Chuck
Berry, whose rollicking songs, springy guitar riffs and onstage duck walk
defined rock & roll during its early years and for decades to come, has
died. The St. Charles County Police Department confirmed the news on Facebook. Berry was 90 years old.
"St. Charles County
police responded to a medical emergency on Buckner Road at approximately 12:40 p.m.
today (Saturday, March 18)," the Facebook post reads. "Inside the
home, first responders observed an unresponsive man and immediately
administered lifesaving techniques. Unfortunately, the 90-year-old man could
not be revived and was pronounced deceased at 1:26 p.m." It went on to
confirm that the man was Berry
and added that his family was requesting privacy at this time.
Starting with his first hit, 1955's
"Maybellene," Berry penned a collection of songs that, in both groove
and teen-life mindset, became essential parts of the rock canon: "Roll
Over, Beethoven," "Rock & Roll Music," and especially
"Johnny B. Goode" were witty, zesty odes to the then-new art
form—songs so key to the music that they had to be mastered by every fledgling
guitarist or band who followed Berry.
As teenagers, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger
first bonded over their love of Berry's music, and over the last five decades Berry's
songs have been covered by an astounding array of artists: from the Rolling
Stones, the Beach Boys, the Kinks, the Doors and the Grateful Dead to James
Taylor, Peter Tosh, Judas Priest, Dwight Yoakam, Phish, and the Sex Pistols. As
Richards said when inducting Berry
into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, "I've stolen every lick he
ever played."
By fusing blues and country, Berry also invented a
signature guitar style — like "ringing a bell," as he put it in
"Johnny G. Goode" — that was imitated by bands from the Stones and
the Beach Boys to punk rockers. His lyrics — largely about sex, cars, music and
trouble — introduced an entirely new vocabulary into popular music in the
Fifties. In his songs, Berry captured America's newfound post-war prosperity — a
world, as he sang in "Back in the U.S.A.," where
"hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day." ''I made records
for people who would buy them," Berry
once said. "No color, no ethnic, no political — I don't want that,
never
did.''
Johnny B Goode
Yet Berry,
in his role as rock and roll pioneer, also dealt with racism and bigotry,
particularly when he was accused in 1961 of violating the Mann Act
(transporting a woman or girl across state lines for purposes of prostitution).
Berry claimed he had met Janice Norine
Escalanti, a 14-year-old Native American, during a show in Texas
and hired her to work at his St. Louis
club, Club Bandstand. Imprisoned after a second trial (the first conviction was
overturned due to the judge repeatedly using the word "nigra"),
Berry, who pleaded not guilty, wound up serving nearly two years in prison and
emerged a noticeably changed, bitter man. In recent years, he had mellowed
somewhat, thanks in part to receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the
Grammys in 1986 and being inducted into the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame.
Born in St.
Louis on October 18th, 1926, Charles Edward Anderson
Berry learned to play blues guitar as a teenager and first performed at his
high school talent show. Music was his first love but not necessarily his first
career choice. The son of a carpenter, Berry
worked on a General Motors assembly line and studied to be a hairdresser. With
pianist Johnnie Johnson (a regular part of his band for years to come), Berry formed a band in
1952. After meeting blues legend Muddy Waters, Berry was introduced to Chess Records
founder Leonard Chess in 1955. Berry
brought along a song based on the country tune "Ida Red." With a new
title and lyrics — and an immediately grabby, grinding opening guitar lick —
the song was transformed into "Maybellene." On a return trip, Berry brought his
recording of the song and was immediately signed to the label. "[Chess]
couldn’t believe that a country tune (he called it a ‘hillbilly song’) could be
written and sung by a black guy," Berry
later wrote in his 1987 memoir Chuck Berry: The Autobiography.
