Berry, Chuck

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Berry, Chuck

October 18, 1926

The rock-and-roll singer Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the third of four children. His parents were deeply religious Baptists, but Berry became interested in secular music as a teenager. He was inspired to become a performer and guitarist after receiving an enthusiastic reception of his rendition of "Confessin' the Blues" at Sumner High School, where he was a student. He attended Poro School of Beauty Culture in St. Louis during the 1940s, and then used his skills as a hairdresser and cosmetologist to support himself in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Berry also performed with several groups at clubs around St. Louis in the early 1950s, and he became popular with both white and black audiences because he sang country songs and blues with equal zest.

In 1955 Berry relocated to Chicago, where Muddy Waters (1915–1983) recommended him to Chess Records, which signed him to a recording contract. Berry's first recording, and his first hit, was "Maybelline" (1955), a reinterpretation of the traditional country song "Ida Red" (Berry's title was inspired by the Maybelline line of hair creams). He performed the song with crisp rapid-fire delivery and introduced new lyrics on the subjects of teenage love and car racing.

Berry was a pioneer in rock and roll and helped transform the new music into a commercially successful genre. His greatest success came in the late 1950s with songs that were definitive expressions of the themes of teenage angst, rebelliousness, and the celebration of youthful vitality. His best-known recordings include "Roll Over, Beethoven" (1956), "School Days" (1957), "Rock-and-Roll Music" (1957), "Sweet Little Sixteen" (1958), "Memphis" (1958), and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958). Surprisingly, his only number-one record was the crass and forgettable "My Ding-a-Ling" (1972), a salute to male teenage masturbation.

After 1959, Berry's career was interrupted when he was arrested for transporting a minor across state lines. Though the events are still contested, Berry allegedly took a fourteen-year-old prostitute from Texas to St. Louis to check hats at a nightclub where he was performing. When he fired her, she reported his actions to local police. Berry served a two-year prison sentence at the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana, from 1961 to 1963. While Berry never reached his former level of popularity after this, he became active in the rock-and-roll revival of the 1980s and early 1990s and performed widely.

Berry was arguably the central figure in the creation of the sound and style of rock and roll in the mid-1950s. He had a tremendous influence on rock performers who came after him, including Buddy Holly, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones, who emulated both his guitar style and his highly energized stage presence. Berry's recording of "Johnny B. Goode" was included in the payload of the Neptune-bound Voyager 1 spacecraft, a testimony to the original and representative nature of his work. In 2004, Rolling Stone published a list of the fifty greatest rock-and-roll artists. Chuck Berry was number five on that list.

See also Muddy Waters (Morganfield, McKinley); Music in the United States