Chuck Berry, Live at Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room in St. Louis, May 13, 2009

I was shocked mostly by the size of his hands. They looked like baseball mitts — old, leathery, well-worn. It seemed inconceivable that they would fit through his shirt sleeves, let alone exercise the finesse required to move up and down the neck of his lacquered Gibson. And yet there they were, still playing the guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell, the oversized mitts of Chuck Berry.

It felt a little surreal to be in the same room as Chuck Berry. Decked out in a sailor’s cap, bolo tie, and sparkling turquoise blouse, the father of rock & roll didn’t seem to belong to this or any other time, like he had stepped off the regular path of history and yet continued to exist in our present day and space. The fact that I was watching him in the basement of retro-kitsch restaurant Blueberry Hill, in the intimate Duck Room, a room whose bizarre displays of assorted duck memorabilia (featuring Donald, Daffy, Howard, Scrooge and nephews, among others) is only excusable because it is ultimately devoted to the world-famous duck walk of the world-famous Chuck Berry, only served to heighten this surreal confluence of space and time.

He’s too old to duck walk now. But Chuck was already getting long in the tooth when he started out more than half a century ago. He didn’t release his first single, “Maybellene,” until 1955 when he was already 29 years old, and he never made it to #1, despite influencing legions of hugely successful bands, until the juvenile “My Ding-a-Ling” inexplicably shot to the top of the charts almost 20 years later in 1972. Now, at age 82, decades after his career creatively stalled, he still puts on sold-out shows, and though he moves about with a grandfatherly gait, he still has the spry energy and humor to make those shows count.

The place was packed, and aside from a marked increase in Greg Norman-polo shirt wearing dads, the overall vibe was similar to any other rock show. The opening band was unfortunately awful, a graying hair rock-meets-Blueshammer travesty, where the singer, who bragged of being tangentially involved in REO Speedwagon, had the audacity to invite his girlfriend on stage to shake her tailfeathers for the duet “Hellhound Blues.” It was an unspeakably uncouth offering to lay before the throne of the King of Rock & Roll, but some of the dads in the audience seemed to be into it.

After they packed it up, the anticipation for Chuck grew palpable. The club owner (?) came out to rile us up, quoting from Bob Dylan’s latest interview in Rolling Stone, where Dylan placed Chuck Berry at the top of his list of the greatest living musicians (he placed himself second, fwiw). Quoting Dylan:

In my universe, Chuck is irreplaceable… All that brilliance is still there, and he’s still a force of nature. As long as Chuck Berry’s around, everything’s as it should be. This is a man who has been through it all. The world treated him so nasty. But in the end, it was the world that got beat.

Obvious words, but worth repeating.

And then he appeared. Strutting, smiling, waving. Chuck Berry in the flesh. Immediately the band launched into “Roll Over Beethoven.” I was afraid that his catalogue would have grown bloated over the years, filled with gratuitous solos and slap-and-pop bass, but that rockin’ rhythm number stayed remarkably limber. This was his house band, with his son playing the second guitar and the rest of the band knowing their place, knowing enough to hold back and let the main event shine where he could. “Memphis” was next, restrained and tender, one of the better showcases for his underrated storytelling.

It’s strange. His songs are so familiar, so commonplace, so ingrained into the fabric of American culture that the songs themselves almost get overshadowed by their historical associations. After all, as the archetypal rock & roller, whose signature two-string strumming and quick-lipped cadence served as a launching pad for the careers of Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Brian Wilson, and countless others on down the line — artists who, in their own right, went on to establish personas and bodies of work that seem to be bigger than time — it’s easy to lose sight of the brown-eyed handsome man at the heart of his own mythology.

But his songs still stand up. “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Let It Rock,” “You Never Can Tell” — durable, catchy, well-constructed songs that are, above all else, fun to sing and dance to. Sure, Chuck may not be in the best shape these days — he flubbed a few notes, repeated a few words, and couldn’t remember past the first verse of one song about a traveling salesman — but he was exuding so much joy and enthusiasm that it was hard not to appreciate the effort. When Chuck shouted “Long live rock & roll!” and we shouted the words right back at him, his old eyes would light up and he’d flash a quick grin, clearly enjoying the adoration.

His vocal delivery has changed. His voice hasn’t grown gravely or incoherent like other rockers, just quirkier. On “School Days,” for example, he’d pause and deliver some lines with great weight and consideration (”Back in the classroom, open your books”) and then follow up the next line with great rapidity (”Gee, but the teacher don’t know how mean she looks”). It was a strange effect, but strangely endearing.

He closed the night with “Johnny B. Goode,” probably the most perfect self-mythologizing rock & roll song there ever will be — and that’s no hyperbole — followed by a quick outro jam that was basically an excuse for him to invite a bevy of ladyfolk up onto the stage with him while he teased the crowd with more call-and-response pleading. He left the stage just as he entered, waving and smiling, guitar in hand. In some sense he’s still that same old country boy he sings about on “Johnny B. Goode,” just strumming his six-string to the rhythm of the railroad tracks, I only hope he sticks around for another half century to tell us the tale himself.

SETLIST (cribbed from memory, so may not be 100% accurate)
Roll Over Beethoven
Memphis, Tennessee
School Days
Sweet Little Sixteen
Travelin’ Salesman
Wee Wee Hours
Let It Rock
MEDLEY: Carol/Little Queenie
Maybellene
You Never Can Tell
Johnny B. Goode
Outro