Chuck Berry

BROWN-EYED HANDSOME GENIUS
Attempting to credit one person with the invention of rock and roll is a misgui
ded and pointless pursuit. But no early rocker played a bigger role in creating
the basic template for guitar-driven electric rock and roll than Chuck
Berry, and no artist of his era did a more effective job of merging an original
musical vision with a cohesive and distinctive songwriting persona.

Ray Charles

SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING
The weather in Atlanta, Georgia, is damp and breezy on the night of May 29,
1959. Despite intermittent rainfall, a crowd of 9,000 people has fi lled the stands
of a minor league ballpark called Herndon Stadium for a long evening of live
rhythm and blues. The Drifters, Ruth Brown, Jimmy Reed, Roy Hamilton,
and B.B. King all have performed to an enthusiastic response; now the crowd is enraptured by the show’s headline attraction, whose set has reached a peak
of controlled frenzy.

Elvis Presley

THE BOY WHO INVENTED ROCK AND ROLL
Actually, no one person can claim to have invented rock and roll. The fundamentally
mongrel genre arose from a long-simmering cross-pollination of
black and white musical styles, an evolution that was fueled by the increasing
pervasiveness of music radio broadcasting in America beginning in the 1930s.
The cross-pollination of black and white music had already begun long before the term “rock and roll” (originally African American slang for sexual intercourse)
was ever applied to music, with blues and jazz elements turning up
frequently in white country music, and vice versa.