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Chuck Berry

February 10, 2023

For other uses, see Chuck Berry (disambiguation) and Charles Berry (disambiguation).

Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the "Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958).[1] Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.[2]

Chuck Berry
Berry in 1957
Born
Charles Edward Anderson Berry

(1926-10-18)October 18, 1926
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
DiedMarch 18, 2017(2017-03-18) (aged 90)
near Wentzville, Missouri, U.S.
Resting placeBellerive Gardens Cemetery, St. Louis
Other namesFather of Rock N' Roll
Occupations
  • Singer-songwriter
  • musician
Spouse
Themetta Suggs
​
(m. 1948)​
Children4
Musical career
Genres
Instrument(s)
  • Guitar
  • vocals
Years active1953–2016
Labels
Websitewww.chuckberry.com

Born into a middle-class black family in St. Louis, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student, he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947. After his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T-Bone Walker, Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio.[3] His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess, he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine's rhythm and blues chart.[4]

By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star, with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand.[5] He was sentenced to three years in prison in January 1962 for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines for the purpose of having sexual intercourse.[3][6][7] After his release in 1963, Berry had several more successful songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine". However, these did not achieve the same success or lasting impact of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgia performer, playing his past material with local backup bands of variable quality.[3] In 1972 he reached a new level of achievement when a rendition of "My Ding-a-Ling" became his only record to top the charts. His insistence on being paid in cash led in 1979 to a four-month jail sentence and community service, for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986; he was cited for having "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance."[8] Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine's "greatest of all time" lists; he was ranked fifth on its 2004 and 2011 lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[9] The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berry's: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music".[10] "Johnny B. Goode" is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record.[11]

Early life

 
Chuck Berry's guitar, Maybellene, a Gibson ES-350T

Born in St. Louis,[12] Berry was the youngest child. He grew up in the north St. Louis neighborhood known as the Ville, an area where many middle-class people lived. His father, Henry William Berry (1895–1987) was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church; his mother, Martha Bell (Banks) (1894–1980) was a certified public school principal.[13] Berry's upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age. He gave his first public performance in 1941 while still a student at Sumner High School;[14] he was still a student there in 1944, when he was arrested for armed robbery after robbing three shops in Kansas City, Missouri, and then stealing a car at gunpoint with some friends.[15][16] Berry's account in his autobiography is that his car broke down and he flagged down a passing car and stole it at gunpoint with a nonfunctional pistol.[17] He was convicted and sent to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri,[12] where he formed a singing quartet and did some boxing.[15] The singing group became competent enough that the authorities allowed it to perform outside the detention facility.[18] Berry was released from the reformatory on his 21st birthday in 1947.

On October 28, 1948, Berry married Themetta "Toddy" Suggs, who gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry on October 3, 1950.[19] Berry supported his family by taking various jobs in St. Louis, working briefly as a factory worker at two automobile assembly plants and as a janitor in the apartment building where he and his wife lived. Afterwards he trained as a beautician at the Poro College of Cosmetology, founded by Annie Turnbo Malone.[20] He was doing well enough by 1950 to buy a "small three room brick cottage with a bath" on Whittier Street,[21] which is now listed as the Chuck Berry House on the National Register of Historic Places.[22]

By the early 1950s, Berry was working with local bands in clubs in St. Louis as an extra source of income.[21] He had been playing blues since his teens, and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from the blues musician T-Bone Walker.[23] He also took guitar lessons from his friend Ira Harris, which laid the foundation for his guitar style.[24]

By early 1953 Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson's trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist.[25][26] The band played blues and ballads as well as country. Berry wrote, "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?' After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."[12]

In 1954, Berry recorded the tracks "I Hope These Words Will Find You Well" and "Oh, Maria!" with the group Joe Alexander & the Cubans. The songs were released as a single on the Ballad label.[27]

Berry's showmanship, along with a mix of country tunes and R&B tunes, sung in the style of Nat King Cole set to the music of Muddy Waters brought in a wider audience, particularly affluent white people.[3][28]

Career

1955–1962: Signing with Chess: "Maybellene" to "Come On"

 
Berry in a 1958 publicity photo

In May 1955, Berry traveled to Chicago, where he met Muddy Waters who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. Berry thought his blues music would interest Chess, but Chess was a larger fan of Berry's take on "Ida Red".[29] On May 21, 1955, Berry recorded an adaptation of the song "Ida Red", under the title "Maybellene", with Johnnie Johnson on the piano, Jerome Green (from Bo Diddley's band) on the maracas, Ebby Hardy on the drums and Willie Dixon on the bass.[30] "Maybellene" sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine's rhythm and blues chart and number five on its Best Sellers in Stores chart for September 10, 1955.[12][31] Berry said, "It came out at the right time when Afro-American music was spilling over into the mainstream pop."[32]

When Berry first saw a copy of the Maybellene record, he was surprised that two other individuals, including DJ Alan Freed had been given writing credit; that would entitle them to some of the royalties. After a court battle, Berry was able to regain full writing credit.[33][34]

At the end of June 1956, his song "Roll Over Beethoven" reached number 29 on the Billboard's Top 100 chart, and Berry toured as one of the "Top Acts of '56". He and Carl Perkins became friends. Perkins said that "I knew when I first heard Chuck that he'd been affected by country music. I respected his writing; his records were very, very great."[35] In late 1957, Berry took part in Alan Freed's "Biggest Show of Stars for 1957", touring the United States with the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and others.[36] He was a guest on ABC's Guy Mitchell Show, singing his hit song "Rock 'n' Roll Music". The hits continued from 1957 to 1959, with Berry scoring over a dozen chart singles during this period, including the US Top 10 hits "School Days", "Rock and Roll Music", "Sweet Little Sixteen", and "Johnny B. Goode". He appeared in two early rock-and-roll movies: Rock Rock Rock (1956), in which he sang "You Can't Catch Me", and Go, Johnny, Go! (1959), in which he had a speaking role as himself and performed "Johnny B. Goode", "Memphis, Tennessee", and "Little Queenie". His performance of "Sweet Little Sixteen" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 was captured in the motion picture Jazz on a Summer's Day.[37]

The opening guitar riff of "Johnny B. Goode"[38] is surprisingly similar to the one used by Louis Jordan in his Ain't That Just Like a Woman (1946).[38] Berry acknowledged the debt to Jordan and several sources have indicated that his work was influenced by Jordan in general.[39][40][41]

By the end of the 1950s, Berry was a high-profile established star with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had opened a racially integrated St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand, and invested in real estate.[42] But in December 1959, he was arrested under the Mann Act after allegations that he had had sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old Apache waitress, Janice Escalante,[43] whom he had transported across state lines to work as a hatcheck girl at his club.[44] After a two-week trial in March 1960, he was convicted, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years in prison.[45] He appealed the decision, arguing that the judge's comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him. The appeal was upheld,[6][46] and a second trial was heard in May and June 1961,[47] resulting in another conviction and a three-year prison sentence.[48] After another appeal failed, Berry served one and one-half years in prison, from February 1962 to October 1963.[49] He had continued recording and performing during the trials, but his output had slowed as his popularity declined; his final single released before he was imprisoned was "Come On".[50]

