MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2017
lifestyle
M U S I C
This file photo taken on December 31, 2010 shows Chuck Berry performing at the Congress Theater in Chicago,
Illinois. — AP/AFP photos
&
M O V I E S
This official White House file photo taken on June 22, 1997 shows the US President Bill Clinton (left) and British
Prime Minister Tony Blair (right) posing for photographers with blues guitar legend Chuck Berry after the Summit
of the Eight meetings in Morrison, Colorado.
Chuck Berry
The greatest rocker of all time
C
huck Berry, rock ‘n’ roll’s founding guitar
hero and storyteller who defined the
music’s joy and rebellion in such classics
as “Johnny B Goode,” “Sweet Little Sixteen” and
“Roll Over Beethoven,” died Saturday at his
home west of St Louis. He was 90. Emergency
responders summoned to Berry’s residence by
his caretaker about 12:40 pm found him unresponsive, police in Missouri’s St Charles
County said in a statement.
Attempts to revive Berry failed, and he was
pronounced dead shortly before 1:30 p.m.,
police said. Berry’s core repertoire was some
three dozen songs, his influence incalculable,
from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to virtually any group from garage band to arena
act that called itself rock ‘n roll.
Roll Music” was a guidebook for all bands that
followed (“It’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it”).
“Back in the U.S.A.” was a black man’s straightfaced tribute to his country at a time there was
no guarantee Berry would be served at the
drive-ins and corner cafes he was celebrating.
“Everything I wrote about wasn’t about me, but
about the people listening,” he once said.
“Johnny B. Goode,” the tale of a guitar-playing
country boy whose mother tells him he’ll be a
star, was Berry’s signature song, the archetypal
narrative for would-be rockers and among the
most ecstatic recordings in the music’s history.
Commercial calculation
Berry can hardly contain himself as the
words hurry out (“Deep down Louisiana close
This file photo taken on
April 15, 2013 legendary US
singer and composer Chuck
Berry, one of the pioneers
of rock-and-roll, performing
during a concert in
Montevideo Uruguay.
to New Orleans/Way back up in the woods
among the evergreens”) and the downpour of
guitar, drums and keyboards amplifies every
call of “Go, Johnny Go!” The song was inspired
in part by Johnnie Johnson, the boogie-woogie piano master who collaborated on many
Berry hits, but the story could have easily been
Berr y ’s, Presley ’s or countless others’.
Commercial calculation made the song universal: Berry had meant to call Johnny a “colored
boy,” but changed “colored” to “country,”
enabling not only radio play, but musicians of
any color to imagine themselves as stars.
“Chances are you have talent,” Berry later
wrote of the song. “But will the name and the
light come to you? No! You have to go!”
Johnny B Goode could have only been a guitarist. The guitar was rock ‘n’ roll’s signature
instrument and Berry’s clarion sound, a melting pot of country flash and rhythm ‘n blues
drive, turned on at least a generation of musicians, among them the Rolling Stones’ Keith
Richards, who once acknowledged he had
“lifted every lick” from his hero; the Beatles’
George Harrison; Bruce Springsteen; and the
Who’s Pete Townshend.
When NASA launched the unmanned
Voyager I in 1977, an album was stored on the
craft that would explain music on Earth to
extraterrestrials. The one rock song included
was “Johnny B. Goode.” Charles Edward
Anderson Berry was born in St. Louis on Oct.
18, 1926. As a child he practiced a bent-leg
stride that enabled him to slip under tables, a
prelude to the duck walk of his adult years. His
mother, like Johnny B. Goode’s, told him he
would make it, and make it big. A fan of blues,
swing and boogie woogie, Berry studied the
very mechanics of music and how it was transmitted. As a teenager, he loved to take radios
apart and put them back together.
Autobiography
Using a Nick Manoloff guitar chord book,
he learned how to play the hits of the time. He
was fascinated by chord progressions and
rhythms, discovering that many songs borrowed heavily from the Gershwins’ “I Got
Rhythm.” He began his musical career at age
In this April 4, 1980 file photo, guitarist and
singer Chuck Berry performs his “duck walk”
as he plays his guitar on stage.
This file photo taken on July 10, 1981
shows US rock singer Chuck Berry performing in Nice, France during the “Grand Jazz
Parade”.
“Just let me hear some of that rock ‘n’ roll
music any old way you use it I am playing I’m
talking about you. God bless Chuck Berry
Chuck,” Beatles drummer Ringo Starr tweeted,
quoting some lyrics from a Berry hit. While Elvis
Presley gave rock its libidinous, hip-shaking
image, Berry was the auteur, setting the template for a new sound and way of life. “Chuck
Berry was a rock and roll original. A gifted guitar
player, an amazing live performer, and a skilled
songwriter whose music and lyrics captured the
essence of 1950s teenage life,” The Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame said in a statement.
Well before the rise of Bob Dylan, Berry wedded social commentary to the beat and rush of
popular music. “He was singing good lyrics, and
intelligent lyrics, in the ‘50s when people were
singing, “Oh, baby, I love you so,’” John Lennon
once observed. Berry, in his late 20s before his
first major hit, crafted lyrics that spoke to the
teenagers of the day and remained fresh
decades later. “Sweet Little Sixteen” captured
rock ‘n’ roll fandom, an early and innocent ode to
the young girls later known as “groupies.”
“School Day” told of the sing-song trials of the
classroom (“American history and practical
math; you’re studying hard, hoping to pass...”)
and the liberation of rock ‘n’ roll once the day’s
final bell rang.
“Roll Over Beethoven” was an anthem to
rock’s history-making power, while “Rock and
15 when he went on stage at a high school
review to do his own version of Jay McShann’s
“Confessin’ the Blues.” Berry would never forget the ovation he received. “Long did the
encouragement of that performance assist me
in programming my songs and even their
delivery while performing,” he wrote in his
autobiography. “I added and deleted according to the audiences’ response to different
gestures, and chose songs to build an act that
would constantly stimulate my audience.”
This file photo taken on July 10, 1981 shows
US rock singer Chuck Berry performing in
Nice, France during the “Grand Jazz Parade”.
David Banks, of St Louis, Missouri, poses for a photo next to a statue of singer and musician Chuck Berry.
Meanwhile, his troubles with the law began,
in 1944, when a joy riding trip to Kansas City
turned into a crime spree involving armed robberies and car theft. Berry served three years of
a 10-year sentence at a reformatory. A year
after his October 1947 release, Berry met and
married Themetta Suggs, who stayed by his
side despite some of his well-publicized indiscretions. Berry then started sitting in with local
bands. By 1950, he had graduated to a sixstring electric guitar and was making his own
crude recordings on a reel to reel machine. On
New Year’s Eve 1952 at The Cosmopolitan club
in East St. Louis, Illinois, Johnson called Berry to
fill in for an ailing saxophonist in his Sir John
Trio. “He gave me a break” and his first commercial gig, for $4, Berry later recalled. “I was
excited. My best turned into a mess. I stole the
group from Johnnie.”
A woman enters the doorway to the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill, where singer and musician Chuck Berry often played, in University City,
Missouri, on March 18, 2017.
Berry’s 60th birthday
Influenced by bandleader Louis Jourdan,
blues guitarist T-Bone Walker and jazz man
Charlie Christian, but also hip to country music,
novelty songs and the emerging teen audiences of the post-World War II era, Berry signed
with Chicago’s Chess Records in 1955.
“Maybellene” reworked the country song “Ida
Red” and rose into the top 10 of the national
pop charts, a rare achievement for a black artist
at that time.