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.
Chuck was born Charles Edward Anderson Berry to a large family in St. Louis. A bright pupil, he 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 neighbourhood barber, Berry progressed from a four-string tenor guitar 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 the task of being able to reproduce as much of it as possible. 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 recording for May 21, 1955. During the session the title was changed to "Maybellene" and rock & roll history was made. 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. Finally, here was a Black rock & roll record with across-the-board appeal, embraced by white teenagers and Southern hillbilly musicians , 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 signalling that rock & roll had arrived and 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' credits 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 and when Hollywood came calling a year or so later, he also made sure that Berry 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: "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. 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 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, 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.
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| Berry & Jagger |
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, trouble with the law reared its ugly head and 1979 saw Berry headed back to prison, this time for income tax evasion. Upon his release this time, the creative days of Chuck Berry seemed to have come to an end. He appeared as himself in the Alan Freed biopic 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 young and old fans alike.
For the next three decades, Berry devoted himself to the oldies circuit, regularly appearing at the Blueberry Hill bar in his hometown of St. Louis and sometimes embarking on tours of the U.S. or Europe. He announced the 2017 release of “ Chuck” on his 90th birthday, but didn't live to see its release: he died at his home on March 18, 2017. Chuck saw the light of day in June 2017; it peaked at 49 in the U.S. and number nine in the U.K. Live from Blueberry Hill, a collection of performances Berry gave over the years at his regular gig at the St. Louis bar, appeared in December 2021.
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. (Edited from All Music)