Tuesday, 10 April 2018

Lucy Museum of Musicians - Chuck Berry

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.


Chuck Berry 

Qualifying Songs: Johnny B Goode, Memphis Tennessee, Roll over Beethoven

You never got variety with Chuck Berry, one song was very similar to any of his other songs and the lyrics would not win any poetry competitions but he found a winning combination early on and stayed with it for almost everything he did.
The start of 'Johnny B Goode' is as good as an intro gets and the song was quite rightly chosen to represent Humans on the Voyager Space Mission so if any alien life finds it they will think those funny looking humans can't be all bad and not obliterate us. 
'Roll Over Beethoven', with a tune not a million miles away from Johnny B Goode, is declaring a new era of music and for the classic composers such as Beethoven to roll over in his grave in reaction to the new genre of music.
'Memphis Tennessee' is a rare, slower tempo song but still has that trademark Berry guitar riff which makes him stand out as one of the greatest guitar players my ears have had the pleasure to hear, Rolling Stone has him at 7th in their greatest Guitar Players list.
On all accountants he wasn't the easiest person to get along with and his list of criminal indiscretions shows that he wasn't a particularly great human being but if you can separate the man from his music, what an amazing musician he was.

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