Cool Groove #4: "Tulane"
"Tulane" by Chuck Berry. Album: Back Home (1970)
Chuck Berry is, without question, one of the towering songwriters in rock & roll history. If we’re talking about the real thing, rather than the louder and more expansive “rock” music that rock & roll eventually became, one could easily argue that he’s the songwriter in rock & roll history. No one else really comes close.
For about thirty or so years, writing a popular song that didn’t have at least some Chuck Berry woven into its structure would have been akin to trying to make yourself a suit without any thread.
Berry’s rhythm guitar playing and teen-focused narratives full of hilarious, playfully worded Americana laid the groundwork for the vast majority of what appeared in its wake. There would have been no Beatles, no Rolling Stones, and no Bruce Springsteen were it not for Chuck Berry, and that’s just three off the top of my head. Hell, there wouldn’t have even been any E.L.O.!
By 1970, though, Berry’s best work was a distant image in “You Can’t Catch Me”’s rearview mirror. And he wasn’t doing so well himself.
Suffice it to say that he was a difficult person, a mean, pigheaded, ornery, sexist, abusive man who, like the rest of Black America, had been harassed throughout his life simply for having brown skin. That said—and racism is never a small part of the equation—he generated many of his problems all by himself.
However he got there, Berry was not a nice guy. His approach to life didn’t exactly make you want to hug him, and he showed little respect for his own legacy.
He could still pack a nightclub in the latter part of his career, but he’d walk onstage with an unrehearsed local band that he had never even met before, count off a song, and start playing. It was up to the other musicians to try to keep up, and, if they couldn’t, Berry would shout abuse at them and play the show anyway. Then he’d take his cash—never a check—and his guitar and head straight back to the airport, no sightseeing needed.
He had stopped giving a shit. This is why I’m always stunned by his late-arriving tune, “Tulane.” It’s a classic Chuck Berry song, and he wrote it at a time when anyone who was still paying attention would have given up hope of ever hearing another one.
Back Home, the 1970 album that contains “Tulane,” was being promoted as Berry’s grand return to Chess Records, his original label (he had been pretty fruitlessly recording for Mercury for several years). But Berry sure didn’t seem to be all that interested in releasing a great record.
Taken as a whole, Back Home is a shockingly lazy album. The band is good, but there’s even a handful of instrumentals on it that almost certainly aren’t complete songs because Berry couldn’t be bothered to write any lyrics for them. And “I’m a Rocker” is such an obvious, thoroughly lame rewrite of “Reelin’ and Rockin’,” he should have lawyered up and sued himself after he recorded it.
And then there’s “Tulane.”
Rather miraculously, “Tulane” is one of Berry’s best “story songs,” ranking right up there with “Bye Bye Johnny” and “The Promised Land,” among many, many others. It could have very readily been recorded in 1961, were it not for a narrative concerning a couple of drug dealers who are trying to literally run away from the cops.
As a screenwriter, I’m awed by Berry’s ability to create little movie scenes, if not entire movies, on a small piece of vinyl. He does this so smoothly, I think most people don’t even recognize the skill—the sheer descriptive power and verbal dexterity—that’s required to pull it off.
Listen to “Tulane” right now, and please follow the lyrics down below. (It’s not totally obvious in the lyric, but Tulane is Johnny’s girlfriend.)
Tulane and Johnny opened a novelty shop
Back under the counter was the cream of the crop
Everything was clickin’ and the business was good
‘Til one day, Lord, the holding officer stood
Johnny jumped the counter but he stumbled and fell
But Tulane made it over, and Johnny belted a yelled
Go head on, Tulane, he can’t catch up with you
Go Tulane, he ain’t man enough for you
Go Tulane, use all the speed you got
Go Tulane, you know you need a lot
Go Tulane, he’s laggin’ behind
Go ‘head on, Tulane
Go by your fathеr’s house and tell him businеss is slow
And see if he will loan us something, soon as you hit the door
Put the cat out in the hall and rumple up the room
Go by Doctor Keller’s, tell him you swallowed some perfume
Tell him we need him quick, ’cuz he may to testify
That you been sick all day and that’s a perfect alibi
(chorus)
Go, let Danny drive in case you run into the Man
Back by the shop and get the stuff and hide it in the van
Go back by your father’s, get the money for the bail
And bring it down and bail me out this rotten, funky jail
We gotta get a lawyer in the clique with politics
Somebody who can win the thing or get the thing fix
(chorus)
Amazing.
That’s not easy to do. It may seem like it is, but it’s not. Think about how much ground is covered and how Berry almost casually adds complexity to the main characters and further deepens their relationship with one another.
You can visualize every second of what’s going on, and there’s an extra jolt of adrenaline involved because Johnny has to shout his entire crazy plan while Tulane is running away! There’s no time for him to take a breath, so Berry doesn’t, either. That alone is a detail that most songwriters would likely miss, and there’s a whole lot more detail here than that.
Again, it comes at you like a movie montage: Tulane knocks on her dad’s door. She tosses the cat in the hallway (for reasons that only she and Johnny can understand) and messes up the room. Then she’s telling a doctor—specifically, “Dr. Keller,” which imbues the moment with even more reality—that she accidentally swallowed some perfume!
That really is a great alibi! It’s such an obscure problem it would have to be true, wouldn’t it?! And it comes out of nowhere. Think about it—Berry’s writing a rock & roll song, and he suddenly has a character telling a doctor she got sick on perfume!!
I know it sounds dumb to say this, but this story isn’t really happening. Someone has to make this stuff up!
I honestly believe people get caught up in Chuck Berry’s narratives and don’t consider that they started out as a blank piece of paper. Music itself is so amorphous and magical its bounce and drive can create the illusion he’s conveying readily available information, like he saw all of this happening one day and now he’s simply telling you about it.
Then you get that crazy-ass final verse where Danny (Who’s Danny?!) has to drive the car so the cops won’t see Tulane. Then she has to grab the weed from the shop, which will be quite a trick considering it’s now a crime scene. And then she has to bail Johnny out and get them a lawyer who’s connected enough to win the case for them even though they’re plainly guilty!
That’s quite an afternoon. Also, pause for a moment to appreciate the deeply descriptive and rhythmic phrase, “in the clique with politics.” Berry’s best lyrics over the years are filled to bursting with that sort of thing. He really was a genius.
I should point out that this song is two minutes and forty seconds long! If Berry had written and directed The Ten Commandments, it would have been over in twelve minutes. I’d give anything to hear him describing the golden idol sequence.
Chuck Berry knew what he was doing, and this Gibson ES-335 was the only tool he needed to do it. He left behind tons of great work, but what a loss for all of us that he gave up pursuing his staggering gifts long before he should have.
The next time you hear one of his songs playing somewhere, pause for a moment and note his brilliance; don’t let it be just another piece of outdated furniture. Better yet, listen to Chuck Berry on purpose instead of just stumbling upon him. Great “old” music sounds as fresh now as the day it was born.
Art—even when it’s categorized as “mere” popular art—is like that.