Tag Archives: Go Go

Jeff Chang has some coherent stuff to say about Chuck Brown’s passage:

And here was Chuck Brown, a nearly 50-year-old man with gold fronts, sporting wraparound glasses and a black hat, leading several hundred teenagers cranking — HARD! — to a genius medley of “Go-Go Swing” (a rewrite of D.C. native Duke Ellington’s classic), Lionel Hampton’s “Midnight Sun,” Eddie Jefferson’s “Moody’s Mood for Love,” and the Woody Woodpecker theme.

Between songs, the percussion section went off, the dancing got really serious, and Chuck shouted out the kids in the audience by name as if he was Mister Señor Love Daddy.

The kids started chanting, “Chuck baby don’t give a fuck!”

On cue, he’d reply, “That ain’t true.”

“Chuck baby don’t give a fuck!”

“I love all of you!”

The band did not stop for hours. The heat was withering. But you never wanted to leave this kind of joy.

via On the legacy of go-go pioneer Chuck Brown – Grantland.