Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.  

1958 : Johnny B Goode - Chuck Berry

I'm not a massive fan of this era rock'n'roll - I generally appreciate the skill and legacy rather than enjoy the actual music.  However, there are exceptions and this is very much one of them - it's on my general playlist and I'm always happy when it pops up with it being just 2:39 of infectious energy and joy.

Wikipedia has remarkably little on such a historic track, but tries its damn hardest to remove any ounce of joy, noting that "no song in the history of rock'n'roll more jubilantly celebrates the downmarket socioeconomic roots of the genre" - admit it, they're just saying what you're thinking.  As a depressing sign of the times, it also tells us "that the original lyrics referred to Johnny as a "colored boy", but he changed it to "country boy" to ensure radio play".

Moving on to happier business, Chuck played this when he was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (in their very first induction ceremony) and he was only backed by Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band - and it's just as good as you'd expect (and Bruce looks so happy at not being the main attraction).  Wikipedia also reminded me that this is one of the tracks that Marty McFly plays at the high school dance in Back To The Future with Michael J. Fox explaining that they incorporated "a Pete Townshend windmill, and Jimi Hendrix behind the back, and a Chuck Berry duckwalk".  Much happier business indeed!

Wikipedia does better on covers than it did last time, giving us Jimi Hendrix, Peter Tosh, Judas Priest and The Sex Pistols.  That's some combo and no mistake!  Other versions offered up by the rest of the internet are The Beach Boys (which is much better than you'd imagine), Elvis Presley, Grateful Dead, Tom Jones, John Denver, Elton John, Freddie Starr, Meat Loaf, The Beatles, Cliff Richard (are there any songs that man hasn't covered?), The Shadows and Motorhead.  And approximately a million other people I've never heard of.  Only Jimi and Judas had charting versions in the UK though reaching #35 and #64 respectively.

For me, other tracks are gonna have to go some to come close to challenging this for top spot, but let's see what we've got.  Apparently "Jailhouse Rock" was the top selling UK single of 1958, so that's out for starters but other potential candidates are Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls Of Fire" and Little Richard's "Good Golly Miss Molly" - it's not a bad year for rock'n'roll, is it?  Looking across the pond, the biggest selling single was "Nel blu, dipinto di blu" by Domenico Modugno - the Italian Eurovision entry.  No - really!  With global sales of 22 million copies!  You might recognise it if I refer to it as "Volare" - but only if you're pretty damn old like me.  Other tracks I recognise are The Everly Brothers' "All I Have To Do Is Dream", Perry Como's "Catch A Falling Star", The Champs' "Tequila" and Sheb Wooley's quite fantastic "Purple People Eater" (the 12th best selling single of the year!).

I think it's safe to say it was going to go to a rock'n'roll track though and I'm very happy it went to Chuck.   He didn't turn out to be the nicest person ever (which is somewhat of an understatement) but this is a very fine track indeed.

1957 - He was gonna turn up somewhere
1959 - A surprising track