"Maybellene" hit Number Five in
1955 and established Berry's
career and sound. By the end of the 1950s, he had logged seven more top 40
hits: "Roll Over Beethoven" (Number 29), "School Day"
(Number Three), "Rock & Roll Music" (Number Eight),
"Sweet Little Sixteen" (Number Two), "Johnny B. Goode"
(Number Eight), "Carol" (Number 28) and "Back in the
U.S.A." (Number 37). Although he was already in his early thirties by
the time he scored those hits, Berry
was unabashed about why he wrote for a younger audience. "Whatever would
sell was what I thought I should concentrate on," he wrote in his memoir,
"so from 'Maybellene' on, I mainly improvised my lyrics toward the young
adult and some even for the teeny boppers, as they called the tots then."
Each song was defined by the Berry trademarks: that
blend of propulsive beat, rueful charm, and ringing guitar. "The beautiful
thing about Chuck Berry's playing was it had such an effortless swing,"
Keith Richards wrote in his memoir, Life.
"None of this sweating and grinding away or grimacing, just pure,
effortless swing like a lion." During a concert in 1956, Berry was so self-conscious about only
having brought one suit that he invented a new stage move "to hide the
wrinkles," as he told RS in
1969. That move, the duck walk, also became part of the rock & roll lexicon.
Intentionally or not, Berry also set the template for the rock and
roll bad boy beyond his Mann Act conviction. Early in his life, Berry spent three years
in reform school for an armed robbery attempt. In 1979, he was indicted for tax
evasion and filing false income tax returns and spent three months in jail. (At
his sentencing, he burst into tears.) In 1990, he was sued by several women who
claimed Berry had videotaped them in the
ladies' room in his restaurant in St.
Louis. (Berry
reached an out-of-court settlement.)
When he was released from a Missouri
prison in October 1963 after his Mann Act conviction, Berry was embittered, but he also saw his
footprint all over a new generation of bands. The Beach Boys had released their
first single, the Berry-influenced "Surfin' Safari," while a new band
from England, the Rolling
Stones, released Berry's
"Come On" as their first single in 1963. At first, Berry picked up where he left off, writing
fine new songs like "You Never Can Tell" and "No Particular Place to Go" that held
onto his devil-may-care attitude.
In 1966, Berry left Chess, his longtime home, for
another label, Mercury, but the result was a series of sub-par albums and weak
re-recordings of his hits. (One notable exception: a jam with the Steve Miller
Band captured on the 1967 album, Live at the Fillmore Auditorium). In
1969, he returned to Chess — and returned to form — on harder-edged songs like "Tulane," a drug-dealer
romp that showed his newfound relevance. In 1972, he scored his first and only
Number One pop hit with the novelty song, "My Ding-a-Ling." His last
album of original songs, Rock It, was released in 1979.
Berry was a notoriously
tough and irascible character offstage. On tour, he long traveled alone, using
backup bands hired by the promoters. He demanded payment in advance, a specific
kind of amplifier, and a limousine (with no driver) for his shows. In 1986,
Richards assembled an all-star backup band (including Eric Clapton, Robert
Cray, and sax player Bobby Keys) to play behind Berry in the documentary Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll.
Even then, Berry
intimidated Richards onstage and off and only showed up on the first day of
filming after he demanded an extra cash payment of $25,000. Despite those difficulties,
the 1987 movie, directed by Taylor Hackford, became one of rock's most
acclaimed concert films.
Up
until his death, Berry
(who is survived by his wife Themetta "Toddy" Suggs, whom he married
in 1948, and four children) continued to perform at clubs and casinos. Once a
month, he played at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and bar in St. Louis. He lived in St.
Louis but often spent time at Berry
Park, a 155-acre property in nearby Wentzville, Missouri.
(As he told Rolling Stone in 2010, he even still mowed the lawn
there.) Asked by RS in
1969 about rock's role, Berry
said, "Like any music, it brings you together, because if two people like
the same music, they can be standing beside each other shaking and they wind up
dancing, and that’s a matter of communication ... so I say it's a means of
communication, more so than other music, to the kids."
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