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.


The St. Louis–bred singer/guitarist was rock’s fi rst great songwriter/performer.
In his fi rst decade as a recording artist, Berry released a remarkable
run of singles that became so deeply woven into rock and roll’s foundation
that it’s diffi cult to imagine the genre existing without them. Long before Bob
Dylan and the Beatles offi cially established it as a legitimate art form in the
1960s, Chuck Berry emerged as rock’s fi rst great poet.
Berry made his name writing infectious, exuberant songs that used evocative
wordplay and whimsical humor to document 1950s American teenage
life. His compositions played a crucial role in chronicling and defi ning the
youth culture that spawned rock and roll, and in introducing much of the
cars-and-girls iconography of early rock and roll. Berry’s uncanny ability to
tap into teen psychology and youthful slang was doubly impressive, given
the fact that he didn’t begin his recording career until he was nearly thirty
years old.
On such enduring anthems as “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Rock and Roll
Music” and “Johnny B. Goode,” Berry celebrated the music’s liberating spirit.
On “School Day,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” and “Reelin’ and Rockin’,” he vividly
documented teen social, recreational, and romantic rituals. His skill for
shaggy-dog storytelling on “Nadine,” “You Can’t Catch Me,” and “No Particular
Place to Go” was balanced by his knack for spinning such poignant
vignettes as “Memphis” and “Havana Moon.” And with such numbers as
“Brown-Eyed Handsome Man,” “Promised Land,” and “Back in the U.S.A.,”
he conjured a colorful American landscape fraught with pitfalls but brimming
with hope and promise.
Berry’s 1955 debut single “Maybellene” is considered by some to be the
fi rst fully realized rock and roll record, the fi rst to fully synthesize the music’s
blues and country infl uences into a cohesive and compelling style. Berry was
also the fi rst prominent rocker to write most of his own material, and the fi rst
to double on vocals and electric guitar.
While much of rock and roll’s foundation was laid by white musicians emulating
and adapting African American musical forms, Berry demonstrated that
the music’s infl uence was a two-way street. He forged his style by mixing country
guitar licks and country-inspired narrative songwriting with a rhythm and
blues beat and the rudiments of Chicago-style electric blues. He enunciated
his lyrics with clear, careful phrasing that contrasted the raw conventions of
blues singing. Berry’s synthesis of black and white infl uences, and his energetic
performing style, made him the fi rst black rocker to cross over from the R&B
charts to achieve consistent success with white teenagers, without alienating
his black audience.
Berry’s distinctive guitar style—drawn from elements of blues, country, and
jazz—is generally considered to be the wellspring for modern rock and roll
guitar. His playing was an essential cornerstone of rock and roll, and was
emulated, to one degree or another, by virtually every signifi cant guitar band
of the 1960s. Most of those bands included Berry material in their repertoire.
Indeed, Berry remains one of the most-covered composers in pop history; his
songs have remained essential staples of jukeboxes, oldies radio stations, and
garage band set lists ever since.
But Berry’s playful musical persona, and his energetic performing style,
belie a complex, thorny personality embittered by years of racism, rip-offs,
and government harassment. Obstinate, obsessively private, distrustful of
outsiders, and mercenary to a fault, Berry has long squandered his legendary
status and severely tested his fans’ goodwill. Once renowned as one rock’s
most electrifying stage performers, for decades he’s been notorious for delivering
spotty, sloppy live shows. Berry’s inelegant approach to live gigs long
ago attained mythic status, with the artist typically turning up at the venue
minutes before set time, receiving payment in cash prior to taking the stage,
and playing with under-rehearsed (or unrehearsed) local pickup bands.

ST. LOUIS BLUES
Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born on October 18, 1926, in St. Louis,
Missouri, the fourth of Martha and Henry Berry’s six children. He grew up
in the Ville, a six-by-nine-block neighborhood north of downtown St. Louis
that was one of the few sections of the heavily segregated city where blacks
were allowed to own property. Because the city’s white institutions were so
inhospitable, the Ville became a self-contained community within the racially
divided city, an oasis of African American–owned businesses and cultural
institutions.
