CHUCK BERRY – "My Ding-A-Ling"

I think I must’ve been four or five when I first heard this, and yes, I thought it was about a bell. Also, I think I may once fell off the family’s jungle gym (on my head, ‘splains everything)listening to it.

Did Gary Glitter cover this ?

Bob Dylan of course never got a #1 🙁

Totally agree that it’s a shame this is CB’s only #1. The only thing I disagree with is the idea that it reflects badly on CB! (Maybe I have made this idea up though).

Coventry Locarno? For some reason I had it in my head that it was recorded at Loughborough University (thus all the student/future Parliament references)…but his backing group for the rest of the gig was I believe the nascent Average White Band.

Bob Dylan has not yet had a UK number one as a performer, but up to 1972 he’d had one chart-topper as a composer (“Mighty Quinn”).

Apart from the Noddy Holder effect (sorry for the spoiler), this was totally dreadful. It was Berry’s “Laughing Gnome”, if you will. I can recall TOTP initially showing the original live footage from Coventry (I probably figured it was recorded in Memphis or Nashville back then) before replacing it, as the disc continue to stop at number one, with a series of drawings of a young white boy playing with a “silver bell hangin’ on a string”. Mary Whitehouse, of course, went loco over this record but she really shouldn’t have bothered. I was eleven at the time and had just started senior school. Neither myself nor any of my other fellow first years felt that “playing wit your own ding-a-ling” remotely funny. Ridiculous rubbish, even if it did line a legend’s pockets.

Ah yes, of course – Dylan being one of the few redeeming factors of that particular, regrettablenumber one…

I don’t mind “My Ding-A-Ling”…it isn’t profound but it’s not hateful either; in terms of musical precedents it probably goes back to the thirties (Cab Calloway?) and even further to the turn-of-the-century days of the *whisper it* minstrel shows (actually, there may be something in the latter since the song does sound like one of those “Trad. arr.” tunes which has been around forever; see also Donegan on “Dustman” whose progeny stretches back to WWI barrack room songs, where he said that all he was doing was applying the Guthrie/Leadbelly ethic to Britain with quite a bit of music hall thrown in)…

Certainly as a seasonal novelty it is far more palatable than the next number one…

(additional point: there was a trend towards sauciness and modest double entendre in the UK charts around this time anyway – see Judge Dread’s “Big Six,” one of 1972’s biggest sellers despite not getting any higher than #11, and also, if one must, “Loop Di Love,” top five for Jonathan King as Shag, just so he could revel in Blackburn and Edmonds having to say the word “shag” on daytime radio, ah dearie me…)

Lanchester, that was it!

Ah, the illustrious 1972 chart run of Wings – “Give Ireland Back To The Irish” (“Make Ireland Irish today”) followed by “Mary Had A Little Lamb” (“It was a protest, y’know like”) and then the year end double A-side of “C Moon,” which was the only one the BBC played since they sniffed EVIL DRUG INFLUENCES in “Hi Hi Hi.”

May I say that “Memory Almost Full” is a remarkable album…and that Macca is a remarkable man.

The defining Chuck Berry moment of my youth was his appearance on ‘Aspel & Company’, circa 1987, to promote his autobiography –

MA: (genially) So I understand that you’ll be playing Johnny B Goode for us tonight?

CB: No! For second-class money you get a second-class song! (goes on to play Memphis Tennessee)

Marcello – I refer you to my earlier note, comment #12, concerning TOTP on this. Pan’s People (Hubba Hubba Hubba!) certainly did not interpret “Ding-a-Ling”. I don’t think Flick Colby would have run with it. My own best moment with Babs, Ruth, Dee Dee etc was when they had a bash at Ashton Gardener and Dyke’s “Resurrection Shuffle”, an absolute belter of a record, which fell just short of the top in 1971.

Just to clarify, I didn’t mean to imply that “Ding-a-Ling” diminished Berry’s legacy. I only meant that, sentimentally speaking, it would’ve been nice if his only #1 (both in the States and in the UK, oddly) had been one of his great songs.

For me, the enjoyable aspect of this record is the palpable glee Berry conveys in being naughty. It doesn’t make it a great piece of music, but I can’t help admiring a man so totally unapologetic about his savoring of the lubricious, Mann Act conviction be damned.

Yes, “disc performance” means you just saw the audience dancing to it, usually over the end credits. Sometimes I wish they’d show entire archive editions of TOTP complete with DJ links but I understand there aren’t too many of those preserved at the BBC.

The “disc performance” persisted into the early eighties, culminating in the ridiculous spectacle of Radio 1 DJs (and Jonathan King) “dancing” (with individuals being freeze-framed) to Adam Ant’s “Friend Or Foe.”

Oh, you haven’t lived if you haven’t seen the “disc performance” of Joy Division’s “Love will tear us part” over the closing credits of TOTP!!!

The most hilarious Pans People performance of 1972 for me, had to be the week that they were given the task of dancing to Debora by Tyrannosaurus Rex. The record had been reissued by Fly Records after Marc Bolan had dumped them to set up his own label.

