This is a little long, but very interesting.
Chuck Berry, 90; the bedrock of rock 'n'roll . By Mark Feeney Globe Staff .
Chuck Berry, the father of rock 'n' roll who duckwalked his way into musical
history, composing, singing, and playing guitar on such anthems as "Johnny B.
Goode," "Roll Over Beethoven,"' and "Rock and Roll Music," died Saturday at his
home in an unincorporated area west of St. Louis. He was 90. Police in St.
Charles County, Mo., confirmed his death. Officers responding to a medical
emergency at Mr. Berry's Wentzville, Mo., home unsuccessfully applied
life-saving measures. Mr. Berry had announced in October that he'd be releasing
an album in 2017, his first in 38 years. How influential was Mr. Berry? John
Lennon stated, "If you tried to give rock 'n' roll another name, you might call
it 'Chuck Berry.' " Jerry Lee Lewis's mother said, "You and Elvis are good, son
- but you're no Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry is rock 'n' roll from his head to hi s
toes. On Elvis Presley's earliest records, one can still pick out rhythm and
blues, country, gospel, and Tin Pan Alley, the musical genres that coalesced to
form something new, which would soon be known as rock 'n' roll. On Mr. Berry's
first record, "Maybellene," from 1955, what one unmistakably hears is that new
something. Mr. Berry sounded "different from everybody. Like nothing we'd heard
before,"' recalled Phil Chess, co-owner of Chess Records, which released
"Maybellene"' and Mr. Berry's other classic recordings. "There was just
something about the rhythm - the beat. The song had a whole new kind of feel to
it. Along with their rhythm and feel, it was the exhilarating forthrightness of
Mr. Berry's songs that made them so important to the development of rock. Where
Presley revealed the power of the new music, Mr. Berry proclaimed it. He was
the herald of rock 'n' roll: not just singing the music, but promoting it. "Any
old way you choose it," Mr. Berry sang, "it's got to be ro ck and roll music,
if you want to dance with me. "Hail, hail, rock 'n' roll," he sang in "School
Day. And "Roll Over Beethoven" is as much command as title, an irresistible
declaration of the arrival of a new cultural phenomenon. Beethoven may not have
rolled over, but his music did have to make room for Mr. Berry's - literally.
In 1977, astrophysicist Carl Sagan had recordings of both "Johnny B. Goode"'
and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony included on two Voyager spacecraft as examples
of human civilization worthy of note should intelligent life be encountered
beyond the solar system. Mr. Berry's centrality to rock 'n' roll was such that
the critic Robert Christgau once described him as the "substance"' of the
music. Mr. Berry, Christgau wrote, "taught George Harrison and Keith Richards
to play guitar long before he met either, and his songs are still claimed as
encores by everyone from folkies to heavy-metal kids. Mr. Berry's distinctive
double-string style of guitar playing, and his tr ansposing the style of
boogie-woogie piano to the guitar, helped form the instrumental DNA of rock.
It's no exaggeration to say the Rolling Stones owe their existence to Mr.
Berry. It was Richards's spotting Mick Jagger carrying a copy of the album "One
Dozen Berrys"' that led to their first meeting, and a cover version of Mr.
Berry's "Come On" was the band's first single. Giving the induction speech for
Mr. Berry at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Richards said, "It's hard for me
to induct Chuck Berry, because I lifted every lick he ever played! Mr. Berry
was one of the hall's inaugural inductees, in 1986. He was a Kennedy Center
honoree in 2000 and the recipient of a 1984 Grammy lifetime achievement award,
which cited him as "one of the most influential and creative innovators in the
history of American popular music. Mr. Berry was also a member of the
Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2012 Mr. Berry was co-recipient, with Leonard
Cohen, of PEN New England's Song Lyrics of Literary Exc ellence Award. "If
Beethoven hadn't rolled over, there wouldn't be room for any of us," Cohen
said. "All of us are footnotes to the words of Chuck Berry. In an e-mailed
tribute, Bob Dylan described Mr. Berry as "the Shakespeare of rock 'n' roll.
During his heyday, the 1950s, Mr. Berry had only four Top Ten singles:
"Maybellene," "Rock and Roll Music," "Sweet Little Sixteen," and "Johnny B.
