![]() It’s propelled by some of the same musicians who played on Howlin’ Wolf’s unearthly singles, including guitarist Hubert Sumlin. ![]() Its stop-start chugging, punctuated by Berry’sĬheeky guitar fills, is a sound he’d return to again and again – here, “School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes the Bell),” but you’d never know itįrom the song’s vivid evocation of the quotidian experience of high school,įrom mean-mugged teachers to crowded lunchrooms (“it’s fortunate if you DJ Alan Freed had nothing to do with writing “Maybellene,” although he got co-credit and royalties for years in return for radio airplay: payola in all but name.Ĭhuck Berry was 30 years old when he sat down to write “School Days,” a.k.a. Leonard Chess came up with the title, inspired by a Maybelline mascara box lying on the floor at the Chess studio. By the time of the May 21st, 1955, session, Berry had been playing country tunes for black audiences for a few years – “After they laughed at me a few times, they began requesting the hillbilly stuff,” he has said. ![]() Its groove comes from “Ida Red,” a 1938 recording by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (of a song that dates back to the 19th century). The entire song is a two-minute chase scene packed with car-culture vernacular and Berry’s hipster-lingo inventions (“As I was motorvatin’ over the hill …”). The pileup of hillbilly country, urban blues and hot jazz in Chuck Berry’s electric twang is the primal language of pop-music guitar, and it’s all perfected on his first single.
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