Long Distance Information

Song 216: This week's playlist track is Memphis by Johnny Rivers, written by Chuck Berry. After the Beatles rocked my world in the middle of the winter of '64, spring followed with a bunch of English bands doing more of this magical rock and roll stuff, along with the Fab 4, and things were still rocking in the summer, when a guy from our side of the pond got to the top ten with a rocker that sounded like it had been recorded live, as indeed it had. That summer, I knew nothing about Chuck Berry or the fact that this song predated the whole British Invasion, but I did know that it sounded like rock and roll, and stood up pretty well alongside all of those English tracks I was hearing on the radio. At some point during the warm weather my family visited the relatives in Ohio, as had been our routine, and I still remember the day my cousin Jim walked in, from whatever he'd been up to, and put this single on the turntable. He was a few years older than me, and I think he was headed towards his senior year, so we didn't do much together or have a whole lot in common, but at that moment, it was clear to me that he shared my love of rock and roll. At the time Jim still wore the '50s-style D.A. haircut, which to me seemed a bit dated, but his record collection was obviously up-to-date. Actually, what wasn't up-to-date at that time was the lyric idea about calling long distance information, which had been the reality a few years earlier when CB wrote and recorded the song, for by the time JR's record hit the charts, direct dial LD had already appeared, but even so, the words still somehow sounded perfectly contemporary. On a side note, if you read the Wickipedia article related to this record, you may discover, as I did, a story by someone who used to work for Elvis in which the story-teller asserts that The King actually recorded his version of this Chuck Berry classic and played the demo for Johnny Rivers before he'd gotten to the final mix, whereupon Rivers, who liked the approach so well, copped the arrangement, getting a record released and to the top of the charts before the Elvis mix was done, and apparently in the process ending whatever friendship the 2 singers might have had. The record business has a bottomless vault of old stories like this, and only the people who were there know which of those tales are true, so I personally have no idea about the validity of this yarn, and even if I could call long distance information, they wouldn't have that kind of information.