Review and news hub for movies, music and video games

2540 guests and 20 members online

It often times seems like some of the most treasured songs in popular music are accompanied by back stories that are just as interesting as the songs themselves. That's what 'Song Stories,' my new bi-weekly article is all about, the compelling and sometimes exceptionally strange stories behind the songs we listen to every day.

I'll be covering both new and old songs, ones that were commercially successful and ones that were underground sensations. Comments and critiques are welcome, as well as suggestions on what songs I should do next. This week I'll start off with the very song that may have started this thing we call rock & roll.

Chuck Berry - "Maybellene" (1955)
From the Album The Great Twenty-Eight

It's an old argument as to who came first. Who exactly was it that broke rock and roll music to the masses? Was it the white boy from Mississippi or the black man from St. Louis? While Elvis would go on to become a living legend, posthumously bordering on deity status; Berry would serve jail time for grand theft auto and for violating the MANN act. But in the mean time Berry all but invented rock music and spread it across white radio stations with 1955's landmark single "Maybellene."

The story of "Maybellene" is undoubtedly an interesting one, just as you'd expect from such a legendary song. Berry began his musical career as a blues musician. He was an extraordinarily skilled guitarist and a multifaceted music lover who would not only play blues songs but also his own renditions of western swing music.

Berry once commented on his take on western swing, "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?' After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."

In 1955 Berry was signed by legendary blues label Chess Records. Though Chuck figured Chess owner Leonard Chess had signed him for his blues music, Chess instead asked Berry to record one of his hillbilly songs. The song that Berry took to the studio was western swing legend Bob Will's 1938 version of the classic folk song "Ida Red."

"Ida Red" was apparently one of the hillbilly songs that Berry would play at St. Louis clubs. It's been said that a version very close to the finalized studio take Berry recorded was a show staple for Chuck's band and was played under the rewritten name of "Ida May." Though we don't know whether or not that's entirely true, once Berry teamed up with blues musicians Willie Dixon on bass and Johnnie Johnson on piano to record the song, "Ida Red" no longer sounded much like western swing. In fact it really didn't sound like anything that had ever been done before.

The transition of the song name from "Ida Red" to "Maybellene" has been disputed, and no clear answer has ever presented itself. If Berry really did call the song "Ida May" at one point, then the transition is a smooth one. Chuck himself said that the name "Maybellene" was the name of a cow in a children's book, while pianist Johnnie Johnson has a more detailed story, "At that time, someone else already had a song out by the same name, so we had to change our version. We noticed a mascara box in the corner, so we changed the name to 'Maybellene.'"

"Maybellene" hit the airwaves in July of 1955 and was an instant hit. It went all the way to #5 on the Billboard charts, which was unheard of for a black musician at the time, and reached #1 on the R&B charts (aka the black charts). The Berry written lyrics about a high speed hot-rod race appealed to a young white audience, the same audience that he would feed off of for a number of his hits throughout the '50s. Once Elvis finally hit the pop charts in January of 1956, "Maybellene" was six months old.

The influence of "Maybellene" can still be seen today. It was the first. The song that set the gold standard for modern rock music. Though Berry would go on to have more hits and record songs that were just as, if not more famous, "Maybellene" will always be remembered as a pioneering single that ushered in rock and roll music.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Name

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

Add Comment Preview