Not a terribly relevant comment, but I thought it might be worth mentioning that this is the first chart-topper since ‘My Sweet Lord’ that I actually have a copy of. Bit of a gap for me, the early Seventies.

This was also a fixture on the Sphinx Bar jukebox. This time it was accompanied, not only by bad beer and pies, but also by a certain caste of student (presumably Engineers) bellowing along to it!

So many of these early-’70s #1s evoke specific childhood memories (Mouldy Old Dough/School’s Out will forever been spliced together in my head with the zzzzcchuppp sound of my brother’s cassette recorder going in and out of rec-pause as we taped the audio off the TOTP Xmas ’72 broadcast).

This one has stirred a memory from an end-of-term “disco” at my primary school in, I guess, summer ’78. It was a disco in the sense that we were allowed to bring in records and play them while we all sat at our desks eating crisps and drinking pop. I don’t believe dancing was encouraged. After Sweet, Blondie, Slade, Abba, whatever, came this. The girl who brought it in seemed a bit nervous about handing it over to the teacher; the record provoked gales of laughter (though I wasn’t sure why it was so funny) and the teacher (Mrs C4ulf13ld, I think) asked the girl, “Is it supposed to be funny?” Girl shrugged, producing a fiercer “I asked you, is it supposed to be FUNNY?” Girl was reduced to tears, disco was swiftly brought to an end.

The long version is mostly consisting of Chuck teaching the chorus and telling the girls to sing “My” and the boys to sing “ding-a-ling”…

Which is why he got a big laugh about one guy singing “my”

Welcome on board Ian, and don’t hold your tongue any more!

So was there ‘future parliament out there singing”?

I always wondered. well, maybe not always…

It just hit me after enjoying this recording – dumb whiiipeeples singing along! The girls sang MY and the boys sang DINGALING! Ha!

And Chuck’s “its a free country!” rings of gay black humor! Kick ass subversive Rock song in the spirit of Rock!

I’m currently watching Chuck Berry (and Rocking Horse – presumably his backing band for that particular night) on BBC4 and it inspired me to look up this entry.

As opposed to just listening to the record, it becomes apparent on watching that Chuck’s mugging constantly through most of his numbers – not just this but also Memphis, Tennessee, Carol, Roll Over Beethoven et al. As such, this is, on one level, an accurate reflection of Chuck’s character (previously obvious from the lyrics – particularly on my own personal favourite No Particular Place To Go – but writ large in performance). Unfortunately, it is about the only thing that it does have going for it. I’d just about have preferred any of Chuck’s records to get to #1 instead of this. Thankfully, as far as my perception of him goes, it’s little more than a footnote – for me, it’s not overshadowing any of his classic singles from earlier in his career – and I doubt I am alone in this perception.

Other things coming out of the show that’s on right now for me; I have to admit he is a good showman (notwithstanding my knowledge of his reportedly difficult behaviour with the bands he uses for backing) – I’ve got to say, I’d still pay good money to go and see Chuck now, if this is any indication of what he is still capable of (admittedly, this footage looks to be at least 35 years old, if not more).

Also, well done Chuck for using basically the same opening guitar line (the Johnny B Goode lick) on every single above mid tempo tune in his set. Great job turning one, admittedly pretty great, trick into legendary status. Him and Bo Diddley – peas in a pod in some respects.

Following this is The Culture Show special on Keith Richards – I assume he’s going to cop to nicking all of Chuck’s ideas, we shall see…

I was out with the girlfriend and only got back in to see the very end of the Chess Doc – one for iPlayer I reckon, as I am sure it was interesting. As with every doc though, it doesn’t surprise me that they’ll alter the narrative, however slightly, to keep to time constraints and streamline towards the aspects of the tale that they want to tell. I’ll take it with the usual pinch of salt.

Presumably there are some decent books about Chess out there WL? Any ideas as to a worthwhile read? Christmas is coming up after all.

Interesting note on Rocking Horse too – I’d never heard of them, being a child of the 80s (despite my interest in music well preceding my arrival) – will be worth a look.

Did anyone catch that excellent offering from Radio 2 last night with Pam Grier outlining the history of funk? Extremely interesting. The most fascinating part for me was when she mentioned “a bunch of white boys from Scotland” who recorded for Atlantic records. This was of course The Average White Band, who took the US by storm with “Pick Up The Pieces”, which was such a huge hit that it topped the mainstream pop chart there. Grier admitted that most Americans assumed that the AWB were a domestic outfit and black. The eventual revelation that they were foreign and white came as a surprise to most and a total shock to some. No less a personage than James Brown, who I’m sure fitted into the second category, responded with an offering recorded under the name The More Than Average Black Band. Two members of the AWB interviewd for the Radio 2 show very diplomatically insisted that this action by Brown was the ultimate compliment to their own work from one of the great masters. I can personally remember others in this country who did not agree and accused Brown of going off on a strop. Pointless to speculate, I suppose. What was funnier for me was when it was also mentioned that AWB members backed Chuck Berry on “My Ding-A-Ling”, which Marcello touched on at the top of this thread. This is terrific, even if it doesn’t alter the awfulness of this truly wretched record.