Chuck Berry

Early life

Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born on October 18, 1926, in St Louis, the youngest child of Henry William Berry and Martha Bell Berry (née Banks). He grew up in the north St Louis neighbourhood known as the Ville, an area where many middle-class people lived. His father, Henry (1895–1987), was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church; his mother, Martha (1894–1980), was a certified public school principal. Berry's upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age. He gave his first public performance in 1941 while still a student at Sumner High School in St Louis; he was still a student there in 1944 when he was arrested for armed robbery after robbing three shops in Kansas City, Missouri and then...

1952–1955: Music career beginnings

By the early 1950s, Chuck 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. He also took guitar lessons from his friend, jazz guitarist Ira Harris, which laid the foundation for his guitar style. By early 1953, Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson's trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist. The band played blues and ballads as well as country. Berry wrote, "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?'...

Legacy

A pioneer of rock and roll, Berry was a significant influence on the development of both the music and the attitude associated with the rock music lifestyle. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics successfully aimed to appeal to the early teenage market by using graphic and humorous descriptions of teen dances, fast cars, high school life, and consumer culture, and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. Thus Berry, the songwriter, according to critic Jon Pareles, invented rock...

You Never Can Tell

"You Never Can Tell", also known as "C'est La Vie" or "Teenage Wedding", is a song written by Chuck Berry. It was composed in the early 1960s while Berry was in federal prison for violating the Mann Act.

Released in 1964 on the album St. Louis to Liverpool and the follow-up single to Berry's final Top Ten hit of the 1960s: "No Particular Place to Go", "You Never Can Tell" reached number 14, becoming Berry's final Top 40 hit until "My Ding-a-Ling", a number 1 in October 1972.

Johnny B. Goode

"Johnny B. Goode" is a song by American musician Chuck Berry, written and sung by Berry in 1958.

Released as a single in 1958, it peaked at number two on the Hot R&B Sides chart and number eight on its pre-Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song remains a staple of rock n' roll music.

Composition and recording

Written by Chuck Berry in 1955, the song is about an illiterate "country boy" from the New Orleans area, who plays a guitar "just like ringing a bell", and who might one day have his "name in lights". Berry acknowledged that the song is partly autobiographical and that the original lyrics referred to Johnny as a "colored boy", but he changed it to "country boy" to ensure eligibility for radio play. As well as suggesting that the guitar player is good, the title hints at autobiographic elements, because Berry was born at 2520 Goode Avenue, in St. Louis.

Legacy

In The Guardian, Joe Queenan argued that "no song in the history of rock'n'roll more jubilantly celebrates the downmarket socioeconomic roots of the genre" than "Johnny B. Goode". In Billboard, Jason Lipshutz stated that the song was "the first rock-star origin story", and that it featured "a swagger and showmanship that had not yet invaded radio".