There is no denying that when Chuck Berry passed away earlier this year at the age of 90, a huge portion of rock music’s early history left with him. Despite only gaining one chart-topping song \u2013 and a throw-away number at a stage in his career well past his prime \u2013 Berry remained a seminal part of rock music’s scene up until nearly the end of his life.<\/p>\n
Chuck<\/i>, his final studio release (and first studio album since 1979’s Rock It<\/i>), is a surprisingly good last statement from one of the few remaining elder statesmen of rock and roll. It’s not a perfect effort, but it also shows that Berry was willing to do some experimenting with his music, even up until the end.<\/p>\n
For a man who, by all rights, should have been enjoying the fruits of his labors over the course of several decades, Berry hardly sounds his age, both in his vocals and his playing ability. Tracks like \u201cBig Boys\u201d and \u201cWonderful Woman\u201d all prove that he had lost precious little of the skills he had demonstrated over the years \u2013 even if some of the songs, such as \u201cLady B. Goode,\u201d don’t show him exactly plowing any new ground.<\/p>\n
Yet it is<\/i> in the exploration of different rhythms and styles that Chuck<\/i> finds its greatest success. Yes, you could argue that \u201cJamaica Moon\u201d is simplistic and repetitive \u2013 and you’d be right on both counts. But it’s also damned enjoyable \u2013 and, let’s be honest, songs from Berry’s catalog over the eyars would hardly be considered to be challenging on the level of, say, Dream Theater. He simply finds a great rhythm, crafted an interesting song around it\u2026 and the rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n
Likewise, Berry doesn’t sing on the song \u201cDutchman,\u201d but turns it into a spoken-word masterpiece with a good rhythm track behind it. These are the moments when you recognize that an artist is doing something different, and you tend to pay attention to them a little more than, say, if we had been presented with an album of \u201cSweet Little Sixteen\u201d rehashes. These experiments work, and work well.<\/p>\n
And while I can’t say that \u201cDarlin’\u201d – an ode from an aging father to his adult child \u2013 works as well, it too is Berry taking a musical chance, and I’ll commend him for that. It just isn’t on the same caliber as \u201cDutchman\u201d or \u201cJamaica Moon\u201d.<\/p>\n
The one misstep on Chuck<\/i> is the inclusion of the live track \u201c3\/4 Time (Enchiladas)\u201d. It fails for a number of reasons, but two quickly come to mind. First, it feels like Berry was trying to recapture the success he had with his double entendre little ditty \u201cMy Ding-A-Ling\u201d from 1972. Second, it’s a little bit creepy to hear an 80-something man singing suggestive songs like this one.<\/p>\n
Honestly, I didn’t expect to find much on Chuck<\/i> that I was going to like, but Berry continued to be full of surprises, even at the end of his life. It almost makes one wonder what he could have accomplished had he released something \u2013 anything<\/i> \u2013 between 1979 and 2017. Chuck<\/i> is a very nice book-end, as well as a farewell, for one of rock’s legendary performers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8773],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-44997","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-chuck-berry","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44997"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}