Hail, Hail: The Chuck Berry Documentary
Posted: February 20th, 2026 | Filed under: Cinema, Culture, Rock & Roll Rewind, Ruminations | 11 Comments »
When I mentioned recently to a fellow rock & roll addict that I’d spent my early morning during breakfast revisiting the great 1987 documentary, “Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock & Roll,” he wondered how that came about?
A long and winding road for certain.
Serpentine. As my thought processes tend to be these days.
Briefly. Or as briefly as I am capable of.
I came upon an article in the New York Times, listing 13 transcendent Beatles covers by black artists.
One incredible tune I had frankly never heard before — or if so, didn’t recall — Al Green covering “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” I’ll imbed the video down below.
On the list was Ray Charles’s brilliant and soulful — Duh! — cover of “Eleanor Rigby.”
Which morphed into my memory of hearing him do it in the 80s at that summer “jazz” festival they’d put on at Riverfront Stadium in Cincy. I also went down the rabbit hole of the times I heard Ray Charles through the years, which I might write about at a later time.
So with Charles on my mind, I ventured to a conversation I had at Mosca’s once with Taylor Hackford, the director who fashioned the Ray Charles biopic with Jamie Foxx. And his talking about what it was like to work with Charles input.
Then I got in touch with how I’ve rued that I didn’t chat him up about working with the notoriously difficult Berry on the documentary he directed. So I tracked down an interview with Hackford about that experience, of which he has few fond memories of dealing with Berry.
Then I realized for four bucks and change I could rewatch the doc on Amazon Prime.
I’m old. I’m retired. My days are pretty open. I’m still a rock & roll addict.
Click.
The live concert footage is way cool. The band put together just for the one off in the doc is top drawer. Keith Richards. Joey Spaminato. Steve Jordan. Bobby Keys. Robert Cray. Some top shelf cameos. Any chance to hear Linda Ronstadt should not be passed by.
Then there are the interviews with a trio of the Founding Fathers. Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard. Plus Jerry Lee Lewis. And Roy Orbison. Oh, and Springsteen about the time early on before he was a superstar when he and his band backed Berry.
A music junkie’s fix.
So yeah, as good documentaries should, the movie gives an illuminating sense of its subject matter. Entertains.
The extensive concert footage, full songs, no voice overs, rocks.
(Interesting to me, the version of “School Days,” as brilliant a rock & roll tune as has ever been written, was just meh.)
Here’s the trailer as a tease:
Watch it.
Really, you consider yourself a fan of rock & roll, watch it. Even, if like me, you saw it back when.
One more unsolicited suggestion: Turn on closed captioning. So you can actually visualize the lyrics. Berry’s been misunderestimated as a lyricist forever.
OK, today’s free of charge bonus track, that Al Green song mentioned above.
All of which brings me, as it often does, to this question: How would I ever have made it here, a year into my octogenarianism, without rock & roll?
Ever the correct answer: Wouldn’t have.
OK, can’t leave you without “School Days” with lyrics. People rave about how “American Graffiti” is the perfect evocation of the mythos of 50s teen culture. Berry nails it in three minutes.
Hail! Hail!
— c d kaplan
I hung out with my pal Stevie Jordan in LA by accident when I ran into hm at The Mondrian Hotel on Sunset during the time they were putting together the documentary
– Keith & Chuck Berry were like oil & water – but it did bring about Stevie & Waddy Wachtell & Charley Drayton & Ivan Neville forming the X-Pensive Winos that year (1987) & a lifelong friendship culminating in Stevie’s gig taking Charlie Watts’ place with the Stones –
Hail Hail Rock n Roll ‼️
Long lost memories of coins in the juke box. It was just a dime store down the street from my grade school in Columbus Ohio. Every day after school, using our lunch money. Black slacks and slick hair. Long live rock and roll(ers)..
Love it, JS.
I listen to Tom Petty’s Buried Treasures on SXM and Tom really loved Chuck. He has played the Rocking at the Philharmonic instrumental several times. Chuck was a fine guitar player.
I love that movie so much that I bought the 4-DVD disc ‘Ultimate Collector’s Edition a few years ago! One of many great moments that plays back in my mind is the sadness oozing out of Chuck as he sits alone in the dusty remains of the nightclub within his failed St. Louis amusement park, strumming beautiful jazz chords, almost whispering the wistful lyrics of A Cottage For Sale.
I liked Wilson Pickett’s version of “Hey Jude” with Duane Allman.
Nice read, I’m going to watch this on Amazon. I will look forward to your Ray Charles screed. I never saw him perform, but just read a bio on Mary Ann Fisher called Songbird of the South. She was a Kentuckian and met up with Ray Charles in Louisville, then toured with him for several years. She had stories about her time with Ray.
C D,
Thanks for citing Joey Spaminato of NRBQ. I saw them in a little barn like club in Woodstock called The Elephant…New Years Eve, 1970…even before Joey joined the group. I think there were about twelve people in the audience.
By the way, there is a substantive doc on Youtube from Canada’s version of “Sunday Morning” on NRBQ.
I still look at your fine writing on The Card Chronicle.
Good Save The Kinks,
Cheers,
R
Sorry, CD.
Make that GOD Save The Kinks.
R
For anyone interested, here’s a link to that NYT article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/arts/music/amplifier-newsletter-beatles-covers-black-musicians.html?unlocked_article_code=1.OFA.6ct1.Kc6OQzWjFQ2Z&smid=url-share
The story of that Wilson Pickett cover of Hey Jude with Duane Allman was told in the movie ‘Muscle Shoals’. I highly recommend you rock n rollers watch it! They say that cover was the birth of southern rock!