Goode. Yet those and a large number of other songs he composed and recorded -
"Roll Over Beethoven," "Little Queenie," "Carol," "Reelin' and Rockin'," "Brown
Eyed Handsome Man," "Memphis," "You Never Can Tell," "Back in the USA," among
others - became rock standards. Almost a decade before the emergence of Dylan,
Mr. Berry created the template for a new cultural phenomenon, the rock
singer-songwriter. Not just the Rolling Stones, but also Buddy Holly, the
Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart, and numerous others have
recorded Mr. Berry's songs. The Beach Boys did, too, though it requ ired a
lawsuit to have that acknowledged. So similar are the melody and rhythm of
"Surfin' USA" to "Sweet Little Sixteen"' that Mr. Berry was eventually awarded
a songwriting credit. "The nature and backbone of my beat is boogie," Mr. Berry
wrote in his 1987 autobiography, "and the muscle of my music is melodies that
are simple. In some ways, his lyrics were simple, too, with their focus on
cars, school, and dating. Yet that very simplicity masked Mr. Berry's striking
talent for narrative compression, clever wordplay, sometimes-bawdy humor, and a
shrewd eye for detail. As much sociologist as songwriter, Mr. Berry consciously
focused his songs on "transistor-radio teenagers," as he called them in his
autobiography. "Whatever would sell is what I thought I should concentrate on,
so from 'Maybellene' on I mainly improvised my lyrics toward the young adult
and some even for the teeny boppers. To make him seem closer in age to his
fans, Mr. Berry claimed for many years to be five years y ounger than he
actually was. He also said he was born in San Jose, Calif., rather than St.
Louis, though that misrepresentation had to do with race, not age. The
teenybopper market was overwhelmingly white, something Mr. Berry very much took
into account. "Johnny B. Goode" was originally a "colored" rather than
"country" boy, but Mr. Berry changed the modifier to increase the song's
popular appeal. Such an alteration was characteristic. Mr. Berry rarely
overlooked commercial considerations. In "Sweet Little Sixteen"' he made a
point of naming Dick Clark's "American Bandstand," hoping to make an appearance
on the television show. He also mentioned several geographical names in the
song - for example, "They're really rockin' in Boston"' - to catch the ear of
disc jockeys in those places. Mr. Berry's ability to cross racial barriers
wasn't solely a product of calculation. He'd long been drawn to country music.
Mr. Berry's biography on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website notes that "
Maybellene" grafts "country & western guitar licks onto a rhythm & blues
chassis. He shunned such traditional African-American vocal devices as
melismas, slurs, and ornamentation. When Mr. Berry sang, he sounded not quite
white and not quite black - thanks to a small but discernible Midwestern twang
in his voice and slightly fussy diction. It's unlikely any rock singer has ever
enunciated quite so precisely as Mr. Berry. Several times, he showed up for
concerts in the Jim Crow South only to be sent away without performing because
the promoter had assumed he was white. It's often been said that much of
Presley's success sprang from his being a white man who sounded black.
Conversely, Mr. Berry was a black man who sounded white. Although his success
never matched Presley's, Mr. Berry had the last laugh, when his biggest (if
least impressive) hit, "My Ding-a-Ling," held down the No. 1 spot on the
Billboard charts in October 1972, keeping Presley's last hit, "Burning Love,"
at No. 2. Fo r all that he was an exuberant performer onstage, Mr. Berry never
displayed the rawness and intensity of such contemporaries as Little Richard
and Jerry Lee Lewis. He was older, cannier, and more experienced. Tellingly,
his idol was that smoothest of popular singers, Nat King Cole. "If I had only
one artist to listen to through eternity," Mr. Berry said in a 1969 New York
Post interview, "it would be Nat Cole. His other primary influences were also
older musicians: the broadly comic rhythm and blues singer Louis Jordan, the
virtuoso jazz guitarist Charlie Christian, and the singer-guitarist bluesman
T-Bone Walker. Mr. Berry's artistic discipline did not extend to his personal
life. Although he abjured drugs, alcohol, and gambling, he showed no similar
restraint toward women. There was a long history, as Mr. Berry winkingly put it
in his autobiography, of "naughty-naughties I would commit from time to time.
