Promised Land Sounds

WHEN CHUCK Berry announced last October, on his 90th birthday, that he would issue new music in 2017, the music world was staggered. He had called a halt to his run of monthly gigs at St Louis’ Blueberry Hill club two years before. It wasn’t known that he was recording, and there were no rumours of a release. In fact, he had set the stage for a new album after one of those last Blueberry Hill shows, in a conversation with the club’s owner Joe Edwards. “My mom was there,” recalls Chuck’s son, Charles Berry Jr. “She remembers Dad talking to Joe, saying, ‘I’m ready. Let’s get this thing done.’” That thing became Chuck, the now-posthumous 10-song album due in June. It’s Berry’s first album of new music since Rockit in 1979. And although he’d written and recorded songs since, many had perished when the studio on his farm outside St Louis burned down in 1989. It was rebuilt two years later, and Berry cut the basic guitar and vocal tracks for Chuck there at various times between 1991 and 2014, Charles Jr says. The eight originals on Chuck recall timeless, rocking Berry. There’s vintage wordplay in Wonderful Woman – “Woe be unto me, if it be, that she, gets away” – which also includes a subtle nod to his most famous inheritors, The Rolling Stones: “You know I need satisfaction/I didn’t get any yesterday.” Meanwhile, Jamaica Moon is a Caribbeanflavoured cut that updates Berry’s classic 1956 release, Havana Moon. The set also includes two covers: a bluesy version of Haven Gillespie and J. Fred Coots’ 1938 standard You Go To My Head, and Tony Joe White’s 3/4 Time. White’s salute to cars, guitars and women was recorded by Ray Charles on his 1983 country LP Wish You Were Here Tonight. Berry’s version, recorded live on-stage, acknowledges mortality – “I like what I'm doin’ and I hope it don’t end too soon” – but ends with an ad lib that mixes his penchants for the salacious and contemporary: “I been hoping to find a woman like you honey, whose software matches this hard drive of mine.”

ITH HIS own vocals and guitar tracks already cut, Berry instructed his Blueberry Hill live band to complete the tracks. Charles Jr plays guitar, as does his son, Charles Berry III. Berry’s daughter and longtime collaborator, Ingrid, duets on Darlin’, which Chuck wrote for her. While there are a few assists – Gary Clark Jr and Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello each play on a song – it’s not weighed down by the kind of heavyweight guest appearances common to albums by rock’s elder statesmen. “He was like, ‘You know what? We’re gonna play it like Chuck Berry plays it,’” Charles Jr says. “‘I’ve got who I want to be on this record right here in St Louis. I’m gonna finish this thing off with my band.’” Given the chance to release the set, Nashville indie label Dualtone jumped at it. It was the label’s loving treatment of June Carter Cash’s last records that impressed the Berry family, says Dualtone’s Paul Roper. “There wasn’t a need for us to hear any [music in advance],” he says. “We knew this was going to be a part of rock history.” Yet it was Dualtone who broached the idea of adding guests. The family was initially reluctant, says Charles Jr. “Then they brought Gary Clark Jr’s name up, and it was like, ‘Oh hell yeah, go get him.’ We immediately zeroed in on him.” Berry Sr first took note of Clark in 2006, when the upstart opened for the legend in Austin, Texas. Berry noticed Clark played a Gibson ES series guitar, the same line he himself had long favoured. “After the show, we strike a conversation up with Gary,” recalls Charles Jr. “My dad’s thinking, ‘He’s got it. He’s good.’ And we remember that kind of stuff.” The label also brought in Morello, whose solo on Big Boys is a salute to rock’s first guitar hero. “To play on a record with the man who invented those riffs, crafted that tone, wrote those songs and walked that duck walk is one of the greatest honours of my career," Morello says. Berry’s intentions with Chuck were pragmatic, says Charles Jr. “Did he relate to me that this was going to be his last record? No. [It was just] ‘I wanna get a record out.’” Fans now wonder if a Prince-like vault of unreleased recordings lies in wait. “I’m gonna have to hold my cards close to my chest on that one,” Berry Jr smiles. “‘No official answer’ is a great way of putting it.”