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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'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. 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'."
This bio courtesy www.allmusic.com
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