Dust on the Bookshelf

I'm Still Not Over It

If there is one man I feel saw the most injustice throughout his musical career it is Chuck Berry. His 1958 song Sweet Little Sixteen was ripped off by The Beach Boys in 1964 (more below) This and it surrounding events have always angered me. And this example of music theft by what were at the time white record labels is one of many. This post simply wants to put the good music in your ear and increase awareness of these past crimes and the cultural context they expose.
To start, here's a great old video of a CB Sweet Little Sixteen performance:

 

...according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: "“Surfin’ U.S.A.,” the Beach Boys’ thinly veiled rewrite of “Sweet Little Sixteen,” enters the Top 40 at a time when Chuck Berry is serving a term in a federal penitentiary for violating the Mann Act. Berry later sues for and receives a co-writing credit on “Surfin’ U.S.A.”"

Briefly on the Mann Act... a funny little bit of legal history. Wikepedia definition: "The White-Slave Traffic Act, passed June 25, 1910 (ch. 395, 36 Stat. 825; codified as amended at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2421–2424), better known as the Mann Act after Congressman James Robert Mann, is a United States law which in its original form prohibited white slavery and the interstate transport of females for “immoral purposes”. Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution, immorality, and human trafficking. While its ambiguous immorality language allowed selective prosecutions for many years, it was later amended by Congress to apply only to transport for the purpose of prostitution or illegal sexual acts^."

By "selective prosecutions" wiki means persecutions and the jailings of many a [black] man who had sex with white women- when others didn't want them to. ie: Chuck Berry's driving of young white girls across state lines to probably have sex with them at some point.. this seems like a common thing with musicians (tour vans right?) unfortunately for Chuck his groopies were young and white.
By "illegal sexual acts" wiki may be referring to old misegenation laws in America. These laws extended racial segregation to the spheres of mariage and sexual relations. It was illegal in America for two people of different races to have sex or be married. Some of the laws go back to colonial times when mixing with native americans was feared. They remained on the books in many states until 1967 (hold out: Alabama, who finally wrote it out in 2000) when the Supreme Court deemed them unconstitutional.

But back to Sweet Little Sixteen. Chuck knew a few of them of course, but here's the song as it was stolen and reworked by the Beach Boys. Perhaps you've heard it before, ladies and gentlemen, "Surfin' USA"

 

I'm not sure if that could have been more lame. But I resist devolveing into a Beach-Boys-are-lame rant.

Here's Chuck doing it in 1964, a video which is a little strange. The girl in the background looks to be about Chuck's type- a visual echo of why he was feared by some white americans in 1960. His successful pursuits of white women perhaps inspired this song. Quickly the lyrics:

Sweet Little Sixteen
She's just got to have
About half a million
Framed autographs
Her wallet's filled with pictures
She gets 'em one by one
She gets so excited
Watch her look at her run

Oh mommy mommy
Please may I go
It's such a sight to see
Somebody steal the show
Oh daddy daddy
I beg of you
Whisper to mommy
It's all right with you

Cause they'll be rockin on bandstand
In Philadelphia P.A.
Deep in the heart of Texas
And 'round the Frisco Bay
All over St. Louis
Way Down in New Orleans
All the Cats wanna dance with
Sweet Little Sixteen

Sweet Little Sixteen
She's got the grown up blues
Tight dress and lipstick
She's sportin' high heal shoes
Oh, but tomorrow morning
She'll have to chang her trend
And be sweet sixteen
And back in class again

Cause they'll be rockin on bandstand
In Philadelphia P.A.
Deep in the heart of Texas And 'round the Frisco Bay
All over St. Louis Way Down in New Orleans
All the Cats wanna dance with
Sweet Little Sixteen

 

But, impressively, Chuck has survived all of this ill-fortune. He is still alive today and performing. Just look at him...
 

Just look at Mos Def playing him in the 2008 film Cadillac Records...


Keep on, Chuck, Keep on. You are a living example of the ever-true lyrics: Rock and roll is here to stay. It will never die, and a healthy reminder of former injustices both artistic and social. 

Download 12 Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay

A Song for Quentin

This song is not, as some of you might expect, an ode to Quentin Compton. I am not that obsessed with William Faulkner. Instead, it is a song that if I could I would share with one of my other favorite Quentins- Quentin Tarantino.

He is the creator of one of my all-time favorite movies, Pulp Fiction. There are too many wonderful things about this movie in particular... the rapid-fire mundane yet somehow hilarious dialogue embedded in all of the wonderful motorized scenes: "a royale with cheese" "I shot marvin!" "She's dying on me man" "What does it feel like to kill a man?" "it was on the kangaroo!" "Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead" there are so many more but i stop myself...

another great feature of this move and all of QT's films is the music. Some of the lesser-known greats from Pulp  include: "Misirlou" by Dick Dale and his Del-Tones, "Son of A Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield, "Bullwinkle Part II" by the Centurians, "You Never Can Tell" by Chuck Berry and "Girl, You'll be a Woman Soon" by Urge Overkill, to name a few. Check out samples of these and others on amazon.

So in this post I place a hidden gem of a song on the steps of the Tarantino Altar. I personally believe, that, the track "Bed of Roses," by Elysian Field, must be in the next QT film, or at the very least could be. Take a listen and see if you agree.

Download 1-20 Bed Of Roses

I found this song in a 1oth Anniversary music sampler of the Oxford American (a literary magazine of Southern writing that I love- they put out an anual music issue) The moaning and twinkling of this song evoke a red convertible down a lonely highway, John Travolta's greasy hair blowing in the wind. The refrain is delicious- a cheery topic that in spite of the angelic violins suggests a grimier rougher song-past.

O, Quentin!
For you these notes
Soar o'er Somerville
To LA lands
of pulp and death.
May you lay on your own
Bed o' Roses!