Jean-Marie Périer‘s Instagram Chronicles are pure wonders.
Every 2 weeks, we publish one of them.
Chuck Berry in Mississippi in 1965.
Since he didn’t want a manager or a musician, I was lucky enough to be able to cross the southern United States alone with him in his Thunderbird. It is still quite surprising on his part that he accepted me like that. Maybe it’s because I worked for a French newspaper. Our country was prestigious in the 60s, we must not forget that many jazz artists considered Paris as a haven of peace for black musicians. At the Saint-Germain club on rue Saint-Benoit and at the Olympia they were really at home.
When I asked him why he demanded to be paid in cash before going on stage, he replied that when he started, when he had finished singing, the bosses often got away with the cash without paying him. Adding without looking at me: “They are white people! “.
I watched him driving, thinking of those roads he had to travel in his youth from little bars to seedy “juke joints” for a few dollars, now he traveled to them like a star. He did not steal it.
Jean-Marie Périer
