{"id":891,"date":"2016-04-29T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=891"},"modified":"2025-02-04T11:28:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T16:28:51","slug":"no-money-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/no-money-down\/","title":{"rendered":"No Money Down (Chuck Berry\/John Hammond)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"No Money Down\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cjF7-9k_-Io?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Blues at Newport<\/em> was one of my life-changing albums. I don&#8217;t remember how or why I bought it (or got my mom to buy it for me), but it was Dave Van Ronk&#8217;s version of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/thatll-never-happen-no\/\">That&#8217;ll Never Happen No More<\/a>&#8221; on that set, more than his version of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cocaine-blues\/\">Cocaine<\/a>&#8221; on a Fantasy sampler, that <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-892 size-full alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/blues-at-newport.jpg?resize=250%2C250&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"blues at newport\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/blues-at-newport.jpg?w=250&amp;ssl=1 250w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/blues-at-newport.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/>persuaded me to persuade my mom to go see him in concert. Neither recording had captured my imagination on first hearing, but when I saw the poster for the gig I recognized the name and went home and listened, and that was enough to send us to the concert that changed my life.<\/p>\n<p>The tracks on that album that did capture my imagination immediately were Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee doing &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/key-to-the-highway\/\">Key to the Highway<\/a>,&#8221; and in particular John Hammond&#8217;s performance of &#8220;No Money Down.&#8221; I don&#8217;t think I was yet aware of Chuck Berry, and certainly hadn&#8217;t heard his version of that particular song &#8212; and when I did, it took a while for me to accept it, because my first reaction was that it was too perky and didn&#8217;t have the guts of Hammond&#8217;s. I&#8217;ve revised that opinion over the years, but there&#8217;s still more Hammond than Berry in the way I do this.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1169 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/chuck-berry.jpg?resize=156%2C145&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"chuck berry\" width=\"156\" height=\"145\" \/>&#8220;No Money Down&#8221; is an interesting example of a self-penned follow-up or &#8220;answer song&#8221;: Berry had hit with &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/maybellene\/\">Maybellene<\/a>,&#8221; in which his little Ford was &#8220;motorvating&#8221; over the hill and won a race with a Cadillac Coupe de Ville driven by the title lady. But rather than being true to his Ford (never mind the lady), in his follow-up he&#8217;s motorvating back into town and jumps at the opportunity to trade up.<\/p>\n<p>Musically, this was one of the many offshoots of Muddy Waters&#8217;s &#8220;Hoochie Coochie Man.&#8221; Written by Willie Dixon, that song started a wave of comically exaggerated blues songs using versions of Muddy&#8217;s trademark riff.\u00a0 Ray Charles had &#8220;It Should&#8217;ve Been Me,&#8221; the Robins\/Coasters had &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/riot-number-nine\/\">Riot In Cell Block Number 9<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/framed\/\">Framed<\/a>,&#8221; Ruth Brown had &#8220;<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-895 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/cadillac-1950-series-61.jpg?resize=300%2C142&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"cadillac 1950 series 61\" width=\"300\" height=\"142\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/cadillac-1950-series-61.jpg?resize=300%2C142&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/cadillac-1950-series-61.jpg?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>I Can&#8217;t Hear a Word You Say,&#8221; and Chuck Berry had this one.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, Hammond changed &#8220;Murphy bed&#8221; to &#8220;roll-away bed,&#8221; apparently to be more up-to-date, and I went back to the original because I thought it was charmingly archaic (my only experience of a Murphy bed being the site of Britt Eklund&#8217;s downfall in <em>The Night they Raided Minsky&#8217;s) <\/em>&#8212; but now that we&#8217;re in a new age of chic urban living, I find Murphy beds are advertised everywhere from Costco to Ikea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of Chuck Berry&#8217;s less familiar masterpieces, going back to his roots in Muddy Waters, which I originally picked up from John Hammond&#8217;s Newport Festival recording.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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(The same thing happened with Woody Guthrie's\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pallet-on-your-floor-aint-no-telling\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4111,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candy-man-john-hurt\/","url_meta":{"origin":891,"position":2},"title":"Candy Man (John Hurt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 10, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This may well be the first song I ever heard from Mississippi John Hurt, because it was his first track on the Blues at Newport LP from 1963. That was one of the defining albums for me, the first place I heard Dave Van Ronk, John Hammond, John Lee Hooker...\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Blues-at-Newport-LP-295x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3605,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/nadine\/","url_meta":{"origin":891,"position":3},"title":"Nadine (Chuck Berry)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 This is my favorite Chuck Berry lyric, which is saying a lot. He was a phenomenal writer, with a gift for fitting words together so they scanned, rhymed, and still felt like normal human speech spiked with flashes of wry humor: As I got on a city bus and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Flamingoes49.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Flamingoes49.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Flamingoes49.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1347,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/friend-of-mine\/","url_meta":{"origin":891,"position":4},"title":"He Was a Friend of Mine (Dave Van Ronk &#038;co)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This was one of the first songs I ever heard from Dave Van Ronk, and remained a staple of his repertoire throughout his career. When he recorded it in 1963 he credited it to Bob Dylan, but in later years would say, \"I learned this from Bob Dylan, who learned\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"von schmidt - cahn","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/von-schmidt-cahn.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1111,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/much-monkey-business\/","url_meta":{"origin":891,"position":5},"title":"Too Much Monkey Business (Chuck Berry)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"An early masterpiece from Chuck Berry and one of the most brilliantly composed lyrics I know, with some further thoughts on his genius.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"chuck berry after school","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/chuck-berry-after-school-300x299.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5643,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891\/revisions\/5643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}