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Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry
Born October 18,1926 St Louis,Missouri
Guitarist, Singer, Songwriter
Chuck Berry is an influential figure and one of the pioneers of Rock and Roll music. According to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame website, while no individual can be said to have invented Rock and Roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together. Cub Koda wrote, of all the early breakthrough Rock and Roll artists,none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry.
Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986. He received Kennedy Center Honors in 2000 in a "class" with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Placido Domingo and Clint Eastwood.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Chuck Berry #5 on their list "The Immortals", "The First Fifty". He was also ranked #6 on the list, "The 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame included three of Chuck Berrys songs (Johnny B Goode, Maybelline and Rock and Roll Music) in the 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll.
Born in St Louis, USA, Berry was the third of six children. He grew up in the north St Louis neighbourhood known as "The Ville" an area where many middle class St Louis blacks lived at the time. His Father was a contractor and a Deacon of a nearby Baptist church,his Mother,a qualified principal.
His middle class upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age and he made his first public appearance while still at summer high school. In 1944, before he could graduate, he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery after taking a joyride with his friends to Kansas City. His car broke down on the side of the highway and not having a way home he flagged down a passing car. Berry attempted to commandeer the man's car at gunpoint with a non functional pistol. The carjacked man called the police from a nearby payphone who quickly pulled over Berry in the car and arrested him and his friends. Berry was released from the intermediate reformatory for young men at Algoa, near Jefferson on his 21st birthday in 1947.
Chuck Berry had been playing the Blues since his teens and by early 1953 he was performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio, a band that played at a popular cub called the Cosmopolitan in east St Louis. Although the band played mostly Blues and ballads the most popular music among whites in the area was Hillbilly. Berrys calculated showmanship began luring larger white audiences to the club, he also began singing the songs of Nat "King" Cole and Muddy Waters.
In May 1955, Berry traveled to Chicago where he met Waters himself, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess records. Berry thought his Blues material would be of great interest to Chess, but to his surprise it was an old Country and Western recording by Bob Wills, entitled "Ida Red" that got Chess`s attention. In recent years Chess had seen the Blues market shrink and was looking to move beyond the R&B market and he thought Berry might be that artist who could do it. So on May 21st berry covered "Ida Red" and renamed it "Maybelline", it sold over a million copies reaching #1 on R&B`s Billboard chart and #6 on the Hot 100.
At the end of June 1956, his song "Roll Over Beethoven" reached #29 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the Autumn of 1957, Berry joined The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and other rising stars of Rock and Roll to tour the USA. The hits continued from 1957 to 1959 with Berry scoring over a dozen hit singles, including the top 10 USA hits "School Days", "Rock and Roll Music", "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Johnny B Goode". Berry appeared in two early Rock and Roll movies, the first was "Rock Rock Rock" released in 1956 (he is shown singing "You Cant Catch Me"). He also had a speaking role as himself in the 1959 film "Go Johnny Go" along with Alan Freed and also shown performing his songs, "Johnny B Goode", "Memphis tennessee" and "Little Queenie".
By the end of the fifties Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name, as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St Louis-based nightclub called, "Berry`s Club Bandstand".
In 1966 Berry left Chess records moving to the Mercury label. During his brief time at Mercury he recorded several albums, including an album of re-recordings of his Chess hits, and an album dominated by an 18-minute long instrumental, "Concerto In B Goode" for a variety of reasons, including changing musical tastes and different production techniques. The hits dried up for Chuck during the Mercury era. He was still a top concert draw however and in July 1969 Berry was the headliner of the Schaefer music festival in New York City`s Central Park along with "The Byrds", "Miles Davis", "Fleetwood Mac", "Led Zeplin", "B B King", "The Beach Boys", "Frank Zappa" and "Patti Labelle".
After a hitless four year stint at Mercury Berry returned to Chess from 1970-1973. Although his 1970 Chess effort "Back Home" yielded no hit singles, in 1972 Chess released a new live recording of "My Ding-A-Ling" a song Berry had initially recorded years earlier as a novelty track. It hit #1 and remains popular today.
A live recording of "Reelin and Rockin" was also issued as a follow up single that same year and would prove to be Berry`s final top 40 hit in both the US and the UK. In the 1970`s Berry toured on the basis of his earlier successes, he was on the road for many years carrying only his Gibson guitar, confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went. Us guitar fanatics couldn't comprehend treating such fantastic instruments like he did but he just threw his guitar in the baggage saying that they were just a business expense - "tools you know".
The all music guide has said that in this period "His Performances Became Increasingly Erratic", working with terrible backing bands and turning in sloppy out-of-tune performances which tarnished his reputation with younger fans and older fans alike. Berry continued to play 70-100 one nighters per year in the eighties still traveling solo and requiring a local band to back him at each stop. One such band was the now famous Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band.
Bruce tells the story of Chuck Berry turning up just 5 minutes before the gig was due to start, there having been no rehearsal time at all. Bruce asked the great man "What are we going to play". The rather curt answer came back "We're going to play Chuck Berry songs" as Chuck launched into his first number. Bruce recounts that at the time their drummer was the only one that knew anything about keys so they all looked to him to give them a clue and followed his cue. Surprisingly, the night went off well. In 1986 Taylor Hacford made a documentary film "Hail Hail Rock And Roll" of a celebration concert for Berry`s sixtieth birthday. Keith richards was the musical leader. Eric Clapton, Etta James, Julian lennon, Robert Cray and Linda Ronstadt, among others, appeared with Berry on stage and film. During the concert Berry played a Gibson ES-355, the luxury version of the ES-335, which he favoured on his 1970`s tours. Richards played a black Fender Telecaster Custom, Cray a Fender Stratocaster and Clapton a Gibson ES 350T, the same guitar Berry used on his early recordings.
One of the highlights in the film version was a testy exchange between Richards and Berry on how to set an amplifier for a guitar. "Image Entertainment" released a new version of the film in June 2006 which contains the original movie and bonus material such as rehearsals and documentaries.
Chuck Berry - One of the true characters of the Guitar. |
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