The most unsavory instance was an accusation in the early '90s that he secret
ly videotaped female patrons at a restaurant he owned as they used the
bathroom. Mr. Berry ran afoul of the law three times. He served nearly three
years in a reformatory for house robberies he and two friends committed when he
was 17. His involvement with an underage girl led to two years in prison in the
early '60s. Convicted on charges of income-tax evasion, Mr. Berry spent four
months in prison in 1979. Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born on Oct.18,
1926, in St. Louis. His father, Henry William Berry, did contracting work. His
mother, Martha (Banks) Berry, was kept busy at home by Mr. Berry and his five
siblings. The family, which was relatively prosperous, was hard-working and
religious. "My very first memories, while still in my baby crib," Mr. Berry
wrote in his autobiography, "are of musical sounds - the assembled pure
harmonies of the Baptist hymns, dominated by mother's soprano and supported by
my father's bass blending with the stirring rhythms of true Baptist soul. Mr .
Berry took up the guitar in high school, seeking to impress girls. He also
played and sang in quartets in the reformatory. After his release, he returned
to St. Louis and, in 1948, married Themetta Suggs. Mr. Berry worked on an auto
assembly line and as a hairdresser. He also began performing at local clubs. In
1952, Mr. Berry joined a trio led by pianist Johnnie Johnson. Johnson's
importance to Mr. Berry's success should not be underestimated. He played with
Mr. Berry off and on for several decades. It's often been speculated how much
Johnson, who died in 2005, contributed to Mr. Berry's composing. He filed a
lawsuit in 2000, a year before he was inducted as a sideman into the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame, seeking a share of Mr. Berry's songwriting royalties. The
suit was dismissed in 2002. Mr. Berry quickly became so popular that when he
threatened to leave the group, Johnson let him take over. Success in St. Louis
emboldened Mr. Berry to seek a recording contract. He went to Chic ago in May
1955, where he introduced himself to blues great Muddy Waters. Waters sent him
to Chess Records, the company he recorded for. Mr. Berry had a tape of two
songs he'd done, "Wee Wee Hours," a slow blues, and "Ida Red,"' an unusual mix
of country and rhythm and blues, about a pretty woman driving a Cadillac. "The
big beat, cars, and young love," recalled label co-owner Leonard Chess, "it was
a trend and we jumped on it. Signed to Chess, Mr. Berry recorded a string of
hits and toured extensively, delighting audiences with his trademark bent-kneed
strut, the duckwalk. Michael J. Fox did a version of it in the hit 1985 film
"Back to the Future. Mr. Berry became something of an entrepreneur, opening a
nightclub in St. Louis and Berry Park, an amusement park, in a nearby suburb.
During the '70s, he held several music festivals there. Mr. Berry's popularity
suffered during his early-'60s prison stay. Upon his release, he toured England
for the first time, meeting with great succes s. He also returned to the
charts, with "Nadine," "Little Marie," and "No Particular Place to Go. Their
success was double-edged, though, as each of those songs was derived from a
previous hit: "Maybellene," "Memphis," and "School Day," respectively. Mr.
Berry wasn't yet an oldies act, but he was getting there. In 1966, Mr. Berry
signed with Mercury Records. The most notable of a motley lot of recordings was
a live album of a Fillmore West concert where Mr. Berry was backed by the Steve
Miller Band. Mr. Berry had already begun touring without his own musicians, a
practice for which he was widely criticized. That he was able to reliably
function with pick-up bands indicates how thoroughly his music had become the
lingua franca of rock. At a Maryland performance in the early '70s, Mr. Berry
was backed by a then-unknown Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
Springsteen later recalled his amazement as Mr. Berry showed up at the last
minute, as was his custom, and was paid in cash, as his contract stipulated.
Returning to Chess, Mr. Berry had the biggest commercial success of his career
with "The London Chuck Berry Sessions,"' in 1972. A 1987 documentary, "Chuck
Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll! ," recorded a 60th birthday concert,
featuring Richards, Eric Clapton, and other musical greats. The film's most
remarkable moment came during rehearsal. Richards announced that Mr. Berry had
to turn down his amplifier to ensure a proper balance on the film's soundtrack.
Mr. Berry flared up. "If it winds up in the film that way, that's the way Chuck
Berry plays it. Understand? The dial stayed where it was. In addition to his
wife, Mr. Berry leaves four children, Darlin Ingrid Berry-Clay, Melody Exes
Berry-Eskridge, Aloha, and Charles Jr.; and several grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@xxxxxxxxx.
