Chuck Berry digs, Oct. 2025. (D. Hoekstra photo)
A few months ago, I drove by the empty Chuck Berry House on the near north side of St. Louis. The modest red brick home is where Berry wrote hits like “Roll Over Beethoven” in 1956 and “Johnny B. Goode” in 1958. The Berry house is at 3137 Whittier Street in the economically challenged Greater Ville neighborhood.
The Berry house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, a rarity since Berry was still alive. Berry and his wife bought the three-room house in 1950 in what then was a middle-class Black neighborhood that included comedian Dick Gregory, [...]
Ernie Medina was a passionate Chicago music fan who joined the Merchant Marines in 1969. When Medina returned to his sister’s home near Glenwood and Ridge in Chicago he taped urban radio and favorite records on his Grundig TK2400 reel-to-reel tape recorder. Like an anchor in his soul, Medina dragged the machine on the USNS Wyandot when he returned to sea.
His son, Mike Medina, is a fine Chicago urban historian and musician who recently repaired the broken-down Grundig. Medina is a former airline mechanic who now repairs lab equipment at the University of Chicago. His father died in 2009 but he has heard a reborn spirit in the Chicago music experience of the [...]
In these times it is important to know the strength of one voice: a clarion of dignity, grace, and conviction. When delivered on note it becomes a sound that can move others forward.
That was the sound of Chicago musician Gene Barge.
Barge died Sunday of natural causes at his home in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. He was 98 years old.
He achieved national fame in 1961 with the Gary U.S. Bonds hit “Quarter to Three,” on which he produced and played saxophone. Bonds sang how “I danced ‘til a quarter to three, with the help last night of Daddy G.” That was Barge’s nickname.
Barge was arranger, producer, and sax player [...]
Michael Brewer (L) and Tom Shipley (Dirty Linen cartoon 2005)
Perhaps it would be a reach to call the 1971 folk-rock ballad “One Toke Over the Line” a “one-hit” wonder, but singer-songwriters Brewer & Shipley were mellow about that. During the early 1970s, Michael Brewer and Tom Shipley were based out of Rolla, Mo., a town on a beautiful winding stretch of Route 66 about 100 miles west of St. Louis.
Michael Brewer died on Dec. 17 at his home outside of Branson. Mo. He was 80 years old. He was born in Oklahoma City, OK. No cause of death has been announced.
Brewer & Shipley did have other [...]
