Detroit rock-guitar heavyweights salute Chuck Berry
Like so many musicians around the world Saturday night, Detroit artists were quick to pay tribute to Chuck Berry and his electrifying influence on the sound and spirit of rock 'n' roll.
Twelve years before "Kick Out the Jams" in 1969, the MC5's Wayne Kramer was a 9-year-old kid getting blown away by his first encounter with Berry's music — and getting inspired enough to take up the guitar.
"I was living on Michigan Avenue at 31st Street, in a parking lot playing ball, and I heard this electric guitar playing out of a car radio," Kramer recounted. "I was just flabbergasted at the velocity and energy of this guitar playing. I'd never heard anything like it. So I went on a hunt to find out who this person was, what was this song, and what was his deal. It literally changed my life."
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All these decades later, Kramer said, Berry still looms large.
"Fred Smith and I spent hours and hours perfecting our Chuck Berry chops — years, really," he said. " 'Johnny B. Goode' was the template for my life’s ambitions. I still want to be the guy who can 'play the guitar just like ringing a bell' while they come to hear me play from miles away."
Among aspiring Detroit rock 'n' rollers, Kramer said, "the measure of a guitar player was how many Chuck Berry guitar solos did you know growing up."
Berry died Saturday in his Missouri home at age 90, leaving a legacy that includes some of rock 'n' roll's most potent early hits.
Aside from his electric-guitar work — the distinctive, propulsive fuel of his records — there were the relatable lyrics: "He was reflecting the world around us back to us kids," said Kramer, who remembers it as a Detroit era of "hamburgers, cars and coney islands."
"He was reading us back the news reports of our own neighborhoods and raging hormones," Kramer said.
Growing up on another side of the Motor City during that era was Ted Nugent, who quickly took to Facebook on Saturday to whip up an on-the-fly version of "Johnny B. Goode,"
"If ever there was an end of a monumental era in the history of mankind it happened (Saturday) with the death of Chuck Berry," Nugent said in a statement. "No one deserves the title of creator, founding father, godfather, genius and wizard of rock 'n' roll more than his Majesty Chuck Berry. …
"Thank God I was body-slammed by this new music and heard my calling loud and clear," Nugent continued. "There is not a guitar player in the history of the instrument that doesn't owe Chuck everything for guiding us into that lyrical, grinding cadence of his honky-tonk gone wild and the unprecedented rhythm of his lyrics and singing style. … His spirit will be with me every time, every day when I play my guitar."
Jim McCarty of the Detroit Wheels — part of the Mitch Ryder band that produced hits such as "Devil With a Blue Dress On" and "Jenny Take a Ride" — was another young guitar whiz whose path was inspired by Berry.
"Every once in a while, you get guys who are signposts, milestones. And Chuck was that guy," said McCarty, who frequently performed with Berry in the 1960s. "He’s the one who invented rock 'n' roll. In terms of guitar, he's the one. That's the source point. ... When you hear ‘Johnny B. Goode,’ ‘Let it Rock,’ “Maybellene’ … the sound that came off the record, with the sheer poetry the guy put on top of it — it was just genius.”
There's another key Detroit connection with Chuck Berry: In 1963, a live recording at Walled Lake Casino was set to be his comeback album following a 1½-year prison stint for a violation of the Mann Act. The record was scrapped at the time, but after widespread bootlegging, the material finally got its formal release in 2009.
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.