1963–1969: "Nadine" and move to Mercury

 
Berry and his sister Lucy Ann (1965)

When Berry was released from prison in 1963, his return to recording and performing was made easier because British invasion bands—notably the Beatles and the Rolling Stones—had sustained interest in his music by releasing cover versions of his songs,[51][52] and other bands had reworked some of them, such as the Beach Boys' 1963 hit "Surfin' U.S.A.", which used the melody of Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen".[53] In 1964 and 1965 Berry released eight singles, including three that were commercially successful, reaching the top 20 of the Billboard 100: "No Particular Place to Go" (a humorous reworking of "School Days", concerning the introduction of seat belts in cars),[54] "You Never Can Tell", and the rocking "Nadine".[55] Between 1966 and 1969 Berry released five albums for Mercury Records, including his second live album (and first recorded entirely onstage), Live at Fillmore Auditorium; for the live album he was backed by the Steve Miller Band.[56][57]

Although this period was not a successful one for studio work,[58] Berry was still a top concert draw. In May 1964, he had made a successful tour of the UK,[54] but when he returned in January 1965 his behavior was erratic and moody, and his touring style of using unrehearsed local backing bands and a strict nonnegotiable contract was earning him a reputation as a difficult and unexciting performer.[59] He also played at large events in North America, such as the Schaefer Music Festival, in New York City's Central Park in July 1969, and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in October.[60]

1970–1979: Back to Chess: "My Ding-a-Ling" to White House concert

Berry helped give life to a subculture ... Even "My Ding-a-Ling", a fourth-grade wee-wee joke that used to mortify true believers at college concerts, permitted a lot of twelve-year-olds new insight into the moribund concept of "dirty" when it hit the airwaves ...

Robert Christgau[61]

Berry returned to Chess from 1970 to 1973. There were no hit singles from the 1970 album Back Home, but in 1972 Chess released a live recording of "My Ding-a-Ling", a novelty song which he had recorded in a different version as "My Tambourine" on his 1968 LP From St. Louie to Frisco.[62] The track became his only number-one single. A live recording of "Reelin' and Rockin'", issued as a follow-up single in the same year, was his last Top 40 hit in both the US and the UK. Both singles were included on the part-live, part-studio album The London Chuck Berry Sessions (other albums of London sessions were recorded by Chess's mainstay artists Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf). Berry's second tenure with Chess ended with the 1975 album Chuck Berry, after which he did not make a studio record until Rockit for Atco Records in 1979, which would be his last studio album for 38 years.[63]

 
Berry as guest host of The Midnight Special in 1973

In the 1970s Berry toured on the strength of his earlier successes. He was on the road for many years, carrying only his Gibson guitar, confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went. AllMusic said that in this period his "live performances became increasingly erratic, ... working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy, out-of-tune performances" which "tarnished his reputation with younger fans and oldtimers" alike.[42] In March 1972 he was filmed, at the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherds Bush, for Chuck Berry in Concert,[64] part of a 60-date tour backed by the band Rocking Horse.[65] Among the many bandleaders performing a backup role with Berry in the 1970s were Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller when each was just starting his career. (Springsteen related in the documentary film Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll that Berry did not give the band a set list, and expected the musicians to follow his lead after each guitar intro. Berry did not speak to the band after the show. Nevertheless, Springsteen backed Berry again when he appeared at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.) At the request of Jimmy Carter, Berry performed at the White House on June 1, 1979.[57]

Berry's touring style, traveling the "oldies" circuit in the 1970s (often being paid in cash by local promoters), added ammunition to the Internal Revenue Service's accusations that Berry had evaded paying income taxes. Facing criminal sanction for the third time, Berry pleaded guilty to evading nearly $110,000 in federal income tax owed on his 1973 earnings. Newspaper reports in 1979 put his 1973 joint income (with his wife) at $374,982.[66] He was sentenced to four months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service—performing benefit concerts—in 1979.[67]

1980–2017: Last years on the road

 
Berry performing at the 1997 Long Beach Blues Festival

Berry continued to play 70 to 100 one-nighters per year in the 1980s, still traveling solo and requiring a local band to back him at each stop. In 1986, Taylor Hackford made a documentary film, Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, of a celebration concert for Berry's sixtieth birthday, organized by Keith Richards.[68] Eric Clapton, Etta James, Julian Lennon, Robert Cray, and Linda Ronstadt, among others, appeared with Berry on stage and in the film. During the concert, Berry played a Gibson ES-355, the luxury version of the ES-335 that he favored on his 1970s tours. Richards played a black Fender Telecaster Custom, Cray a Fender Stratocaster and Clapton a Gibson ES 350T, the same model that Berry used on his early recordings.[15]

In the late 1980s, Berry bought the Southern Air, a restaurant in Wentzville, Missouri.[69] In 1982, Berry performed a television special at The Roxy in West Hollywood with Tina Turner as his special guest. The concert was released a year later on home video.[70]

In November 2000, Berry faced legal issues when he was sued by his former pianist Johnnie Johnson who claimed that he had co-written over 50 songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Roll Over Beethoven", that credit Berry alone. The case was dismissed when the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the songs were written.[71]

 
Berry in 2008

In 2008, Berry toured Europe, with stops in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland, and Spain. In mid-2008, he played at the Virgin Festival in Baltimore.[72] During a concert on New Year's Day 2011 in Chicago, Berry, suffering from exhaustion, passed out and had to be helped off stage.[73]

Berry lived in Ladue, Missouri, approximately 10 miles (16 km) west of St. Louis. He also had a home at "Berry Park", near Wentzville, Missouri where he lived part-time since the 1950s and was the home in which he died. This home, with the guitar-shaped swimming pool, is seen in scenes near the end of the film Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll.[74] He regularly performed one Wednesday each month at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop neighborhood of St. Louis, from 1996 to 2014.

Berry announced on his 90th birthday that his first new studio album since Rockit in 1979, entitled Chuck, would be released in 2017.[75] His first new record in 38 years, it includes his children, Charles Berry Jr. and Ingrid, on guitar and harmonica, with songs "covering the spectrum from hard-driving rockers to soulful thought-provoking time capsules of a life's work" and dedicated to his wife Toddy.[76]

Physical and sexual abuse allegations

In 1987, Berry was charged with assaulting a woman at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel. He was accused of causing "lacerations of the mouth, requiring five stitches, two loose teeth, [and] contusions of the face." He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of harassment and paid a $250 fine.[77]

In 1990, he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the bathroom of his restaurant. Berry claimed that he had had the camera installed to catch a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant. Although his guilt was never proven in court, Berry opted for a class action settlement. One of his biographers, Bruce Pegg, estimated that it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees.[15] His lawyers said he had been the victim of a conspiracy to profit from his wealth.[15] During this time, Berry began using Wayne T. Schoeneberg as his legal counsel.

