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Johnny
Chester ScreenSound
Australia
So popular was Chester during the peak of his career, he was asked to compere his own TV show and supported many visiting overseas acts. After becoming a regular DJ on 3UZ his career went decidedly country where he continued to have success, writing more of his own material. To the casual listener, who wants to know if this album is worth buying, then the answer is yes. While many of the tracks were rock to audiences in those days, some of it sounds pretty tame today. However there are some wild performances which would have been unusual to be able to record them the way he wanted them in the early days. There are covers of Little Richard (Miss Ann), Chuck Berry (Bye Bye Johnny, Forty Days and Johnny B Goode). Unusually, the collection is not in chronological order, instead chosing to lead off with a couple of rockers - Let's Have a Party, Baby I Don't Care and C'Mon Everybody. Other highlights include Can Can Ladies, Do the Stomp and Shop Around. Noel McGrath considers the oft recorded song, Shakin' (All Over) the best of any recorded version he had heard. Of the 30 tracks on disc 1, there's not one that lasts more than three minutes: short blasts of energy and let's get on to the next song to whip up the crowd! I was surprised to learn that Chester was writing his own songs as early as 1963, and these compare well with the other tracks. The CD includes a 16 page booklet, details of each recording session - ie who played what instrument and who produced each track. Ian B. Allen writes the liner notes. The two CD set also includes 4 film clips of Chester performing at a live performance at Festival Hall in 1964, during the 1964 Beatles tour. For those of you unfamiliar with the work of Chester will enjoy this as he struts his stuff out front of the Phantoms. The lighting and choreography shown for the song Fever is quite stunning showing Chess was prepared to entertain an audience, rather than just sing his songs. The whole project has been co-ordinated by Nick Weare: he and ScreenSound are to be congratulated on a great job! What's next in the pipeline guys? Previous
columns Chris Spencer is author of the "Who's Who of Australian Rock'. He can be contacted through Moonlight Publishing. |
This
month I've finally got a chance to review a CD re-issue that has
been long anticipated among record collectors around Australia -
for different reasons. Entreprenaurs have been hassling Johnny Chester
to release his early rock material onto CD. For over a decade Chester
has resisted, wanting to do the project in his own time and on his
own terms - as he owns the rights to all his early W&G material.
Finally, through the auspices of ScreenSound in Canberra, the project
has seen the light of day. The early recorded work of Johnny Chester
was much more rock dominated than his later, country influenced
material. At the time that he recorded he was among the two or three
most popular performers on the Melbourne dance scene. Hence the
interest in this recording - his records from this era are almost
impossible to find, even in Melbourne. Interstate, he is largely
an unknown, but collectors eagerly await listening to this CD to
find out what all the fuss was about, not being able to obtain W&G
recordings locally.
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