I'll get you to a rude awakening now to let you know that school is not over and the man to prove it?
Professor Chuck Berry!
I have to give my heart to somebody like Chuck Berry.
Because Chuck Berry for me, is that bridge between blues, and rock and roll.
2 highschool boys, up in the morning and out to school.
There are a couple of things that Chuck brings to the table
that is tradition, in terms of blues.
He gives us a 12 bar blues form.
But he gives us something really wonderful in that he doesn't give us the 12 bar blues lyric.
He tells us a story. And he goes back to the tradition, the very early blues and storytelling.
He tells the story of what it's like for a teenager in the 1950s to go to school
To go through school, then to get out of school, and to go listen to music, and then to dance all night.
So you get that, ya know ...
That's the 1 chord.
The 4 chord, bars 5 and 6.
The 1 chord, 7 and 8.
Bars 9 and 10 are the 5 chord,
Back to the 1 chord, 11 and 12.
You can hear in this example, a graphic instance of the call and response.
The voice speaks, the guitar responds.
The guitar is Chuck's duet. It's his other singer. It's his other voice.
Here you have a kind of song form within the blues.
And this happens really in a number of really remarkable songs.
For example, "Can't Buy Me Love" by the Beatles.
I'll buy you a diamond ring my friend if it makes you feel alright
Goes to the 4 chord: give you anything, my friend, if it'll make you feel alright.
Back to the 1 chord: I don't care, 5 chord: too much for money, 4 chord: money can't buy me love. Back to 1.
A 12 bar blues.
And then there's a bridge: can't buy me love
What the Beatles do in a situation like that is they have an actual traditional song form, which is AABA.
Very similar to the kinds of songs that were written by Irving Berlin or Cole Porter, or any of these people.
So, your A section is a 12 bar blues. Your second A section is a 12 bar blues.
But then you have this 8 bar bridge, and then you've got a 12 bar blues.
James Brown does the exact same thing in "I Feel Good"
That's a 12 bar blues. He does that twice, so you have the AA. Then he has a bridge.
You have an AABA structure: 12 bar blues, 12 bar blues, modified 12 bar blues, 12 bar blues.
Chuck Berry does it, James Brown Doesit, the Beatles do it, the Rollingstones do it, Led Zepplin does it.
Everybody does it.
It's really rather remarkable, how inventive you can get with that very, very simple DNA called the 12 bar blues.