Reportedly, a police raid on his house found intimate videotapes of women, one of whom was apparently a minor. Also found in the raid were 62 grams of marijuana. Felony drug and child abuse charges were filed. The child abuse charges were eventually dropped, and Berry agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. He was given a six month suspended jail sentence, placed on two years unsupervised probation, and was ordered to donate $5,000 to a local hospital.[78]

Later, videos Berry recorded of himself urinating on a woman and another of her defecating on him would surface.[79][80][81]

Death

On March 18, 2017, Berry was found unresponsive at his home near Wentzville, Missouri. Emergency workers called to the scene were unable to revive him, and he was pronounced dead by his personal physician.[82][83] TMZ posted an audio recording on its website in which a 911 operator can be heard responding to a reported cardiac arrest at Berry's home.[84]

Berry's funeral was held on April 9, 2017, at The Pageant, in Berry's hometown of St. Louis.[85][86] He was remembered with a public viewing by family, friends, and fans in The Pageant, a music club where he often performed. He was viewed with his cherry-red Gibson ES-335 guitar bolted to the inside lid of the coffin[87] and with flower arrangements that included one sent by the Rolling Stones in the shape of a guitar. Afterwards a private service was held in the club celebrating Berry's life and musical career, with the Berry family inviting 300 members of the public into the service. Gene Simmons of Kiss gave an impromptu, unadvertised eulogy at the service, while Little Richard was scheduled to lead the funeral procession but was unable to attend due to an illness. The night before, many St. Louis area bars held a mass toast at 10 pm in Berry's honor.[88]

One of Berry's attorneys estimated that his estate was worth $50 million, including $17 million in music rights. Berry's music publishing accounted for $13 million of the estate's value. The Berry estate owned roughly half of his songwriting credits (mostly from his later career), while BMG Rights Management controlled the other half; most of Berry's recordings are currently owned by Universal Music Group.[89] In September 2017, Dualtone, the label which released Berry's final album, Chuck, agreed to publish all his compositions in the United States.[90]

Berry is interred in a mausoleum in Bellerive Gardens Cemetery in St. Louis.[91]

Legacy

 
"The founding father of rock n roll" street art on Denmark Street, London

While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together. It was his particular genius to graft country & western guitar licks onto a rhythm & blues chassis in his very first single, "Maybellene".

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame[92][93]

A pioneer of rock and roll, Berry was a significant influence on the development of both the music and the attitude associated with the rock music lifestyle. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics successfully aimed to appeal to the early teenage market by using graphic and humorous descriptions of teen dances, fast cars, high school life, and consumer culture,[3] and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.[2] Thus Berry, the songwriter, according to critic Jon Pareles, invented rock as "a music of teenage wishes fulfilled and good times (even with cops in pursuit)."[94] Berry contributed three things to rock music: an irresistible swagger, a focus on the guitar riff as the primary melodic element and an emphasis on songwriting as storytelling.[95] His records are a rich storehouse of the essential lyrical, showmanship and musical components of rock and roll. In addition to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, a large number of significant popular-music performers have recorded Berry's songs.[3] Although not technically accomplished, his guitar style is distinctive—he incorporated electronic effects to mimic the sound of bottleneck blues guitarists and drew on the influence of guitar players such as Carl Hogan,[96] and T-Bone Walker[3] to produce a clear and exciting sound that many later guitarists would acknowledge as an influence in their own style.[78] Berry's showmanship has been influential on other rock guitarists,[97] particularly his one-legged hop routine,[98] and the "duck walk",[99] which he first used as a child when he walked "stooping with full-bended knees, but with my back and head vertical" under a table to retrieve a ball and his family found it entertaining; he used it when "performing in New York for the first time and some journalist branded it the duck walk."[100][101]

He has been cited as a major reference to a variety of some of the most influential acts of all time:

On July 29, 2011, Berry was honored in a dedication of an eight-foot, in-motion Chuck Berry Statue in the Delmar Loop in St. Louis right across the street from Blueberry Hill. Berry said, "It's glorious--I do appreciate it to the highest, no doubt about it. That sort of honor is seldom given out. But I don't deserve it."[102]

Rock critic Robert Christgau considers Berry "the greatest of the rock and rollers",[103] and John Lennon said, "if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."[104] Ted Nugent said, "If you don't know every Chuck Berry lick, you can't play rock guitar."[105] Bob Dylan called Berry "the Shakespeare of rock 'n' roll".[106] Bruce Springsteen tweeted, "Chuck Berry was rock's greatest practitioner, guitarist, and the greatest pure rock 'n' roll writer who ever lived."[107]

When asked what caused the explosion of the popularity of rock 'n roll that took place in the 1950s, with him and a handful of others, mainly him, Berry said, "Well, actually they begin to listen to it, you see, because certain stations played certain music. The music that we, the blacks, played, the cultures were so far apart, we would have to have a play station in order to play it. The cultures begin to come together, and you begin to see one another's vein of life, then the music came together."[108]

 
Chuck Berry wearing the Kennedy Center Honors, 2000

Among the honors Berry received were the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984[109] and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000.[110] He was ranked seventh on Time magazine's 2009 list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all time.[111] On May 14, 2002, Berry was honored as one of the first BMI Icons at the 50th annual BMI Pop Awards. He was presented the award along with BMI affiliates Bo Diddley and Little Richard.[112] In August 2014, Berry was made a laureate of the Polar Music Prize.[113]

Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine's "Greatest of All Time" lists. In September 2003, the magazine ranked him number 6 in its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".[114] In November his compilation album The Great Twenty-Eight was ranked 21st in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[115] In March 2004, Berry was ranked fifth on the list of "The Immortals – The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time".[9][116] In December 2004, six of his songs were included in "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Johnny B. Goode" (#7), "Maybellene" (#18), "Roll Over Beethoven" (#97), "Rock and Roll Music" (#128), "Sweet Little Sixteen" (#272) and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (#374).[117] In June 2008, his song "Johnny B. Goode" was ranked first in the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time".[118]

The journalist Chuck Klosterman has argued that in 300 years Berry will still be remembered as the rock musician who most closely captured the essence of rock and roll.[119] Time magazine stated, "There was no one like Elvis. But there was 'definitely' no one like Chuck Berry."[120] Rolling Stone called him "the father of rock & roll" who "gave the music its sound and its attitude, even as he battled racism - and his own misdeeds - all the way," reporting that Leonard Cohen said, "All of us are footnotes to the words of Chuck Berry."[121] Kevin Strait, curator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, said that Berry is "one of the primary sonic architects of rock and roll."[122]

