AKA:
Bio:
"If you were going to give rock & roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."
--John Lennon
Chuck Berry will forever remain the epitome of rock & roll, of all the early breakthrough rock & roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers. Quite simply, without him, there would be no Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, nor a myriad others. There would be no standard "Chuck Berry guitar intro," the instrument's clarion call to get the joint rockin' in any setting. The clippety-clop rhythms of rockabilly would not have been mainstreamed into the now standard 4/4 rock & roll beat.
There would be no obsessive wordplay by modern-day tunesmiths; in fact, the whole history (and artistic level) of rock & roll songwriting would have been much poorer without him.
He was born Charles Edward Anderson Berry to a large family in St. Louis. A bright pupil, With some local tutelage from the neighborhood barber, Berry progressed from a four-string tenor guitar up to an official six-string
model and was soon working the local East St. Louis club scene, In 1954,
he ended up taking over pianist Johnny Johnson's small combo and a residency at the Cosmopolitan Club soon made the Chuck Berry Trio the top attraction in the black community.
Chuck yearned to make records, and a trip to Chicago netted a two-minute conversation with his idol Muddy Waters, who encouraged him to approach Chess Records. Upon listening to Berry's homemade demo tape, label president Leonard Chess professed a liking for a hillbilly tune on it named "Ida Red"
and quickly scheduled a session for May 21, 1955. During the session the title was changed to "Maybellene" and rock & roll history was born. Although the record only made it to the mid-20s on the Billboard pop chart, its overall influence was massive and groundbreaking in its scope. Here was finally a black rock & roll record with across-the-board appeal, embraced by white teenagers and Southern hillbilly musicians, all signaling that rock & roll had arrived and it was no fad. Helping to put the record over to a white teenage audience was the highly influential New York disc jockey Alan Freed. Freed was also the first white DJ/promoter to consistently use Berry on his rock & roll stage show extravaganzas at the Brooklyn Fox and Paramount theaters playing to predominately white audiences and when Hollywood came calling a year or so later, also made sure that Chuck appeared with him in Rock! Rock! Rock!, Go, Johnny, Go!, and Mister Rock'n'Roll.
The hits started coming thick and fast over the next few years, every one of them about to become a classic of the genre: " "Brown Eyed Handsome Man,"
"You Can't Catch Me," "School Day," "Carol," "Back in the U.S.A.," "Little Queenie," "Memphis, Tennessee," "Johnny B. Goode," and the tunes that defined the moment perfectly, "Rock and Roll Music" and "Roll Over Beethoven".
In the 1960's British teenagers had discovered his music and were making his old songs hits all over again. While in America, teens had discovered the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, both of whom based their music on Berry's style. Berry found himself in the midst of a worldwide beat boom with his music as the centerpiece. He came back with a clutch of hits like "Nadine,"
"No Particular Place to Go," and "You Never Can Tell".
Brian Wilson said, "he wrote all of the great songs and came up with all the rock'n'roll beats." Elvis may have fueled rock & roll's imagery, but Chuck Berry was its heartbeat and original mindset.