1964
THE PROMISED LAND * CHUCK BERRY * PYE INTERNATIONAL 25285 * UK
"And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land." On the day before he was assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr gave his historic speech in Memphis, Tennessee from which this line has become so celebrated. There is no irony intended in Martin Luther King's words when he mentions 'the promised land', he's referring to it in the biblical sense as in which book the land of Israel is promised as an everlasting possession to the descendants of the Hebrew patriarchs Abraham Isaac, and Jacob; though when Chuck Berry uses the term he might well be using irony. Chuck Berry is referring to California, the Golden State, when he sings about The Promised Land. For me the song balances, like much good art, irreverence with regard, reality with fiction, and seriousness with frivolity; it's not for nothing that he was called a poet.
See also:
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| Johnny Be Good | Childhood Sweetheart | Sweet Little Rock And Roll |
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| Carol | Almost Grown | Maybellene | School Days | Sweet Little Sixteen |
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| Come On | Go, Go, Go | Thirty Days | Roll Over Beethoven | Rock And Roll Music |