According to Cleveland.com's Troy L. Smith, "Chuck Berry didn't invent rock and roll all by his lonesome. But he was the man who took rhythm and blues and transformed it into a new genre that would ever change popular music. Songs like 'Maybellene,' 'Johnny B. Goode,' 'Roll Over Beethoven' and 'Rock and Roll Music' would showcase the core elements of what rock and roll would become. The sound, the format and the style were built on the music Berry created. To some extent, everyone who followed was a copycat."[123]

Discography

Main article: Chuck Berry discography

Studio albums

References

Citations

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  3. ^ a b c d e f g "Chuck Berry". Britannica Online Encyclopedia. from the original on June 4, 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2010.
  4. ^ Frederick, Jennifer (March 18, 2017). "Chuck Berry, a Founding Father of Rock 'n' Roll, Dies at 90". Billboard. from the original on March 27, 2017. Retrieved March 27, 2017.
  5. ^ "Chuck Berry, a rock 'n' roll originator, dies at age 90". The Salt Lake Tribune. Associated Press. March 18, 2017. from the original on March 27, 2017. Retrieved March 27, 2017.
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  7. ^ Pegg (2003, pp. 119–127).
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  10. ^ "Experience the Music: One Hit Wonders and the Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll". from the original on May 9, 2012. Retrieved December 15, 2012.
  11. ^ "Voyager Interstellar Mission: The Golden Record". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. from the original on July 20, 2013. Retrieved July 6, 2015.
  12. ^ a b c d "Chuck Berry". history-of-rock.com. from the original on November 4, 2012. Retrieved June 3, 2010.
  13. ^ Gates, Henry Louis Jr.; Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks (April 29, 2004). African American Lives. Oxford University Press. p. 71. ISBN 9780199882861. from the original on February 16, 2021. Retrieved March 21, 2017.
  14. ^ Weinraub, Bernard (February 23, 2003). "Sweet Tunes, Fast Beats and a Hard Edge". The New York Times. from the original on December 13, 2009. Retrieved December 11, 2007. A significant moment in his early life was a musical performance in 1941 at Sumner High School, which had a middle-class black student body.
  15. ^ a b c d e Weinraub, Bernard (February 23, 2003). "Sweet Tunes, Fast Beats and a Hard Edge — Series". The New York Times. from the original on December 13, 2009. Retrieved February 18, 2010.
  16. ^ Gulla, Bob (2009). Guitar Gods: The 25 Players Who Made Rock History. ABC-CLIO. p. 32. ISBN 9780313358067. from the original on June 27, 2014. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
  17. ^ Pegg (2003, p. 14).
  18. ^ Berry (1988, pp. 57–72)
  19. ^ Early, Gerald Lyn (1998). Ain't but a Place: An Anthology of African American Writings About St. Louis. Missouri History Museum. p. 166. ISBN 9781883982287. from the original on June 27, 2014. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
  20. ^ Pegg (2003, pp. 20–22).
  21. ^ a b Early (1998, p. 179).
  22. ^ . outside.in. Archived from the original on July 21, 2011. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
  23. ^ Cohn, Lawrence; Aldin, Mary Katherine; Bastin, Bruce (1993). Nothing but the Blues: The Music and the Musicians. Abbeville Press. p. 174. ISBN 978-1-55859-271-1.
  24. ^ . chuckberry.com. Archived from the original on January 9, 2010. Retrieved February 18, 2010.
  25. ^ "Chuck Berry plays tribute to Johnnie Johnson". CBC News. April 15, 2005. from the original on February 16, 2021. Retrieved December 14, 2020.
  26. ^ Wittenauer, Cheryl. "Chuck Berry Remembers Johnnie Johnson". firstcoastnews.com. Associated Press. Retrieved June 5, 2010.[permanent dead link]
  27. ^ Joe Alexander And The Cubans – Oh Maria (1954, Vinyl), retrieved June 19, 2021
  28. ^ . chuckberry.com. Archived from the original on January 9, 2010. Retrieved June 6, 2010.
  29. ^ Leonard Chess interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969).
  30. ^ Rothwell, Fred (2001). Long Distance Information: Chuck Berry's Recorded Legacy. Music Mentor Books. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-9519888-2-4.
  31. ^ . Die-rock-and-roll-ag.de. Archived from the original on October 2, 2011. Retrieved October 7, 2011.
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General and cited sources

  • Berry, Chuck (1988). Chuck Berry: The Autobiography. New York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-67159-6. OCLC 17918633.
  • Pegg, Bruce (2003). Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93751-5. from the original on February 16, 2021. Retrieved November 28, 2015. p. 144 March 19, 2017, at the Wayback Machine p. 173 June 27, 2014, at the Wayback Machine p. 262 February 16, 2021, at the Wayback Machine

Further reading

  • Christgau, Robert (March 22, 2017). "Yes, Chuck Berry Invented Rock 'n' Roll – and Singer-Songwriters. Oh, Teenagers Too". Billboard. Retrieved March 24, 2017.
  • Fryer, Paul H. (1981). ""Brown-Eyed Handsome Man": Chuck Berry and the Blues Tradition". Phylon. 42 (1): 60–72. doi:10.2307/274885. JSTOR 274885.

