Thursday, April 3, 2014

Name the Damn Thing "Maybellene"




Had a bit of wine fuzz to work through at the gym this morning.  One of those mornings you most definitively do not want to be there.  The walk over, drudgery.  Slower than usual. The slightest excuse, would be enough to send you home with the towel thrown in.  I stepped up and fiddled around for a song to start it off with and thumbing aimlessly I landed on old “Maybellene” by Chuck Berry.  I smiled and got underway.  It was gonna be alright.

Recorded in 1955 on Chess records the tune effectively launches Rock n’ Roll guitar. I searched around and found a live recording of him performing it what appears to be someone where in Western Europe given the accented English of the intro before he appropriately tears off the stage as if a bomb is going to hit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvKDr8AgvK8

The man himself looks quite young of course.  But I checked and he was already twenty-nine at the time.  Far older than say Hendrix was, when he died.  He bounces out into the ring though like a school kid, 年轻气盛.[1]  In my mind he must have been six foot six as every time you see him standing next to John Lennon or Keith Richards he towers over them and he’s all legs when he’s rockin one back and forth across the stage.  But a quick look suggests he was 6’2”.  He and I could see eye to eye.  Watching the clip he seems to be channeling the future to the stayed audience.  The voice is irresistible.  The song tame today must have been reckless and racy and fundamentally American.  But the guitar playing, when he solos and skips across the stage and wails that distorted axe, shaking it in the air.  You can just imagine fifteen-year old Paul McCartney’s and Jimi Hendrix’ hearing that sound, seeing that prancing and lusting for that irresistible, loud, currency of power. 



I know there was another fifteen year-old who was tuned in.  My pop can’t help but curl over like a kid whenever the tune comes on.  He and the tune are fused in my mind.  I imagine him, cherub like, fascinated with cars, and girls and the whiff of danger from across the tracks.  He always maintained that the song was banned which is wonderful to imagine.  But it went to number 5 on the Billboard charts and Number 1 on the R&B charts.  I’m sure it was “banned” in his home, and at his Catholic school, and perhaps it wasn’t given proper air play on his local station, but I labored to find evidence of Sex Pistols “God Save the Queen” outright ban. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maybellene  Pop, you gotta weigh in on the Maybellene-ban, below.   Who banned it?

The song was apparently an adaptation the song by Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys, called “Ida Red.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Red   As in “Ida Red, Ida Red, I’m a plum fool about Ida Red.” And in this remarkable world we live in, I can access “Ida Red” and play it with about four minutes of searching.   Some other time I’ll have to learn more about these Texas Playboys who probably got quite a few rooms moving in their day.   But if I was a patent attorney I’d have a hard time identifying any sort of plagiarism here by Chuck.  Other than the washboard drum beat, and the fact that the gent is a fool for the woman, the older country tune doesn’t speak to the rock classic in any way I can hear.  I like the idea that Berry thought “Ida Red” too countrified and apparently when he and his partner Johnie Johnson saw a box of mascara on the floor the latter said: ““Well, hell, let’s name the damn thing Maybellene.”  And changed the name from the make up to avoid a lawsuit.  That’s great.  Rock on Mr. Johnson.



Now I’m writing you all this morning on my wife’s computer.  This, because when I dutifully clicked on the auto OS update on my Mac yesterday the computer shut itself down and till now has been unable to turn itself back on.  This is a massive drag that ate and continues to eat up hours of wasted time.  I, for one, can suffer fools lightly.  I have copious patience for human beings.  Perhaps too much.  But things?  When things break, I have no patience and cannot keep from swearing like a sailor, huffing and groaning, when this method and that method all fail, and you see your work day slip away.  The on-line help threads say, “if these all don’t work, you need to make an appointment with the Genius Bar” Great.  I’ll be off to a local Mac place today and if that’s a flop we’ll head to the Genius Bar downtown, which is invariably packed.  Wish me luck.  Still, it is amazing how much is recoverable immediately now, resting as it does up in the cloud.






[1] niánqīngqìshèng:  full of youthful vigor (idiom) / in the prime of youth

No comments:

Post a Comment