Chuck Berry – "Come On" (1961)

Everything is wrong since

Me and my baby parted

All day long I’m walking ’cause I 

Couldn’t get my car started

We’ve been working our way through the Musicoholics website’s ranking of states based their relative contributions to popular music.

Last time, we covered the states ranked from #30 to #21.  Today, we’re going to discuss the states that Musicoholics ranked #20 through #11.

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Arkansas holds down the #20 spot on the Musicoholics list mostly because the great Johnny Cash grew up there.  I might flip Arkansas with Alabama – the home of Hank Williams – which was ranked 21st. But Cash is comparable in importance to Williams . . . so no harm, no foul.

Next in the Musicoholics rankings is Missouri.  The most notable pop musician to hail from Missouri was St. Louis native Chuck Berry, a truly great songwriter and performer – Elvis Presley can’t hold a candle to him but was a much more popular figure than Berry because Chuck was (1) older, (2)  black, and (3) a perv.  

#19 (with a bullet!)

Jazz great Charlie “Bird” Parker also spent his formative years in Missouri – he was from Kansas City, which was home to a thriving jazz scene.  (You did know that Kansas City is in Missouri, don’t you?  Unless you’re talking about Kansas City, Kansas – which is much smaller than Kansas City, Missouri.)

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Indiana comes in at #18 on the Musicoholics list.  Michael Jackson and his musical brothers and sisters were born there, as were John Mellencamp (who wears his Hoosierness on his sleeve) and Axl Rose (who doesn’t).

Next comes Virginia, which spawned a number of country and bluegrass legends – Patsy Cline, the Carter Family, and the Stanley Brothers among them.  I might Virginia higher but for the fact that Dave Matthews and Bruce Hornsby are from there.)

Florida ranks #3 among the states in population, but Musicoholics assigns them only the #16 spot in its rankings for its contributions to rock (Tom Petty and Lynyrd Skynyrd), rap (2 Live Crew and Pitbull), disco (KC and the Sunshine Band), and Latin music (Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine).

I would move Florida ahead of #15 Massachusetts – Aerosmith, Boston, the Cars, and the J. Geils Band had their moments, but are all overrated.  (Mission of Burma, by contrast, is almost criminally underrated.)

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Pennsylvania and Ohio are #6 and #7 in population, but are underachievers when it comes to their musical contributions – they are #14 and #13, respectively, in the Musicoholics rankings.   

Pennsylvania produced a lot of great R&B artists, but personally I prefer the groups who came out of Ohio – among them the James Gang, Devo, Pere Ubu, and especially the Pretenders.  (The Pretenders were formed in the UK, and three of its four original members were English – but Chrissie Hynde grew up in Ohio, and Chrissie Hynde is the Pretenders as far as I’m concerned. . . not to mention the greatest female singer/songwriter of all time.)

Chrissie Hynde

Washington (state – not D.C.) comes in at the 12th spot on the Musicoholics list.  I would bump Washington up a few spots –after all, it was home to Jimi Hendrix, the Sonics (perhaps the greatest garage band of all), and grunge greats like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden.

Rounding out the second ten on the Musicoholics list is New Jersey.  Frank Sinatra and the Four Seasons  justify a high ranking for the Garden State, but it gets demerits for the hugely overrated Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen.  

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Between 1955 and 1959, the great Chuck Berry released a dozen or so hit singles, including “Maybellene,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” and “Johnny B. Goode.”

But his career was derailed in December 1959 when he was arrested for picking up a 14-year-old Native American girl before a performance in El Paso and transporting her to St. Louis to work as a hatcheck girl at his club.  (Berry claimed that she said she was 21.)

Berry was convicted of violating the federal Mann Act – which made it a felony to transport any female across state lines for immoral purposes – and given a five-year prison sentence.  Click here to read a fascinating account of the trial.

The star won an appeal of the conviction – his lawyer claimed that the trial judge had made racist comments that prejudiced the all-white jury – but was retried in 1961 and convicted again.  Berry’s appeal of that conviction failed and he spent a year and a half in jail.

Today’s featured song was the last single Berry released before he went to the poke.  It didn’t chart, and I was unaware of the song until I recently heard the Rolling Stones cover of it, which was the very first single they released.

The Stones’ recording of “Come On” made it to #21 on the UK single charts, but was not released in the U.S.  

Click here to listen to Chuck Berry’s version of “Come On.”

Click below to buy the recording from Amazon: