Headed for home: RIP Chuck Berry

Neil Young sang: “Rock ‘n’ Roll will never die.” But damn, I think it just did. From today’s New York Times:

While Elvis Presley was rock’s first pop star and teenage heartthrob, Mr. Berry was its master theorist and conceptual genius, the songwriter who understood what the kids wanted before they knew themselves. With songs like “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roll Over Beethoven,” he gave his listeners more than they knew they were getting from jukebox entertainment.

“Master theorist”? “Conceptual genius”? Pretty heady declarations about a guy who strutted like a duck across the stage, played his guitar like ringin’ a bell, and and sang 4-chord songs about cars and girls. After all, its only rock ‘n’ roll, and I like it, like, yes I do…right?

Those declarations are not heady enough, actually. He was a poet:

Arrested on charges of unemployment,
He was sitting in the witness stand
The judge’s wife called up the district attorney
Said you free that brown eyed man
You want your job you better free that brown eyed man

“Arrested on charges of unemployment.” That is fucking genius. That’s from “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man”. It gets even better:

Flying across the desert in a TWA,
I saw a woman walking across the sand
She been a-walkin’ thirty miles en route to Bombay.
To get a brown eyed handsome man
Her destination was a brown eyed handsome man

Way back in history three thousand years
Back every since the world began
There’s been a whole lot of good women shed a tear
For a brown eyed handsome man
That’s what the trouble was brown eyed handsome man

Beautiful daughter couldn’t make up her mind
Between a doctor and a lawyer man
Her mother told her daughter go out and find yourself
A brown eyed handsome man
That’s what your daddy is a brown eyed handsome man

Milo Venus was a beautiful lass
She had the world in the palm of her hand
But she lost both her arms in a wrestling match
To get brown eyed handsome man
She fought and won herself a brown eyed handsome man

Two, three count with nobody on
He hit a high fly into the stand
Rounding third he was headed for home
It was a brown eyed handsome man
That won the game; it was a brown eyed handsome man.

Keep in mind…that song was released in 1956, long before James Brown wrote “(Say it Loud) I’m Black and I’m Proud”. Just sayin’.

Granted, at 90, he was roundin’ third. But now he’s headed home. And we’ll always have the music; most importantly, the poetry. R.I.P.

— Dennis Hartley