its greatest participant, Chuck Berry, get ready. On December 17 you can dive into the artist’s new posthumous concert record, Live From Blueberry Hill.

However, today (November 17), a month before the release, fans can check out a sneak peak from the forthcoming LP and listen to the live recording of Berry performing the jam “Let It Rock.”

“I’ve been out here so long, I’ve dwindled down to just: ‘Call me Chuck,’” Berry says before diving into the rocking tune. The crowd laughs and the guitar lines ring out.

According to a statement about the forthcoming live concert record: “Taken from performances recorded between July 2005 and January 2006, Live From Blueberry Hill features Berry tearing through classics like ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ ‘Sweet Little Sixteen,’ and ‘Johnny B. Goode’ on the stage that he performed on more than 200 times during the final decades of his life.

“With his Blueberry Hill Band — daughter Ingrid Berry on harmonica, son Charles Berry, Jr. on guitar, bassist and band leader Jimmy Marsala, pianist Robert Lohr, and drummer Keith Robinson — in tow, Chuck’s Duck Room performances were a rare opportunity to witness the godfather of rock and roll savoring his own talents and putting a raucous, freewheeling spin on classics that are now permanently woven into the fabric of modern music.”

See the newly released recording from Berry, who Bob Dylan called “the Shakespeare of rock ‘n’ roll,” below.





The performances came together in 1996 when Berry said to Joe Edwards, owner of Blueberry Hill, which opened in 1972, “You know, Joe, I’d like to play a place the size of the ones I played when I first started out.”

After deciding that Blueberry Hill was the place for these shows, Edwards built “The Duck Room,” a new stage named after Berry’s signature stage move. Throughout the next 17 years, Berry would perform 209 shows with his “Blueberry Hill Band,” the longest-running band in his 60-year career, consisting of longtime Berry collaborators and family members, including daughter Ingrid Berry on harmonica and son Charles Berry, Jr. on guitar, along with bassist and bandleader Jimmy Marsala, pianist Robert Lohr, and drummer Keith Robinson.

Berry’s musical accomplishments stretch far and wide. He was the first member inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and he is a recipient of both a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Kennedy Center Honor. And similar to Dylan, John Lennon said that Berry’s name was synonymous with rock and roll itself.

Berry, who died in 2017 at 90 years old, released his final studio album, Chuck, in 2017. He’d released his first album 60 years earlier in 1957.

Throughout the years, artists like Lorde, Motorhead’s Lemmy, Robbie Robertson of The Band, fellow St. Louis native Nelly, and more made the pilgrimage to St. Louis to see Berry perform. He would play his final show at The Duck Room on Oct. 15, 2014, nearly three years before his death.






Live From Blueberry Hill Track List:

1. Roll Over Beethoven
2. Rock And Roll Music
3. Let It Rock
4. Carol / Little Queenie
5. Sweet Little Sixteen
6. Around And Around
7. Nadine
8. Bio
9. Mean Old World
10. Johnny B. Goode



Quelle: americansongwriter.com/new-chuck-berry-r...eleased-let-it-rock/

 

Ich tue mich immer recht schwer mit Aufnahmen von so alten Altstars. Die Sachen klingen leider fast immer recht flügellahm, auch wenn man dann wieder sagt, hey der Mann war da schon 78 oder was auch immer. Sie bleiben leider fast immer nur noch ein Schatten Ihrer frühen Jahre …

Das kann ich gut verstehen. Besonders auch bei Chuck, der ja die letzten Jahrzehnte für ordentlich Ohrenkrebs gesorgt hat. Umso erstaunter bin ich von den Beispielen aus diesem Album. Das klingt echt gut und man fragt sich, ob die Stücke tatsächlich aus 2006 stammen.

Ich bin da nicht so tief in der Materie, aber ich kann nur sagen, dass ich sein letztes Album „CHUCK“ nach wie vor für herausragend halte.
 

Dann muss ich wohl tatsächlich mal ins letzte Album ‘reinhören. Die Sachen davor fand ich schon lange nicht mehr so spannend, wie seine frühen Aufnahmen. Liegt aber bei einem Rock‘n’Roll-/1950sFan in der Natur der Sache.

Falls du dir das Album erst zulegen solltest:
Nimm bitte unbedingt die Vinyl Variante.
Das beigelegte Booklet (fast schon ein kleines Buch) ist grandios. Sicher eines der schönsten von allen LPs die ich habe!