Johnny B Goode / Bonnie Boland and Mark Radice

Here's Bonnie Boland and Mark Radice at Clearcut Studios in Garfield New Jersey Septemeber 8th 2011...thanks to Max Caselnova for recording us and stuff :)

Composition and recording
Written by Berry in 1955, the song is about a poor country boy who plays a guitar "just like ringing a bell," and who might one day have his "name in lights." The poor country boy could also sing very well, or 'good', an obvious reference to the 'Goode' in the title of the song. There is also some speculation as to where the letter B in his middle name comes from, with many theories ranging from "bellringer", taken from a line in the song, to "be", as in to have a presence. This is a quite famous one, as the poor country boy's name could have been Johnny, thus creating the sentence 'Johnny be good.'[2] Berry has acknowledged that the song is partly autobiographical, and originally had "colored boy" in the lyrics, but he changed it to "country boy" to ensure radio play.[3] The title is suggestive that the guitar player is good, and hints at autobiographic elements because Berry was born on Goode Avenue in St. Louis.[2] The song was initially inspired by Berry's piano player, Johnnie Johnson,[4][5] though developed into a song mainly about Berry himself. Even though Johnnie Johnson played on many other Chuck Berry songs, it was Lafayette Leake who played piano on this song.[2]

The opening guitar riff on "Johnny B. Goode" is essentially a note-for-note copy of the opening single-note solo on Louis Jordan's "Ain't That Just Like a Woman" (1946), played by guitarist Carl Hogan.[6]

Berry has written 3 more songs involving the character Johnny B. Goode, "Bye Bye Johnny", "Go Go Go", and "Johnny B. Blues"; and titled an album, and the nearly 19 min instrumental title track from it, as "Concerto in B. Goode".

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Bonnie
• Boland
• Mark
• Radice
• duo
• cover
• song
• Chuck
• Berry

[suzimore92]

great, glad to see Mark's music back online.