External links

February 10, 2023
chuck, berry, other, uses, disambiguation, charles, berry, disambiguation, charles, edward, anderson, berry, october, 1926, march, 2017, american, singer, songwriter, guitarist, pioneered, rock, roll, nicknamed, father, rock, roll, refined, developed, rhythm, . For other uses see Chuck Berry disambiguation and Charles Berry disambiguation Charles Edward Anderson Berry October 18 1926 March 18 2017 was an American singer songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll Nicknamed the Father of Rock and Roll he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as Maybellene 1955 Roll Over Beethoven 1956 Rock and Roll Music 1957 and Johnny B Goode 1958 1 Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music 2 Chuck BerryBerry in 1957BornCharles Edward Anderson Berry 1926 10 18 October 18 1926St Louis Missouri U S DiedMarch 18 2017 2017 03 18 aged 90 near Wentzville Missouri U S Resting placeBellerive Gardens Cemetery St LouisOther namesFather of Rock N RollOccupationsSinger songwritermusicianSpouseThemetta Suggs m 1948 wbr Children4Musical careerGenresRock and roll rhythm and bluesInstrument s GuitarvocalsYears active1953 2016LabelsChessMercuryAtcoDualtoneWebsitewww wbr chuckberry wbr comBorn into a middle class black family in St Louis Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School While still a high school student he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory where he was held from 1944 to 1947 After his release Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant By early 1953 influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T Bone Walker Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio 3 His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records With Chess he recorded Maybellene Berry s adaptation of the country song Ida Red which sold over a million copies reaching number one on Billboard magazine s rhythm and blues chart 4 By the end of the 1950s Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career He had also established his own St Louis nightclub Berry s Club Bandstand 5 He was sentenced to three years in prison in January 1962 for offenses under the Mann Act he had transported a 14 year old girl across state lines for the purpose of having sexual intercourse 3 6 7 After his release in 1963 Berry had several more successful songs including No Particular Place to Go You Never Can Tell and Nadine However these did not achieve the same success or lasting impact of his 1950s songs and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgia performer playing his past material with local backup bands of variable quality 3 In 1972 he reached a new level of achievement when a rendition of My Ding a Ling became his only record to top the charts His insistence on being paid in cash led in 1979 to a four month jail sentence and community service for tax evasion Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986 he was cited for having laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance 8 Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine s greatest of all time lists he was ranked fifth on its 2004 and 2011 lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time 9 The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berry s Johnny B Goode Maybellene and Rock and Roll Music 10 Johnny B Goode is the only rock and roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record 11 Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2 1 1955 1962 Signing with Chess Maybellene to Come On 2 2 1963 1969 Nadine and move to Mercury 2 3 1970 1979 Back to Chess My Ding a Ling to White House concert 2 4 1980 2017 Last years on the road 3 Physical and sexual abuse allegations 4 Death 5 Legacy 6 Discography 6 1 Studio albums 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 General and cited sources 8 Further reading 9 External linksEarly life Chuck Berry s guitar Maybellene a Gibson ES 350T Born in St Louis 12 Berry was the youngest child He grew up in the north St Louis neighborhood known as the Ville an area where many middle class people lived His father Henry William Berry 1895 1987 was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church his mother Martha Bell Banks 1894 1980 was a certified public school principal 13 Berry s upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age He gave his first public performance in 1941 while still a student at Sumner High School 14 he was still a student there in 1944 when he was arrested for armed robbery after robbing three shops in Kansas City Missouri and then stealing a car at gunpoint with some friends 15 16 Berry s account in his autobiography is that his car broke down and he flagged down a passing car and stole it at gunpoint with a nonfunctional pistol 17 He was convicted and sent to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa near Jefferson City Missouri 12 where he formed a singing quartet and did some boxing 15 The singing group became competent enough that the authorities allowed it to perform outside the detention facility 18 Berry was released from the reformatory on his 21st birthday in 1947 On October 28 1948 Berry married Themetta Toddy Suggs who gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry on October 3 1950 19 Berry supported his family by taking various jobs in St Louis working briefly as a factory worker at two automobile assembly plants and as a janitor in the apartment building where he and his wife lived Afterwards he trained as a beautician at the Poro College of Cosmetology founded by Annie Turnbo Malone 20 He was doing well enough by 1950 to buy a small three room brick cottage with a bath on Whittier Street 21 which is now listed as the Chuck Berry House on the National Register of Historic Places 22 By the early 1950s Berry was working with local bands in clubs in St Louis as an extra source of income 21 He had been playing blues since his teens and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from the blues musician T Bone Walker 23 He also took guitar lessons from his friend Ira Harris which laid the foundation for his guitar style 24 By early 1953 Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson s trio starting a long time collaboration with the pianist 25 26 The band played blues and ballads as well as country Berry wrote Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it 12 In 1954 Berry recorded the tracks I Hope These Words Will Find You Well and Oh Maria with the group Joe Alexander amp the Cubans The songs were released as a single on the Ballad label 27 Berry s showmanship along with a mix of country tunes and R amp B tunes sung in the style of Nat King Cole set to the music of Muddy Waters brought in a wider audience particularly affluent white people 3 28 Career1955 1962 Signing with Chess Maybellene to Come On Berry in a 1958 publicity photo In May 1955 Berry traveled to Chicago where he met Muddy Waters who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records Berry thought his blues music would interest Chess but Chess was a larger fan of Berry s take on Ida Red 29 On May 21 1955 Berry recorded an adaptation of the song Ida Red under the title Maybellene with Johnnie Johnson on the piano Jerome Green from Bo Diddley s band on the maracas Ebby Hardy on the drums and Willie Dixon on the bass 30 Maybellene sold over a million copies reaching number one on Billboard magazine s rhythm and blues chart and number five on its Best Sellers in Stores chart for September 10 1955 12 31 Berry said It came out at the right time when Afro American music was spilling over into the mainstream pop 32 When Berry first saw a copy of the Maybellene record he was surprised that two other individuals including DJ Alan Freed had been given writing credit that would entitle them to some of the royalties After a court battle Berry was able to regain full writing credit 33 34 At the end of June 1956 his song Roll Over Beethoven reached number 29 on the Billboard s Top 100 chart and Berry toured as one of the Top Acts of 56 He and Carl Perkins became friends Perkins said that I knew when I first heard Chuck that he d been affected by country music I respected his writing his records were very very great 35 In late 1957 Berry took part in Alan Freed s Biggest Show of Stars for 1957 touring the United States with the Everly Brothers Buddy Holly and others 36 He was a guest on ABC s Guy Mitchell Show singing his hit song Rock n Roll Music The hits continued from 1957 to 1959 with Berry scoring over a dozen chart singles during this period including the US Top 10 hits School