Five Overlooked Nuggets From Chuck Berry

Along with some of the most popular songs of the 20th century, Chuck Berry’s vast catalog contains more than a few buried gems waiting to be unearthed by curious listeners. Here are five little-heard favorites:

“Drifting Heart” (After School Session, 1957)

While he established the rules of rock and roll, Berry bent or broke them frequently. Drawing from the era’s calypso craze, “Drifting Heart” is a melancholy piece of rock & rhumba with Berry in full teen crooner mode, his voice light and sweet over the sauntering piano and dramatic island rhythms. So early in rock’s development, he’s already showing us just how gracefully rock can incorporate other sounds and styles. 

“Go Go Go” (single, 1961)

Berry was never shy about touting his own accomplishments, and in this underrated sequel he toasts a rocker very much like Chuck Berry, “duckwalking on his knees and pecking like a hen.” But the best part is the last verse, where he tussles with some jazzbos: “Mixing Ahmad Jamal in my ‘Johnny B. Goode,’ sneaking Erroll Garner in my ‘Sweet Sixteen.’” He dreams of pop music with no genre boundaries, and it would take us a while to catch up to his vision.

“Our Little Rendezvous” (From St. Louis To Liverpool, 1964)

Chuck Berry released his tenth album at the height of the British Invasion, and the title was an acknowledgement that this new wave of English bands were borrowing from him. However, “Our Little Rendezvous,” one of his most playful and endearing story-songs, bounces along on a Bo Diddley beat instead of a Merseybeat, as Berry spins a fantastical tale of teenage lovers who literally take their romance to the stars: “I’ll build a spaceship with a heavy payload,” he promises his bride. “We’ll go beep beep beep way out in the wide open blue.”

“C.C. Rider” (Live At The Fillmore Auditorium, 1967)

Originally a hit for Ma Rainey back in the 1920s, this 12-bar blues experienced a resurgence of popularity in the 1960s, with the Grateful Dead, the Animals, and of course Elvis Presley adding it to setlists. Berry slowed it down to a leering crawl when he played the Fillmore Auditorium in June 1967. Backed by the Steve Miller Blues Band, he teases out those syllables, as though pleading with the audience and turning that title into a question: “See? See Rider, don’t you see what you have done?”

“Tulane” (Back Home, 1970)

After four years and five albums on Mercury Records, Berry returned to Chess Records, where he had recorded his biggest hits in the late 1950s. Maybe it’s the familiar surroundings, but Back Home reveals a rejuvenated artist marrying his old-school rock and roll riffs to new-school hippie topics. Best is “Tulane,” a rollicking story song about a young couple running a head shop (perhaps the newlyweds from “You Never Can Tell”?). When the cops bust them and throw the boy in jail, Berry tells the girl to flee: “Go ahead on, Tulane!” In a different universe, that exclamation is a countercultural rallying cry. 

Read our cover story on Berry here.