Will Johnnie Be Good Enough?

Gubernatorial candidates Jane Harman and Al Checchi aren’t the only ones putting personal fortunes into a campaign these days.

Business executive George Turek is bankrolling a candidate for election as well. But rather than political office, this is a campaign for a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for Chuck Berry’s pianist, Johnnie Johnson.

Believing that Johnson--whose rippling style is as much a part of “Maybellene” and “Roll Over Beethoven” as Berry’s slippery wordplay and trademark guitar licks--has been overlooked as an architect of rock ‘n’ roll, Turek dipped into his own pocket to purchase a full-page ad in Billboard magazine last week. It was the third Billboard page he’s bought in the past year, and they don’t come cheap.

“We’ve taken this on as a cause,” says Turek, chairman and CEO of the MES Group, a Houston-based physicians management service company. “We were fortunate enough to be successful in business and we directed that to our avocation of helping Johnnie. He made such a big contribution to music and has never gotten the recognition he deserves.”

Turek, who met and befriended Johnson, 74, five years ago, is not alone in that thinking. The ad, in fact, features a quote from Keith Richards stating that Johnson was largely responsible for the sound of those classic songs.

“The songs were obviously collaborations,” Richards’ quote reads in part. “Please do the right thing. Please place Johnnie Johnson’s name on this year’s ballot.”

Berry himself has been part of the campaign, writing a letter to Hall of Fame board chairman Ahmet Ertegun on Johnson’s behalf, stating that he and the pianist have been musical collaborators for more than 40 years. Turek, who has also spoken with Ertegun on the matter several times, says that the Atlantic Records founder, as well as other hall officials, are sympathetic to the cause.

There’s just one problem. There’s no fitting category for Johnson. Performers are inducted for work released in their own name or that of a group they were a part of. And no matter how much he collaborated with Berry, the songwriting is credited to Berry alone, which eliminates him from consideration in the non-performer category in which songwriters can be honored. And he’s also not appropriate for “early influence” induction, which goes to figures from before the rock ‘n’ roll era.

“The board needs to discuss whether or not they want to expand a category or add one, perhaps for sidemen,” says Suzan Evans, the hall’s executive director, noting that she expects the issue to be raised at a nominating committee meeting in June.

Meanwhile, Turek is finding that people in the music industry don’t know quite what to make of his efforts.

“People always want to know why I’m doing this, asking me, ‘What’s in it for you?’ ” he says. “It takes me the first five minutes to convince people that it’s just the right thing to do. There’s no ulterior motive. It’s just this fellow who it would be wonderful to recognize in his lifetime.”

JUNE HONEYMOON: Just months after the release of her acclaimed “Little Plastic Castle,” Ani DiFranco is planning to return to the studio this week to start work on another new album. But there will be something different about these sessions--they’ll be her first as a married woman.

With arrangements made on the hush-hush, DiFranco and her soundman, Andrew Gilchrist, were set to be married Saturday at a family vacation home in Canada. The move might catch some of DiFranco’s fans off guard, given both her anti-traditionalist attitudes and her acknowledged bisexual experiences. But she and Gilchrist had been pretty much a steady item for some time--with the relationship providing fodder for songs on recent albums.

DiFranco has no plans to let marriage slow her down, though. In addition to working on the next album, she’ll be touring much of the summer (she plays UC Irvine’s Bren Events Center on July 13). She has also invited veteran folk singer U. Utah Phillips to her home studio in Buffalo to do a second collaborative album, and she’s overseeing the planned release through her Righteous Babe Records of an album culled from performances at a Woody Guthrie tribute concert held in 1996 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, due in the fall. Her next album probably won’t be released before the end of the year.

LAST DANCE: Los Angeles techno star DJ Keoki has agreed to perform at an extremely unusual gig. A young fan of his, stricken with multiple sclerosis and expected to live only a few months, asked Keoki to spin the music at her funeral.

“I want a happy funeral, not a sad one, and Keoki makes me happier than anybody else,” says Kathy Frank, 25, in a statement issued via her family and Moonshine Music, which releases Keoki’s work.

It was actually at a 1997 Keoki performance in Toronto that the symptoms of MS first manifested in Frank, a resident of Lake Sheffield, Ohio. Having seen and met Keoki at a similar rave a year before, she was dancing near his deejay setup and collapsed, hitting her head on his turntables.

Frank is scheduled to graduate with an associates degree from Lorraine County Community College near her home on June 13--and Keoki has accepted an invitation to that event as well.