Chuck Berry

The architect whose double-stop intros became rock and roll's alphabet

Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born in St. Louis in 1926 and grew up in a middle-class Black neighborhood where he absorbed blues, swing, country and the jazz guitar of players like T-Bone Walker and Charlie Christian. His youth took a detour when he was convicted of armed robbery as a teenager and sent to a reformatory, where he spent about three years. Afterward he married, worked factory jobs and trained in hairdressing, while playing guitar at night to earn extra money.

In 1953 he joined pianist Johnnie Johnson's trio at a St. Louis club and soon took over as its frontman, winning crowds by mixing country tunes into a blues set. On a 1955 trip to Chicago he met Muddy Waters, who pointed him toward Chess Records. His first single, Maybellene, a rocked-up reworking of the fiddle tune Ida Red, became a national hit, and over the next four years he wrote and recorded a stream of classics about cars, school and teenage life.

Roll Over Beethoven, Rock and Roll Music, Sweet Little Sixteen and Johnny B. Goode defined the sound and subject matter of early rock and roll. His momentum stopped in late 1959, when he was arrested under the Mann Act; after two trials he served about a year and a half in prison. By the time he walked out in 1963, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were covering his songs, and new singles such as Nadine and No Particular Place to Go brought him back to the charts.

He kept touring for decades, usually alone, using local pickup bands. The novelty song My Ding-a-Ling gave him his only number-one hit in 1972, and in 1979 he served a short sentence for tax evasion. In 1986 he was in the first class inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and his 60th-birthday concerts, led by Keith Richards, became the film Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll. He played monthly shows in St. Louis into his late eighties and died in 2017, shortly before his final album, Chuck, was released.

The 10 greatest Chuck Berry solos

1. 1
   Johnny B. Goode

   Chuck Berry · solo by Chuck Berry · 1958
2. 2
   Roll Over Beethoven

   Chuck Berry · solo by Chuck Berry · 1956
3. 3
   Maybellene

   Chuck Berry · solo by Chuck Berry · 1955
4. 4
   Carol

   Chuck Berry · solo by Chuck Berry · 1958
5. 5
   School Days

   Chuck Berry · solo by Chuck Berry · 1957
6. 6
   Little Queenie

   Chuck Berry · solo by Chuck Berry · 1959
7. 7
   Guitar Boogie

   Chuck Berry · solo by Chuck Berry · 1958
8. 8
   Sweet Little Sixteen

   Chuck Berry · solo by Chuck Berry · 1958
9. 9
   Let It Rock

   Chuck Berry · solo by Chuck Berry · 1960
10. 10
    Deep Feeling

    Chuck Berry · solo by Chuck Berry · 1957

The sound

Berry's guitar language is so familiar that it is easy to forget someone invented it. His intros stack ringing double stops and bent unisons, borrowed partly from T-Bone Walker and jump-blues horn lines, into bright, urgent fanfares. Underneath, his rhythm playing uses a chugging boogie shuffle on the low strings that became the default rock-and-roll accompaniment. His tone was clean and trebly from hollow and semi-hollow Gibsons, and his solos were short, rhythmic and hooky, like extra verses. Add the duckwalk and a storyteller's timing, and he fused showmanship and songcraft into one package.

• Gibson ES-350T (guitar) The thinline hollow-body he played on many of his classic 1950s Chess recordings.
• Gibson ES-355 (guitar) His favored stage guitar from the 1960s on; he was buried with one.
• Gibson ES-335 (guitar) A semi-hollow Gibson he also used frequently on stage.
• Fender Dual Showman (amp) The amp he requested from promoters so he could tour with only his guitar.
• Local backline amps (amp) Traveling alone, he typically plugged into whatever the local band and promoter supplied.

Covers

• Route 66, originally by Nat King Cole Trio He sped up the travel song and added his own rhythm-guitar drive.
• Down the Road Apiece, originally by Will Bradley Trio A boogie-woogie tune translated into rocking guitar.
• Confessin' the Blues, originally by Jay McShann A slow blues that shows how rooted he was in the jump-band tradition.
• Merry Christmas Baby, originally by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers A relaxed, bluesy holiday reading with tasteful guitar fills.
• Worried Life Blues, originally by Big Maceo Merriweather He gave the prewar standard a lean, modern feel.

Timeline

• 1926 Born in St. Louis, Missouri
• 1953 Joins the Johnnie Johnson Trio in St. Louis
• 1955 Meets Muddy Waters, signs with Chess and releases Maybellene
• 1958 Releases Johnny B. Goode
• 1959 Arrested under the Mann Act, leading to a prison term
• 1963 Released from prison as British bands cover his songs
• 1972 My Ding-a-Ling becomes his only number-one hit
• 1977 Johnny B. Goode is included on the Voyager Golden Record
• 1986 Inducted in the first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class
• 2017 Dies at 90; final album Chuck released

Facts

1. Johnny B. Goode is the only rock-and-roll song on the Voyager Golden Record sent into interstellar space.
2. Maybellene was adapted from the western swing fiddle tune Ida Red.
3. Muddy Waters recommended that he approach Chess Records.
4. He trained as a hairdresser before his music career took off.
5. Despite his many classics, his only number-one single was the novelty song My Ding-a-Ling.
6. He was part of the first group of artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
7. He usually toured without his own band, hiring local musicians in each town.
8. Rolling Stone ranked him the second-greatest guitarist of all time in 2023.
9. A crater on Mercury was named after him in 2020.
10. He was buried with a Gibson ES-355 guitar.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Chuck Berry