Minnesota Now and Then: Chuck Berry played with St. Paul's newest British wannabe band
Chuck Berry performing onstage.
Courtesy of Kew Media
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As part of our history series called Minnesota Now and Then, we’ll hear a story about St. Paul’s favorite 1964 rock n’ roll band … from Britain. They performed New Year’s Eve at the old St. Paul Armory with Chuck Berry. Minnesota Now producer Britt Aamodt told the story of Chuck Berry and the Escapades.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
HOST: It's almost New Year's Eve. Maybe you're heading out for a little music and celebrating. Our next story is part of our history series here on the program called Minnesota Now and Then. And it takes place at the old St. Paul Armory on New Year's Eve in 1964. Our producer, Britt Aamodt, tells the story of Chuck Berry and the Escapades.
BRITT AAMODT: What you have to know about Chuck Berry is he always got paid upfront in cash, no green, no "Maybellene."
CHUCK BERRY (SINGING): Maybellene, why can't you be true?
BRITT AAMODT: This story takes place on a frosty New Year's Eve in 1964. Chuck Berry, the old rock and roll hitmaker of the 1950s, was headlining a St, Paul Armory show, the same one at which Ron Butwin and his St. Paul garage band were about to give their stage debut with a little bit of a twist, which they hoped would make them stand out from the other Twin Cities bands. They'd all been in bands before. Butwin, 18, had been gigging for four years already.
But a seismic shift had occurred in the music scene that year, the Beatles. Suddenly, the St. Paul group's setlist was as outdated as poodle skirts. These four St. Paul young men knew they had to change their sound and their nationality. Ron Butwin says, what they decided to do was call themselves the Escapades and make-believe like they were the latest band of the British invasion.
RON BUTWIN: I said, look, what we're going to do is instead of everybody doing Chuck Berry and all the same music, I said let us come out and pretend that we're an English group.
BRITT AAMODT: Only, they didn't quite have the right look yet.
RON BUTWIN: None of us can grow our hair long enough fast enough. So let's get some really nice, long wigs and learn enough songs that we can appear as this English group.
BRITT AAMODT: The wigs came, courtesy of a local wig shop. Then Butwin, through contacts, got The Escapades booked as the opening act for Chuck Berry. So there they were, New Year's Eve, thrashing away on the Armory stage in matching suits, boots, and wigs. Butwin, the drummer, also served as the band's spokesperson--
RON BUTWIN: Well, we'd like to welcome you all here this afternoon.
BRITT AAMODT: --with a vaguely English accent--
RON BUTWIN: We get there. We're dressed in our English garb. We've got the little boots. And everybody bit for it because we had the songs done. We did the Beatles. We did Rolling Stones. We did the Kinks. And it really went over well.
BRITT AAMODT: Well as in the audience of screaming girls really thought the Escapades were the Beatles' second coming. Getting paid at the end of the night, that would just be icing on the cake for these four St. Paul bandmates.
Another thing you have to know about Chuck Berry is he never traveled with a backing band. The concert promoters at every city were supposed to set him up with one. So Chuck Berry took the stage for his first set of the St. Paul show with a backing band that was drunk, incompetent, both.
MAN (SINGING): Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans.
BRITT AAMODT: The Escapades watched, horrified, from the wings as the band stumbled along and butchered these classic songs. So they did something that would change the course, not of their lives, but of that evening at any rate. One by one, the Escapades walked out and took over for the backing band. The audience loved it. And more importantly, the headliner did, too, because these long-haired boys from England sure knew how to rock.
MAN (SINGING): There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood, where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode, never, ever--
BRITT AAMODT: At intermission, the Escapades escaped off stage. They tried to hole up in a corner and not talk very much because pulling off a convincing British accent was not easy. So they probably tensed up when they saw Barry making a beeline for them. He pulled Butwin aside. "Ron, you guys get paid yet?"
"No, we haven't." "They're going to be gone before intermission is over," Barry told him. "They don't care what happens. They got their money." They, as in the concert promoters. Butwin could see Barry was trying to help him out. And he felt like a heel, pretending to be somebody he wasn't.
RON BUTWIN: Chuck, I've got to tell you something, you know. You might be surprised that I'm not really English. I'm just doing the voice.
BRITT AAMODT: Barry eyeballed the kid. Was he going to lose it? "Well," he said, "you fooled me," and shrugged it off.
MAN (SINGING): With no particular place to go.
BRITT AAMODT: And this was how Butwin, a high school graduate in a wig, found himself dragged down a hallway past two beefy guys into a back office with another couple of beefy guys behind a table, counting piles of money. These were the concert promoters. And they had guns. Barry, this veteran of a thousand concert stages and just about as many scam artists, didn't flinch. He just opened his guitar case and pulled out a bigger gun.