Days Rock and Roll Music Sweet Little Sixteen and Johnny B Goode He appeared in two early rock and roll movies Rock Rock Rock 1956 in which he sang You Can t Catch Me and Go Johnny Go 1959 in which he had a speaking role as himself and performed Johnny B Goode Memphis Tennessee and Little Queenie His performance of Sweet Little Sixteen at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 was captured in the motion picture Jazz on a Summer s Day 37 The opening guitar riff of Johnny B Goode 38 is surprisingly similar to the one used by Louis Jordan in his Ain t That Just Like a Woman 1946 38 Berry acknowledged the debt to Jordan and several sources have indicated that his work was influenced by Jordan in general 39 40 41 By the end of the 1950s Berry was a high profile established star with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career He had opened a racially integrated St Louis nightclub Berry s Club Bandstand and invested in real estate 42 But in December 1959 he was arrested under the Mann Act after allegations that he had had sexual intercourse with a 14 year old Apache waitress Janice Escalante 43 whom he had transported across state lines to work as a hatcheck girl at his club 44 After a two week trial in March 1960 he was convicted fined 5 000 and sentenced to five years in prison 45 He appealed the decision arguing that the judge s comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him The appeal was upheld 6 46 and a second trial was heard in May and June 1961 47 resulting in another conviction and a three year prison sentence 48 After another appeal failed Berry served one and one half years in prison from February 1962 to October 1963 49 He had continued recording and performing during the trials but his output had slowed as his popularity declined his final single released before he was imprisoned was Come On 50 1963 1969 Nadine and move to Mercury Berry and his sister Lucy Ann 1965 When Berry was released from prison in 1963 his return to recording and performing was made easier because British invasion bands notably the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had sustained interest in his music by releasing cover versions of his songs 51 52 and other bands had reworked some of them such as the Beach Boys 1963 hit Surfin U S A which used the melody of Berry s Sweet Little Sixteen 53 In 1964 and 1965 Berry released eight singles including three that were commercially successful reaching the top 20 of the Billboard 100 No Particular Place to Go a humorous reworking of School Days concerning the introduction of seat belts in cars 54 You Never Can Tell and the rocking Nadine 55 Between 1966 and 1969 Berry released five albums for Mercury Records including his second live album and first recorded entirely onstage Live at Fillmore Auditorium for the live album he was backed by the Steve Miller Band 56 57 Although this period was not a successful one for studio work 58 Berry was still a top concert draw In May 1964 he had made a successful tour of the UK 54 but when he returned in January 1965 his behavior was erratic and moody and his touring style of using unrehearsed local backing bands and a strict nonnegotiable contract was earning him a reputation as a difficult and unexciting performer 59 He also played at large events in North America such as the Schaefer Music Festival in New York City s Central Park in July 1969 and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in October 60 1970 1979 Back to Chess My Ding a Ling to White House concert Berry helped give life to a subculture Even My Ding a Ling a fourth grade wee wee joke that used to mortify true believers at college concerts permitted a lot of twelve year olds new insight into the moribund concept of dirty when it hit the airwaves Robert Christgau 61 Berry returned to Chess from 1970 to 1973 There were no hit singles from the 1970 album Back Home but in 1972 Chess released a live recording of My Ding a Ling a novelty song which he had recorded in a different version as My Tambourine on his 1968 LP From St Louie to Frisco 62 The track became his only number one single A live recording of Reelin and Rockin issued as a follow up single in the same year was his last Top 40 hit in both the US and the UK Both singles were included on the part live part studio album The London Chuck Berry Sessions other albums of London sessions were recorded by Chess s mainstay artists Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf Berry s second tenure with Chess ended with the 1975 album Chuck Berry after which he did not make a studio record until Rockit for Atco Records in 1979 which would be his last studio album for 38 years 63 Berry as guest host of The Midnight Special in 1973 In the 1970s Berry toured on the strength of his earlier successes He was on the road for many years carrying only his Gibson guitar confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went AllMusic said that in this period his live performances became increasingly erratic working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy out of tune performances which tarnished his reputation with younger fans and oldtimers alike 42 In March 1972 he was filmed at the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherds Bush for Chuck Berry in Concert 64 part of a 60 date tour backed by the band Rocking Horse 65 Among the many bandleaders performing a backup role with Berry in the 1970s were Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller when each was just starting his career Springsteen related in the documentary film Hail Hail Rock n Roll that Berry did not give the band a set list and expected the musicians to follow his lead after each guitar intro Berry did not speak to the band after the show Nevertheless Springsteen backed Berry again when he appeared at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 At the request of Jimmy Carter Berry performed at the White House on June 1 1979 57 Berry s touring style traveling the oldies circuit in the 1970s often being paid in cash by local promoters added ammunition to the Internal Revenue Service s accusations that Berry had evaded paying income taxes Facing criminal sanction for the third time Berry pleaded guilty to evading nearly 110 000 in federal income tax owed on his 1973 earnings Newspaper reports in 1979 put his 1973 joint income with his wife at 374 982 66 He was sentenced to four months in prison and 1 000 hours of community service performing benefit concerts in 1979 67 1980 2017 Last years on the road Berry performing at the 1997 Long Beach Blues Festival Berry continued to play 70 to 100 one nighters per year in the 1980s still traveling solo and requiring a local band to back him at each stop In 1986 Taylor Hackford made a documentary film Hail Hail Rock n Roll of a celebration concert for Berry s sixtieth birthday organized by Keith Richards 68 Eric Clapton Etta James Julian Lennon Robert Cray and Linda Ronstadt among others appeared with Berry on stage and in the film During the concert Berry played a Gibson ES 355 the luxury version of the ES 335 that he favored on his 1970s tours Richards played a black Fender Telecaster Custom Cray a Fender Stratocaster and Clapton a Gibson ES 350T the same model that Berry used on his early recordings 15 In the late 1980s Berry bought the Southern Air a restaurant in Wentzville Missouri 69 In 1982 Berry performed a television special at The Roxy in West Hollywood with Tina Turner as his special guest The concert was released a year later on home video 70 In November 2000 Berry faced legal issues when he was sued by his former pianist Johnnie Johnson who claimed that he had co written over 50 songs including No Particular Place to Go Sweet Little Sixteen and Roll Over Beethoven that credit Berry alone The case was dismissed when the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the songs were written 71 Berry in 2008 In 2008 Berry toured Europe with stops in Sweden Norway Finland the United Kingdom the Netherlands Ireland Switzerland Poland and Spain In mid 2008 he played at the Virgin Festival in Baltimore 72 During a concert on New Year s Day 2011 in Chicago Berry suffering from exhaustion passed out and had to be helped off stage 73 Berry lived in Ladue Missouri approximately 10 miles 16 km west of St Louis He also had a home at Berry Park near Wentzville Missouri where he lived part time since the 1950s and was the home in which he died This home with the guitar shaped swimming pool is seen in scenes near the end of the film Hail Hail Rock n Roll 74 He regularly performed one Wednesday each