Chuck Berry

Full Name: Chuck Edward Anderson Berry

Born: October 18, 1926 in St. Louis, MO

Years Active in Music: 1950s, 1960s, 1970s

Genres/Style: Rock 'n' Roll

Instruments: Vocals, Leader, Electric Guitar, Songwriter

Tones: Energetic, Rambunctious, Fun, Boisterous, Playful, Witty, Cheerful, and Good Natured

Labels: Chess, Mercury, Sound Solutions, Pye, MCA, Onyx Classix, Columbia River

Of all the early breakthrough rock & roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. 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 if Chuck Berry had not come along, there would be no Beatles, no Rolling Stones, no Beach Boys, nor Bob Dylan. There would be no standard 'Chuck Berry guitar intro,' the instrument's first sound 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. Chuck Berry wrote "all of the great songs and came up with all the rock'n'roll beats." Those who do not claim him as a seminal influence or profess a liking for his music and showmanship show their ignorance of rock's development as well as his place as the music's first great creator. Musical historians say that Elvis may have fueled rock & roll's imagery, but Chuck Berry was its heartbeat and original mindset.

He was born Charles Edward Anderson Berry to a large family in St. Louis. Berry was a bright pupil, who developed a love for poetry and hard blues early on. He won a high school talent contest with a guitar and vocal rendition of Jay McShann's big band number, "Confessin' the Blues." 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, sitting in everywhere he could. He quickly found out that Black audiences liked a wide variety of music and set himself to the task of being able to reproduce as much of it as possible. What he found they really liked — besides the blues and Nat King Cole tunes — was the sight and sound of a Black man playing White hillbilly music, and Berry's showmanlike flair, coupled with his seemingly inexhaustible supply of fresh verses to old favorites, quickly made him a name on the circuit. In 1954, Chuck Berry made the top attraction in the Black community. Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythms were his only real competition.

Chuck Berry yearned to make records, and a trip to Chicago netted a two-minute conversation with his idol Muddy Waters. Muddy Waters encouraged him to approach Chess Records. Upon listening to Berry's homemade demo tape, Chess 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. The record only made it to the mid-20s on the Billboard pop chart. "Maybellene's" overall influence was massive and groundbreaking. Chuck Berry finally produced a Black rock & roll record with across-the-board appeal, embraced by White teenagers and Southern hillbilly musicians. One thing that made Berry so popular and original was his blazing 24-bar guitar solo in the middle of it, the imaginative rhyme schemes in the lyrics and the sheer thump of the record, 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, who had been given part of the writers' credit by Chess in return for his spins and plugs. But Freed was also the first White dee jay-promoter to consistently use Chuck 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 Berry appeared with him. Within a years' time, Chuck had gone from a local St. Louis blues picker making $15 a night to an overnight sensation commanding over a hundred times that, arriving at the dawn of a new strain of popular music called rock & 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; "Back in the U.S.A.," "Little Queenie," "Memphis, Tennessee," "Johnny B. Goode"; just to name a few. Chuck Berry was in constant demand, touring the country on mixed package shows and appearing on television and in movies, and was smart enough to know exactly what to do with the spoils of a suddenly successful show business career. He started investing heavily in St. Louis area real estate and, ever one to push the envelope, opened up a racially mixed nightspot called the Club Bandstand in 1958 to the consternation of uptight locals. These were not the plans of your average R&B singers who contented themselves with a wardrobe of flashy suits, a new Cadillac and the nicest house in the Black section. Berry was smart with plenty of business savvy and was already making plans to open an amusement park in nearby Wentzville. When the St. Louis hierarchy found out that an underage hat-check girl Berry hired had also set up shop as a prostitute at a nearby hotel, trouble came down on Chuck Berry. Berry was charged with transporting a minor over state lines. He endured two trials and was sentenced to federal prison for two years as a result.

He emerged from prison a moody, embittered man. But two very important things had happened in his absence. First, British teenagers had discovered his music and were making his old songs hits all over again. Second, and perhaps most important, America had discovered the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The Beatles and Rolling Stones based their music on Chuck Berry's. Berry was caught up in the midst of a world-wide beat boom with his music as the centerpiece. He came back with a clutch of hits like "Nadine," "No Particular Place to Go," "You Never Can Tell".

As times changed, Chuck Berry moved right along with the times and found a new audience in the bargain. In the early '70s, Berry scored his last hit with a live version of the salacious nursery rhyme, "My Ding a Ling,". This became Berry's first official gold record. In 1979 Berry headed back to prison, for income tax evasion. Upon his release this time from prison, it seemed as if the days of Chuck Berry had died.

Today Chuck Berry is still alive and well. He is about 73 years old. Berry still sings here and there, but not too often. All the great artists in music see Chuck Berry, as the place where the heartbeat of rock 'n' roll began.

Bibliography:

"Chuck Berry." Rolling Stone. April 2001. Issue 866. 142.

"Chuck Berry." Music Guide. November 1999. 132-140.