Martha and Henry Berry were the grandchildren of Southern slaves, and
were among the many rural blacks that had migrated to St. Louis in search of
employment. Unlike most African American women of the era, Martha possessed
a college education. Henry was a contractor and carpenter, as well as a
deacon of the local Antioch Baptist Church. The middle-class Berry family
maintained a strong grounding in the church, and stressed discipline, enterprise,
and educational achievement as a means to prosper within the societal
barriers of the time.
In his youth, Chuck did carpentry work for his father, and developed an
interest in photography through his uncle Harry Davis (who would later shoot
many enduring images of his nephew). Unlike his siblings, though, Chuck
gravitated toward trouble in his teen years. He attended the prestigious Sumner
High School, the fi rst black high school west of the Mississippi, but bristled
against its stringent educational and disciplinary standards.
Although he’d begun singing in his church’s choir at the age of six, Chuck
didn’t take up the electric guitar until his teens. He was inspired to learn to
play after singing Jay McShann’s “Confessin’ the Blues” (a song he would later
record on his 1960 LP Rockin’ at the Hops ) at a school talent show, accompanied
by a guitar-playing friend. While some faculty members strongly disapproved of such down-and-dirty material, the positive crowd response
drove Berry to pick up the instrument, developing his skills with some help
from local jazz player Ira Harris.
In the fall of 1944, Berry dropped out of high school, and decided to head
for California with two friends. They only got as far as Kansas City, where
they were arrested and convicted for armed robbery. All three were sentenced
to ten years in the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near
Jefferson, Missouri.
Berry was released from the reformatory after three years, on his twentyfi
rst birthday on October 18, 1947. A year and ten days later, he married
Themetta “Toddy” Suggs, with whom he would eventually have four children.
In addition to doing work for his father’s construction business, he worked as
a photographer and as a janitor in an auto assembly plant, and trained to be
a hairdresser and cosmetologist. He also continued to hone his guitar skills,
drawing upon such infl uences as electric-blues pioneer T-Bone Walker, jazz
innovator Charlie Christian and Carl Hogan of Louis Jordan’s Tympani Five.
One of Berry’s favorite vocalists was Nat “King” Cole, whose combination of
jazz/blues grit and cultured sophistication would infl uence Berry’s own musical
sensibility, as well as his careful vocal enunciation.
By 1951, Berry had become a skillful enough guitarist that his high school
classmate Tommy Stevens invited him to join his trio. The Tommy Stevens
Combo worked the rough, sometimes violent clubs of East St. Louis, Illinois,
just across the Mississippi River, and specialized in black blues and pop standards.
Berry’s addition to the group brought out his natural sense of showmanship,
and he expanded the group’s repertoire by adding country and
novelty tunes.
At around this time, Charles Berry began adding an “n” to his last name
and billing himself as Chuck Berryn, apparently in deference to the church ties
of his father, who couldn’t have looked kindly on his son’s decision to play the
devil’s music.
At the end of 1952, Johnnie Johnson (1924–2005), a local jazz/boogiewoogie
piano player who’d recently arrived from Chicago, hired Berry to play
a New Year’s Eve gig with his group, Sir John’s Trio, at the Cosmopolitan
Club in East St. Louis, where they were a frequent attraction. He’d initially
been hired to substitute for an unavailable musician, but Johnson was
impressed enough with Berry’s abilities that he invited the guitarist to become
a permanent member of the act. Before long, the newcomer would come to
dominate the group.
As he had with his previous band, Berry energized Johnson’s sets, augmenting
the pianist’s repertoire of 1930s and 1940s pop standards with his own
up-tempo country-style numbers. Berry’s urban hillbilly act enhanced the group’s
local reputation, drawing white patrons to the black club and establishing
Chuck as a competitor to such local guitarists as Ike Turner, Albert King, and
Little Milton. Although Berry’s humorous narrative songs had little precedent in the blues at the time, black jump-blues bandleader Louis Jordan—an early
Berry hero—had been doing something comparable, with considerable commercial
success, since the early 1940s.