Chuck Berry sidled back on stage to finish his second set backed by the Escapades during which time, the promoters fled with their cash and were never seen again. At the end of the night, no one got paid, no one except for Chuck Berry and the Escapades, St. Paul's newest band from England.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CHUCKLES]
HOST: I love this story. Good job, Britt Aamodt. That's the story of Chuck Berry and the Escapades playing New Year's Eve at the St. Paul Armory in 1964.
BRITT AAMODT: What you have to know about Chuck Berry is he always got paid upfront in cash, no green, no "Maybellene."
CHUCK BERRY (SINGING): Maybellene, why can't you be true?
BRITT AAMODT: This story takes place on a frosty New Year's Eve in 1964. Chuck Berry, the old rock and roll hitmaker of the 1950s, was headlining a St, Paul Armory show, the same one at which Ron Butwin and his St. Paul garage band were about to give their stage debut with a little bit of a twist, which they hoped would make them stand out from the other Twin Cities bands. They'd all been in bands before. Butwin, 18, had been gigging for four years already.
But a seismic shift had occurred in the music scene that year, the Beatles. Suddenly, the St. Paul group's setlist was as outdated as poodle skirts. These four St. Paul young men knew they had to change their sound and their nationality. Ron Butwin says, what they decided to do was call themselves the Escapades and make-believe like they were the latest band of the British invasion.
RON BUTWIN: I said, look, what we're going to do is instead of everybody doing Chuck Berry and all the same music, I said let us come out and pretend that we're an English group.
BRITT AAMODT: Only, they didn't quite have the right look yet.
RON BUTWIN: None of us can grow our hair long enough fast enough. So let's get some really nice, long wigs and learn enough songs that we can appear as this English group.
BRITT AAMODT: The wigs came, courtesy of a local wig shop. Then Butwin, through contacts, got The Escapades booked as the opening act for Chuck Berry. So there they were, New Year's Eve, thrashing away on the Armory stage in matching suits, boots, and wigs. Butwin, the drummer, also served as the band's spokesperson--
RON BUTWIN: Well, we'd like to welcome you all here this afternoon.
BRITT AAMODT: --with a vaguely English accent--
RON BUTWIN: We get there. We're dressed in our English garb. We've got the little boots. And everybody bit for it because we had the songs done. We did the Beatles. We did Rolling Stones. We did the Kinks. And it really went over well.
BRITT AAMODT: Well as in the audience of screaming girls really thought the Escapades were the Beatles' second coming. Getting paid at the end of the night, that would just be icing on the cake for these four St. Paul bandmates.
Another thing you have to know about Chuck Berry is he never traveled with a backing band. The concert promoters at every city were supposed to set him up with one. So Chuck Berry took the stage for his first set of the St. Paul show with a backing band that was drunk, incompetent, both.
MAN (SINGING): Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans.
BRITT AAMODT: The Escapades watched, horrified, from the wings as the band stumbled along and butchered these classic songs. So they did something that would change the course, not of their lives, but of that evening at any rate. One by one, the Escapades walked out and took over for the backing band. The audience loved it. And more importantly, the headliner did, too, because these long-haired boys from England sure knew how to rock.
MAN (SINGING): There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood, where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode, never, ever--
BRITT AAMODT: At intermission, the Escapades escaped off stage. They tried to hole up in a corner and not talk very much because pulling off a convincing British accent was not easy. So they probably tensed up when they saw Barry making a beeline for them. He pulled Butwin aside. "Ron, you guys get paid yet?"
"No, we haven't." "They're going to be gone before intermission is over," Barry told him. "They don't care what happens. They got their money." They, as in the concert promoters. Butwin could see Barry was trying to help him out. And he felt like a heel, pretending to be somebody he wasn't.
RON BUTWIN: Chuck, I've got to tell you something, you know. You might be surprised that I'm not really English. I'm just doing the voice.
BRITT AAMODT: Barry eyeballed the kid. Was he going to lose it? "Well," he said, "you fooled me," and shrugged it off.
MAN (SINGING): With no particular place to go.
BRITT AAMODT: And this was how Butwin, a high school graduate in a wig, found himself dragged down a hallway past two beefy guys into a back office with another couple of beefy guys behind a table, counting piles of money. These were the concert promoters. And they had guns. Barry, this veteran of a thousand concert stages and just about as many scam artists, didn't flinch. He just opened his guitar case and pulled out a bigger gun.
Chuck Berry sidled back on stage to finish his second set backed by the Escapades during which time, the promoters fled with their cash and were never seen again. At the end of the night, no one got paid, no one except for Chuck Berry and the Escapades, St. Paul's newest band from England.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CHUCKLES]
HOST: I love this story. Good job, Britt Aamodt. That's the story of Chuck Berry and the Escapades playing New Year's Eve at the St. Paul Armory in 1964.
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