Chuck Berry -- "Thirty Days"
While Elvis and other white boys in Memphis were making rock and roll suitable for mass consumption, Chuck Berry was carrying the genre forward by creating the formula that would ultimately win out. Not to knock Elvis, a musical savant in his own right, and the rest of the Sam Philips crowd, but the rock and roll tradition of the 60s draws more from Chuck Berry in terms of sound. What makes "Thirty Days" one of my favorite Chuck Berry tracks is not just the playful inventiveness of the lyrics but also the crunch of the guitar, which isn't quite distorted, exactly, but it does have a bite. The sound of the song isn't that of hopped-up country music or even hopped-up blues--though it starts with both. For all the indie kids out there today who've thought to ask themselves where it is that the music they listen to origianlly came from, here's the answer.
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