Description
Label Review.
2017 album. With exclusive Chuck guitar plectrum!
Our Overview.
For his 90th birthday celebrations, Chuck Berry announced his first new album since 1979 would be released in 2017. Sadly, he died before it’s release but the album his fans have been patiently waiting for is finally ready!
Chuck hadn’t been idle since that last record. Although, he concentrated on touring he always kept a pad and pencil with him and continued to write. Unfortunately a fire at his studio in 1989 destroyed all the material he’d been working on and had to start from scratch. This new record contains songs which date back as far as 1991 but go all the up to 2014. The album includes a sequel to ‘Johnny B. Goode’ in the form of ‘Lady B. Goode’.
Chuck learned to record on computer and often invited his band over to play the parts he’d written on piano. “He’d be waving his long fingers, encouraging the guys to try things,” says Joe Edwards, owner of Blueberry Hill, where Berry appeared once a month for 21 years. Jimmy Marsala, his frequent bass player since the early Seventies adds: “He’d say ‘This is it’ and we’d just play along with him live. Sometimes he’d show us the bass line or the piano line that he wanted. He heard things differently than most people do, let’s put it that way.” At the end of the day, Chuck would play the recordings for his wife Themetta: “My mom would give a thumbs up or a thumbs down,” says his son Charles Jr. “Thumbs up, he was done. Thumbs down, ‘I’ve got more work to do.’”