Thirty Days

Album: Rock, Rock, Rock (1955)
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Songfacts®:

  • This was Berry's second single, after "Maybellene." Officially titled "Thirty Days (To Come Back Home)," it is usually alluded to as simply "Thirty Days." According to Berry's piano player and collaborator Johnnie Johnson in Bruce Pegg's unauthorized biography Brown Eyed Handsome Man..., like the B-Side "Together (We Will Always Be)," this track was written by Berry while they were on the road, and recorded in haste at Chicago.

    "I don't think that it took more than an hour for each one," he said.

    An attempt to reproduce "Maybellene," it was released on the Chess label, made #8 on the R&B chart, but never troubled the Hot 100, and was soon covered by Ernest Tubb on Decca. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England
  • In this song, Berry's girl has left him and he's giving her 30 days to return, warning her that if she doesn't, he'll "send out a world wide hoodoo" and press false charges against her. It's not a very romantic sentiment, but that wasn't Berry's game: his songs were filled with humor and dysfunction.
  • Mick Jagger got the title for "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" from the line in this: "Can't get no satisfaction from the judge."
  • As he sings here, Chuck Berry really couldn't get any satisfaction from the judge. He was incarcerated three times: first in 1947 when he was sent to a reformatory for armed robbery, second in 1962 when he went to jail for 20 months for transporting a minor across state lines, then in 1979 when he was locked up for four months on tax evasion charges.

Comments: 2

  • Barry from Sauquoit, NyIn 1959 Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks released a cover version of this song, but they titled it "Forty Days", it peaked at No. 45 and was in the Top 100 for eight weeks!!!
  • Karim from Bremen, Germanyhallo

    thank you verry much
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