month at Blueberry Hill a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop neighborhood of St Louis from 1996 to 2014 Berry announced on his 90th birthday that his first new studio album since Rockit in 1979 entitled Chuck would be released in 2017 75 His first new record in 38 years it includes his children Charles Berry Jr and Ingrid on guitar and harmonica with songs covering the spectrum from hard driving rockers to soulful thought provoking time capsules of a life s work and dedicated to his wife Toddy 76 Physical and sexual abuse allegationsIn 1987 Berry was charged with assaulting a woman at New York s Gramercy Park Hotel He was accused of causing lacerations of the mouth requiring five stitches two loose teeth and contusions of the face He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of harassment and paid a 250 fine 77 In 1990 he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the bathroom of his restaurant Berry claimed that he had had the camera installed to catch a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant Although his guilt was never proven in court Berry opted for a class action settlement One of his biographers Bruce Pegg estimated that it cost Berry over 1 2 million plus legal fees 15 His lawyers said he had been the victim of a conspiracy to profit from his wealth 15 During this time Berry began using Wayne T Schoeneberg as his legal counsel Reportedly a police raid on his house found intimate videotapes of women one of whom was apparently a minor Also found in the raid were 62 grams of marijuana Felony drug and child abuse charges were filed The child abuse charges were eventually dropped and Berry agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana He was given a six month suspended jail sentence placed on two years unsupervised probation and was ordered to donate 5 000 to a local hospital 78 Later videos Berry recorded of himself urinating on a woman and another of her defecating on him would surface 79 80 81 DeathOn March 18 2017 Berry was found unresponsive at his home near Wentzville Missouri Emergency workers called to the scene were unable to revive him and he was pronounced dead by his personal physician 82 83 TMZ posted an audio recording on its website in which a 911 operator can be heard responding to a reported cardiac arrest at Berry s home 84 Berry s funeral was held on April 9 2017 at The Pageant in Berry s hometown of St Louis 85 86 He was remembered with a public viewing by family friends and fans in The Pageant a music club where he often performed He was viewed with his cherry red Gibson ES 335 guitar bolted to the inside lid of the coffin 87 and with flower arrangements that included one sent by the Rolling Stones in the shape of a guitar Afterwards a private service was held in the club celebrating Berry s life and musical career with the Berry family inviting 300 members of the public into the service Gene Simmons of Kiss gave an impromptu unadvertised eulogy at the service while Little Richard was scheduled to lead the funeral procession but was unable to attend due to an illness The night before many St Louis area bars held a mass toast at 10 pm in Berry s honor 88 One of Berry s attorneys estimated that his estate was worth 50 million including 17 million in music rights Berry s music publishing accounted for 13 million of the estate s value The Berry estate owned roughly half of his songwriting credits mostly from his later career while BMG Rights Management controlled the other half most of Berry s recordings are currently owned by Universal Music Group 89 In September 2017 Dualtone the label which released Berry s final album Chuck agreed to publish all his compositions in the United States 90 Berry is interred in a mausoleum in Bellerive Gardens Cemetery in St Louis 91 Legacy The founding father of rock n roll street art on Denmark Street London While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together It was his particular genius to graft country amp western guitar licks onto a rhythm amp blues chassis in his very first single Maybellene Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 92 93 A pioneer of rock and roll Berry was a significant influence on the development of both the music and the attitude associated with the rock music lifestyle With songs such as Maybellene 1955 Roll Over Beethoven 1956 Rock and Roll Music 1957 and Johnny B Goode 1958 Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with lyrics successfully aimed to appeal to the early teenage market by using graphic and humorous descriptions of teen dances fast cars high school life and consumer culture 3 and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music 2 Thus Berry the songwriter according to critic Jon Pareles invented rock as a music of teenage wishes fulfilled and good times even with cops in pursuit 94 Berry contributed three things to rock music an irresistible swagger a focus on the guitar riff as the primary melodic element and an emphasis on songwriting as storytelling 95 His records are a rich storehouse of the essential lyrical showmanship and musical components of rock and roll In addition to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones a large number of significant popular music performers have recorded Berry s songs 3 Although not technically accomplished his guitar style is distinctive he incorporated electronic effects to mimic the sound of bottleneck blues guitarists and drew on the influence of guitar players such as Carl Hogan 96 and T Bone Walker 3 to produce a clear and exciting sound that many later guitarists would acknowledge as an influence in their own style 78 Berry s showmanship has been influential on other rock guitarists 97 particularly his one legged hop routine 98 and the duck walk 99 which he first used as a child when he walked stooping with full bended knees but with my back and head vertical under a table to retrieve a ball and his family found it entertaining he used it when performing in New York for the first time and some journalist branded it the duck walk 100 101 He has been cited as a major reference to a variety of some of the most influential acts of all time Elvis Presley covered Memphis Tennessee Too Much Monkey Business Johnny B Goode and Promised Land Jimi Hendrix covered Johnny B Goode The Beatles covered Rock and Roll Music Roll Over Beethoven and Memphis Tennessee among others The Rolling Stones have covered Around and Around Bye Bye Johnny Carol Come On Let It Rock Little Queenie Talkin About You and You Can t Catch Me among others The Beach Boys used the melody from Sweet Little Sixteen for Surfin U S A and later covered Rock and Roll Music Carl Perkins covered Roll Over Beethoven and Johnny B Goode The Dave Clark Five covered Reelin and Rockin Electric Light Orchestra covered Roll Over Beethoven Status Quo have covered You Never Can Tell and Carol ACϟDC have covered School Days Bryan Adams Keith Richards and Dave Edmunds have covered Run Rudolph Run Faces covered Memphis Tennessee David Bowie covered Around and Around The Yardbirds covered Guitar Boogie as Jeff s Boogie The Kinks covered Too Much Monkey Business and Beautiful Delilah Buddy Holly covered Brown Eyed Handsome Man The Grateful Dead have covered Around and Around Promised Land Johnny B Goode and Let it Rock On July 29 2011 Berry was honored in a dedication of an eight foot in motion Chuck Berry Statue in the Delmar Loop in St Louis right across the street from Blueberry Hill Berry said It s glorious I do appreciate it to the highest no doubt about it That sort of honor is seldom given out But I don t deserve it 102 Rock critic Robert Christgau considers Berry the greatest of the rock and rollers 103 and John Lennon said if you tried to give rock and roll another name you might call it Chuck Berry 104 Ted Nugent said If you don t know every Chuck Berry lick you can t play rock guitar 105 Bob Dylan called Berry the Shakespeare of rock n roll 106 Bruce Springsteen tweeted Chuck Berry was rock s greatest practitioner guitarist and the greatest pure rock n roll writer who ever lived 107 When asked what caused the explosion of the popularity of rock n roll that took place in the 1950s with him and a handful of others mainly him Berry said Well actually they begin to listen to it you see because certain stations played certain music The music that we the blacks played the cultures were so far apart we would have to have a play station in order to play it The cultures begin to come together and you begin to see one another s vein of life then the music came together 108 Chuck Berry wearing the