Chuck Berry & the Bee Gees Perform Together in 1973: An Unexpected Video from The Midnight Special Archive

in Music | August 21st, 2023 5 Comments

Dur­ing the 1970s, Burt Sug­ar­man pro­duced The Mid­night Spe­cial, a late-night musi­cal vari­ety show that fea­tured great rock and pop music per­for­mances. In recent months, Sug­ar­man has start­ed bring­ing the show’s archive to YouTube, allow­ing you to revis­it vin­tage per­for­mances by David Bowie, Steely Dan, Tina Turn­er, Fleet­wood Mac, Blondie, Richard Pry­or and much more. Above, you can watch one such gem in the archive–that is, Chuck Berry & the Bee Gees per­form­ing Reel­in’ and Rockin’ (a song orig­i­nal­ly released as a B‑side with “Sweet Lit­tle Six­teen” in 1957). As one YouTu­ber put it, “what an odd com­bi­na­tion that absolute­ly works; one of Chuck’s most sat­is­fy­ing per­for­mances of this era; his guitar’s in tune, the band is hot & sup­port­ive (who’s that piano play­er?!), and it’s always cool to hear Mau­rice sing solo.” The per­for­mance took place on Octo­ber 12, 1973. Enjoy.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch David Bowie’s Final Per­for­mance as Zig­gy Star­dust, Singing “I Got You Babe” with Mar­i­anne Faith­full, on The Mid­night Spe­cial (1973)

Chuck Berry Jams Out “John­ny B. Goode” with Eric Clap­ton, Kei­th Richards, John Lennon & Bruce Spring­steen

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)


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