We recently lost the great Chuck Berry, one of the handful of people whom I'd credit as the originators of rock and roll. His guitar mastery, his stage presence, his sound and songwriting acumen -- nobody had quite seen anything like him before. His song catalog is amazing, but "Memphis Tennessee" is probably my favorite, a perfect melding of lyric and music.
(The Beatles, like the Stones, were big Chuck Berry fans, and they included this song on their playlist when auditioning for Decca back in 1962. In one of the biggest mistakes in music history, Decca executives chose to pass on signing the group.)
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