Kennedy Center Honors 2000 Among the honors Berry received were the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984 109 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000 110 He was ranked seventh on Time magazine s 2009 list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all time 111 On May 14 2002 Berry was honored as one of the first BMI Icons at the 50th annual BMI Pop Awards He was presented the award along with BMI affiliates Bo Diddley and Little Richard 112 In August 2014 Berry was made a laureate of the Polar Music Prize 113 Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine s Greatest of All Time lists In September 2003 the magazine ranked him number 6 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time 114 In November his compilation album The Great Twenty Eight was ranked 21st in Rolling Stone s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 115 In March 2004 Berry was ranked fifth on the list of The Immortals The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time 9 116 In December 2004 six of his songs were included in Rolling Stone s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time Johnny B Goode 7 Maybellene 18 Roll Over Beethoven 97 Rock and Roll Music 128 Sweet Little Sixteen 272 and Brown Eyed Handsome Man 374 117 In June 2008 his song Johnny B Goode was ranked first in the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time 118 The journalist Chuck Klosterman has argued that in 300 years Berry will still be remembered as the rock musician who most closely captured the essence of rock and roll 119 Time magazine stated There was no one like Elvis But there was definitely no one like Chuck Berry 120 Rolling Stone called him the father of rock amp roll who gave the music its sound and its attitude even as he battled racism and his own misdeeds all the way reporting that Leonard Cohen said All of us are footnotes to the words of Chuck Berry 121 Kevin Strait curator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC said that Berry is one of the primary sonic architects of rock and roll 122 According to Cleveland com s Troy L Smith Chuck Berry didn t invent rock and roll all by his lonesome But he was the man who took rhythm and blues and transformed it into a new genre that would ever change popular music Songs like Maybellene Johnny B Goode Roll Over Beethoven and Rock and Roll Music would showcase the core elements of what rock and roll would become The sound the format and the style were built on the music Berry created To some extent everyone who followed was a copycat 123 DiscographyMain article Chuck Berry discography Studio albums After School Session 1957 One Dozen Berrys 1958 Chuck Berry Is on Top 1959 Rockin at the Hops 1960 New Juke Box Hits 1961 Two Great Guitars with Bo Diddley 1964 St Louis to Liverpool 1964 Chuck Berry in London 1965 Fresh Berry s 1965 Chuck Berry s Golden Hits 1967 Chuck Berry in Memphis 1967 From St Louie to Frisco 1968 Concerto in B Goode 1969 Back Home 1970 San Francisco Dues 1971 The London Chuck Berry Sessions 1972 Bio 1973 Chuck Berry 1975 Rockit 1979 Chuck 2017 ReferencesCitations Kalhan Rosenblatt March 18 2017 Chuck Berry father of rock n roll dies at 90 NBC News Archived from the original on May 22 2019 Retrieved April 27 2019 a b Campbell M ed 2008 Popular Music in America And the Beat Goes On 3rd ed Cengage Learning pp 168 169 a b c d e f g Chuck Berry Britannica Online Encyclopedia Archived from the original on June 4 2020 Retrieved February 21 2010 Frederick Jennifer March 18 2017 Chuck Berry a Founding Father of Rock n Roll Dies at 90 Billboard Archived from the original on March 27 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1996 Go Cat Go Hyperion Press pp 215 216 ISBN 0 7868 6073 1 Schinder Scott Schwartz Andy 2008 Icons of Rock ABC CLIO p 86 ISBN 9780313338465 Archived from the original on June 27 2014 Retrieved February 6 2014 Denisoff R Serge Romanowski William D 1991 Risky Business Rock in Film Transaction Publishers p 104 ISBN 9781412833370 Archived from the original on June 27 2014 Retrieved February 6 2014 a b Lovett Emily July 25 2017 Louis Jordan the Jukebox King Five Guys Named Moe Court Theatre Italie Hillel March 18 2017 Chuck Berry s influence on rock n roll was incalculable The Seattle Times Retrieved August 15 2021 Flanagan Bill 1987 Written in My Soul Conversations with Rock s Great Songwriters RosettaBooks Sommer Tim March 31 2017 3 Surprising Factors That Made Chuck Berry s Music Eternal Observer a b Chuck Berry gt Biography AllMusic Retrieved February 18 2010 Chuck Berry goes on trial for the second time Oct 28 1961 History com Archived from the original on April 1 2015 Retrieved March 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679 73728 6 Pegg 2003 p 184 Rock It Album Review Songs Ratings starpulse com Archived from the original on June 6 2011 Retrieved June 2 2010 Chuck Berry in Concert BBC Four bbc co uk Archived from the original on March 27 2017 Retrieved March 19 2017 Michael Snow Biography amp History AllMusic allmusic com Archived from the original on March 20 2017 Retrieved March 19 2017 Chuck Berry Pleads Guilty to Tax Evasion for 1973 The New York Times June 13 1979 Archived from the original on May 27 2018 Retrieved May 26 2018 Chuck Berry Enters Prison Where Watergaters Stayed Jet August 30 1979 p 61 Archived from the original on June 27 2014 Retrieved February 6 2014 Hackford Taylor March 16 2007 Rock n Roll Fireworks Keith Richards and Chuck Berry Together on Stage The Independent London Archived from the original on December 5 2008 Retrieved June 6 2010 Chuck Berry history of rock com Archived from the original on March 4 2010 Retrieved June 3 2010 Chuck Berry Live at the Roxy with Tina Turner 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original on November 20 2016 Retrieved March 18 2017 Patterson Rob June 30 2002 BMI ICON Awards Honor Three of Rock amp Roll s Founding Fathers bmi com Archived from the original on September 25 2014 Retrieved October 2 2010 Brown Mark August 26 2014 Rock n Roll Pioneer Chuck Berry Wins Polar Music Prize in Sweden The Guardian Archived from the original on August 27 2014 Retrieved August 28 2014 The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time Rolling Stone May 5 2008 Archived from the original on April 17 2010 Retrieved October 7 2011 The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time Rolling Stone 2003 Archived from the original on February 7 2006 Retrieved October 7 2011 Perry Joe March 24 2004 Chuck Berry Rolling Stone Archived from the original on March 1 2014 Retrieved February 27 2014 The RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time Rolling Stone December 9 2004 Archived from the original on April 17 2010 Retrieved May 17 2011 The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time Rolling Stone Archived from the original on June 5 2008 Retrieved June 4 2010 Klosterman Chuck May 23 2016 Which Rock Star Will Rock Historians of the Future Remember The New York Times Retrieved May 26 2016 permanent dead link Richards Cliff April 3 2017 Chuck Berry Rock n Roll Icon Time p 19 Mikal Gilmore Chuck Berry 1926 2017 Rolling Stone pp 23 24 April 20 2017 Kevin Strait July 6 2017 PBS News Hour Smith Troy L June 25 2020 50 most important African American music artists of all time cleveland com General and cited sources Berry Chuck 1988 Chuck Berry The Autobiography New York Fireside Simon amp Schuster ISBN 0 671 67159 6 OCLC 17918633 Pegg Bruce 2003 Brown Eyed Handsome Man The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry Routledge ISBN 0 415 93751 5 Archived from the original on February 16 2021 Retrieved November 28 2015 p 144 Archived March 19 2017 at the Wayback Machine p 173 Archived June 27 2014 at the Wayback Machine p 262 Archived February 16 2021 at the Wayback MachineFurther readingChristgau Robert March 22 2017 Yes Chuck Berry Invented Rock n Roll and Singer Songwriters Oh Teenagers Too Billboard Retrieved March 24 2017 Fryer Paul H 1981 Brown Eyed Handsome Man Chuck Berry and the Blues Tradition Phylon 42 1 60 72 doi 10 2307 274885 JSTOR 274885 External linksChuck Berry at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Data from Wikidata Official website Chuck Berry at Curlie Chuck Berry discography at Discogs Chuck Berry at IMDb Chuck Berry at the TCM Movie Database Chuck Berry at Last fm Chuck Berry lyrics Archived March 20 2017 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Chuck Berry amp oldid 1137907439, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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