Chuck Berry

American guitarist, singer, and songwriter Chuck Berry was born on 18th Oct 1926. Berry was one of the pioneers of rock and roll music, he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and his own brand of showmanship that became a major influence on subsequent rock music.

While still a high school student, Berry was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947.

By the early 1950s, Berry was working with local bands in clubs in St. Louis as an extra source of income. He had been playing blues since his teens, and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from the blues musician T-Bone Walker.

By early 1953, Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson’s trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist.

In May 1955, Berry travelled to Chicago, where he met Muddy Waters who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. Berry thought his blues music would interest Chess, but Chess was a larger fan of Berry’s take on “Ida Red”. Berry recorded an adaptation of the song under the title “Maybellene”. It sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine’s rhythm and blues chart and number five on its Best Sellers in Stores chart.

By the end of the 1950s, Berry was a high-profile established star with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career.

In December 1959, Berry was arrested after allegations that he had had sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old Apache waitress. After a two-week trial in March 1960, Berry was convicted, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years in prison. He appealed the decision, arguing that the judge’s comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him. The appeal was upheld and a second trial was heard resulting in another conviction and a three-year prison sentence. After another appeal failed, Berry served one and one-half years in prison, from February 1962 to October 1963.

When Berry was released from prison in 1963, his return to recording and performing was made easier because British invasion bands—notably The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had sustained interest in his music by releasing cover versions of his songs and other bands had reworked some of them, such as the Beach Boys‘ 1963 hit “Surfin’ U.S.A.”, which used the melody of Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”.

Berry returned to Chess from 1970 to 1973 and they released a live recording of “My Ding-a-Ling”, a novelty song which Berry had recorded in a different version as “My Tambourine” on his 1968 LP From St. Louie to Frisco. The track became his only number-one single.

In November 2000, Berry faced legal issues when he was sued by his former pianist Johnnie Johnson who claimed that he had co-written over 50 songs, including “No Particular Place to Go”, “Sweet Little Sixteen” and “Roll Over Beethoven”, that credit Berry alone. The case was dismissed when the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the songs were written.

Berry’s showmanship has been influential on other rock guitarists, particularly his one-legged hop routine, and the “duck walk”, which he first used as a child when he walked “stooping with full-bended knees, but with my back and head vertical” under a table to retrieve a ball and his family found it entertaining; Berry used it when “performing in New York for the first time and a journalist branded it the duck walk.”

In 2002, Rolling Stone magazine published a list of the Top 50 guitar songs of all time. No.5 was “Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones, No.4, “You Really Got Me” By The Kinks, No.3, “Crossroads”, by Cream, No.2 “Purple Haze”, by Jimi Hendrix and No.1 “Johnny B Goode”, Chuck Berry.

On July 29, 2011, Berry was honoured in a dedication of an eight-foot, in-motion Chuck Berry Statue in the Delmar Loop in St. Louis right across the street from Blueberry Hill.

Berry announced on his 90th birthday that his first new studio album since Rockit in 1979, entitled Chuck, would be released in 2017. Berry’s first new record in 38 years, included his children, Charles Jr. and Ingrid, on guitar and harmonica, with songs “covering the spectrum from hard-driving rockers to soulful thought-provoking time capsules of a life’s work” and was dedicated to his wife Toddy.

On March 18, 2017, Berry was found unresponsive at his home near Wentzville, Missouri. Emergency workers called to the scene were unable to revive him, and he was pronounced dead at the age of 90 by his physician.

The journalist Chuck Klosterman has argued that in 300 years Berry will still be remembered as the rock musician who most closely captured the essence of rock and roll. Time magazine stated, “There was no one like Elvis. But there was ‘definitely’ no one like Chuck Berry.”