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, 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. Like Brian Wilson
said, he wrote "all of the great songs and came up with all the rock
& 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. 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. A bright pupil, Berry developed a love for poetry and hard blues early on, winning 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, 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, with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm their only real competition.
But Berry had bigger ideas; he 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 (a young Elvis Presley,
still a full year from national stardom, quickly added it to his stage
show), that for once couldn't be successfully covered by a pop singer
like Snooky Lanson on Your Hit Parade. Part of the secret to its originality was Berry's
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 to his credit, 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. Within a years' time, Chuck
had gone from a local St. Louis blues picker making 15 dollars 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:
"Roll Over Beethoven," "Thirty Days," "Too Much Monkey Business," "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 tune that defined the moment perfectly, "Rock and Roll
Music." Berry
was not only in constant demand, touring the country on mixed package
shows and appearing on television and in movies, but 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 Berry like a sledgehammer on a fly. Charged with transporting a minor over state lines (the Mann Act), Berry 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, both of whom based their music on Berry's style, with the Stones' early albums looking like a Berry song list. Rather than being resigned to the has-been circuit, 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 ("Nadine," "No
Particular Place to Go," "You Never Can Tell"), toured Britain in
triumph, and appeared on the big screen with his British disciples in
the groundbreaking T.A.M.I. Show in 1964.
Berry
had moved with the times and found a new audience in the bargain and
when the cries of "yeah-yeah-yeah" were replaced with peace signs, Berry
altered his live act to include a passel of slow blues and quickly
became a fixture on the festival and hippie ballroom circuit. After a
disastrous stint with Mercury Records, he returned to Chess in the early '70s and scored his last hit with a live version of the salacious nursery rhyme, "My Ding a Ling," yielding Berry
his first official gold record. By decade's end, he was as in demand as
ever, working every oldies revival show, TV special, and festival that
was thrown his way. But once again, troubles with the law reared their
ugly head and 1979 saw Berry headed back to prison, this time for income tax evasion. Upon release this time, the creative days of Chuck Berry seemed to have come to an end. He appeared as himself in the Alan Freed
bio-pic, American Hot Wax, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame, but steadfastly refused to record any new material or even
issue a live album. His live performances became increasingly erratic,
with Berry
working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy, out-of-tune
performances that did much to tarnish his reputation with younger fans
and oldtimers alike. In 1987, he published his first book, Chuck Berry:
The Autobiography, and the same year saw the film release of what will
likely be his lasting legacy, the rockumentary Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll,
which included live footage from a 60th-birthday concert with Keith Richards
as musical director and the usual bevy of superstars coming out for
guest turns. But for all of his off-stage exploits and seemingly ongoing
troubles with the law, Chuck Berry
remains the epitome of rock & roll, and his music will endure long
after his private escapades have faded from memory. Because when it
comes down to his music, perhaps John Lennon said it best, "If you were going to give rock & roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."
