CHUCK BERRY | Rock 'n' Roll Legend
It's difficult not to acknowledge a life as incredible as Chuck Berry’s.
On 18th March 2017, Chuck Berry - legendary guitarist, singer, songwriter and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer passed away, aged 90. Berry lived an eventful life, and inspired many on his journey to rock 'n' roll stardom.
Born Charles Edward Anderson Berry on 18th October 1926 in St Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from a young age, giving his first public performance while in high school.
A few years later, Berry and two school friends robbed three shops at gunpoint before stealing a car. The three received ten years jail time, but Berry was released on good behaviour after three - on his 21st birthday.
On 28th October 1948, he married Themetta ‘Toddy’ Suggs, whom he went on to have four healthy children with.
By the early 1950s, Berry had joined two bands and began to develop a unique reputation for his stage presence.
In 1955, Berry met blues musician Muddy Waters, who cleverly advised him to contact Chess Records. Not long after this meeting, he wrote and recorded his now-iconic song 'Maybellene', took it to the Chess Records executives, and was offered a contract. The song went to Number 1 on the R&B charts, and reached Number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
Between 1955-1960, the hits kept coming for Berry: 'Roll Over Beethoven', 'Too Much Monkey Business', 'Rock and Roll Music', 'Sweet Little Sixteen', 'Johnny B. Goode', and 'Memphis Tennessee' were among the hugely popular singles released during this five year period, and which are now regarded as classic rock ‘n’ roll tracks.
However, it was in 1961 that Berry was convicted under the Mann Act of transporting an under-age girl over state lines for ‘immoral purposes’, serving one and a half years of a three-year prison sentence.
After his prison release in 1963, Chuck Berry continued to write and record, releasing the popular singles 'No Particular Place To Go', 'You Never Can Tell' and 'Nadine'. But his jail time took its toll.
American singer-songwriter Carl Perkins - writer of 'Blue Suede Shoes', toured with Berry a year after his prison release. Perkins said of his tour-mate: “Never saw a man so changed. He’d been an easy-going guy before, the kinda guy who’d jam in dressing rooms, sit and swap licks and jokes. In England he was cold, real distant and bitter. It wasn’t just jail. It was those years of one-nighters — grinding it out like that can kill a man. But I figure it was mostly jail.”
Throughout the 1970's, Berry continued recording, and in 1972, 'My Ding-a-Ling' became his only song to reach Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Berry continued to tour, taking only his guitar and hiring bands wherever he went. Amongst the band leaders he hired were Steve Miller and Bruce Springsteen, before their careers truly took off.
Berry was honoured with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and rewarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1987. His recording of 'Johnny B. Goode' was included on NASA's Voyager Golden Record.
Chuck Berry was still performing regularly up until 2014. It was announced on his 90th birthday that Berry would release his first studio album in almost forty years in 2017, and that it would be his last.
The ‘Father of Rock & Roll’ was hugely influential throughout his six-decade career. His music has inspired or been recorded by legends of the rock genre, such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys.
In film, Berry's songs are not forgotten. In Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 smash ‘Pulp Fiction’, 'You Never Can Tell' plays when Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) participate in a twist contest.
And who can forget when Marty McFly joins Marvin Berry and the Starlighters on stage at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, belting out 'Johnny B. Goode' in 'Back to the Future'?
But perhaps it was John Lennon who summed up the man's legacy best: "If you tried to give rock 'n' roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry.'”
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