Johnny Rivers Runs Through Rock History

Johnny Rivers, Parker's, 17001 Aurora Ave. N. Tonight and tomorrow, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tickets, $15. 542-9491 and 628-0888. -----------------------------

Johnny Rivers did for Chuck Berry in the '60s what Pat Boone did for Little Richard in the '50s. He brought a black rock- 'n'-roll artist's material to a white mainstream audience and made it part of the American vocabulary.

Fortunately, he did it a lot better than Pat Boone ever did.

Rivers didn't homogenize songs like Berry's "Memphis." He retained enough of his Italian New York background (his real name is Ramistella) to give the songs he covered some grit. That they were recorded live, at least the first hits, gave them all the more urgency.

Rivers' debut was the 1964 "Live at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, then the hottest club on Hollywood's Sunset Strip. Rivers wasn't the only '60s artist to tie in to Chuck Berry's riffs. Keith Richards is still redefining the St. Louis rocker's chicken-choking chord leads. But Rivers gave the music a clean, mainstream familiarity.

From "Memphis" on through his first four or five hits, he maintained the `live" recording sound, even though it was later reported that some of the songs were done with a dubbed-in audience track. Rivers eventually got away from the `"lub" sound with songs like `"aby I Need Your Loving" and `"he Tracks of My Tears." He also struck big with the 1972 `"ockin' Pneumomia and the Boogie Woogie Flu" and 1977's `"waying to the Music (Slow Dancing)"

Rivers' most enduring hit was "Secret Agent Man," the theme song for a popular British television spy series from the mid-'60s. According to P.F. Sloan, who wrote the song, along with '60s protest hits like "Eve of Destruction," Rivers didn't want to do the song at first.

"So I only wrote the opening bars and a couple of lines," Sloan said recently at a recording session

at Redmond's Triad Studios. "Johnny really didn't care that much for the song. But we thought we had a hit, so I finished it and he trusted us enough to go with it." It turned out to be one of Rivers' most enduring hits, covered many times by bands from the '80s and '90s. Sloan, in fact, recently recorded a version with members of Seattle's Young Fresh Fellows.

Rivers is an old pro. He was originally discovered by Alan Freed, the man who if he didn't invent the phrase rock 'n' roll, certainly popularized it. Rivers has also always been able to spot talent. He renamed and launched The Fifth Dimension in the '60s and had a lot to do with the popularization of Jimmy Webb, who for better or worse, wrote "MacArthur Park."

Rivers has also always surrounded himself with the best available session men. A show with Johnny Rivers promises to be both nostalgic and professional. He's never been known to let an audience down.