PLAYING CHESS
In the spring of 1955, Berry began making trips to the black musical mecca of
Chicago, looking for contacts and recording possibilities. He met legendary
electric bluesman Muddy Waters, who suggested that Berry contact Leonard
Chess, who ran Chess Records, the infl uential independent label for which
Waters recorded.
Chess Records, run by Polish-born immigrant brothers Leonard and Phil
Chess, was already one of America’s most successful specialists in recording
and selling black music. The company’s artist roster included such popular
bluesmen as Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Little Walter, and Sonny
Boy Williamson, as well as the infl uential vocal groups the Flamingos and the
Moonglows.

Doo-Wop at the Dawn of Rock and Roll
The vocal group harmony style, with roots in black gospel quartet singing,
was an important part of the original rock and roll explosion of the 1950s.
Years later, this sound became known as doo-wop, so called because the background
singers often intoned such nonsense syllables to accompany the lyrics
sung by the lead vocalist.
In some respects, the vocal groups were at a disadvantage in the intensely
competitive and exploitive music industry of the period. Most did not write
their own material or play instruments on their own recordings, so they were
dependent on others for their material and backing. The reinforcement of the
group image tended to obscure the individual members’ identities, and often
the group’s name was owned by a manager or record company entrepreneur.
The person holding legal title to the name could hire and fi re the group
members almost at will. An entire group such as the Drifters could be reconstituted
and then sent into the recording studio or out on tour. Meanwhile,
former members continued to appear as (for example) Charlie Thomas of
the Drifters. These practices created confusion and resentment among performers
and fans alike—along with a tide of lawsuits, some extending to the
present day.
Two of the most important black vocal groups at the birth of rhythm &
blues were the Ravens and the Orioles. The Ravens’ recordings of “Ol’ Man
River” and “Send for Me If You Need Me” (both 1948) contrasted the soaring
tenor of Maithe Marshall (sometimes singing in falsetto) with the deep bass
of Jimmy Ricks. It was a combination that other groups would emulate for decades to come. The Orioles’ overall vocal tone was less polished and slightly
more soulful than that of the Ravens. On their number one R&B hit of 1949,
“Tell Me So,” a wordless falsetto entwined around Sonny Til’s angelic tenor
lead—another device that later would be appropriated on countless vocal
group recordings.
The Orioles’ success with R&B renditions of Tin Pan Alley standards ( “What
Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”) gave rise to a host of so-called bird groups:
the Penguins (“Earth Angel”), the Flamingos (“I Only Have Eyes for You”), and
so on. In 1954, the Crows created one of rock and roll’s greatest one-shot hits
with “Gee.” This song, wrote vocal group authority Philip Groia, “became the
fi rst recording of black street-corner singing to transcend the realm of R&B
into the white pop market. It was a million-seller and the fi rst doo-wop record
to be recognized by the white media. In hindsight, it has often been referred
to as the fi rst rock and roll group record.”
Andy Schwartz

“You could tell right away,” Phil Chess recalled in Peter Guralnick’s book
Feel Like Going Home . “He had that something special, that—I don’t know
what you’d call it. But he had it.” 1
Chess told the young hopeful to bring him a demo tape, so Berry went
home and cut some songs on a borrowed wire recorder with Johnson’s band.
The resulting demo included the slow blues original “Wee Wee Hours” and an
up-tempo reworking of a much-recorded country standard titled “Ida Red,”
which Berry knew from a popular 1938 version by western swing pioneers
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.
Berry felt that “Wee Wee Hours” would be a natural for the blues-oriented
Chess Records. But Leonard Chess, eager to tap into the emerging rock and
roll market that had begun to eat into the sales of his label’s blues releases,
saw more potential in “Ida Red.” Chess’s preference was understandable. At
the time, a successful blues single was unlikely to sell more than 10,000 copies,
while a rhythm and blues hit could sell hundreds of thousands, and a rock
and roll crossover might shift as many as a million.
“The big beat, cars, and young love,” said Leonard Chess. “It was a trend
and we jumped on it.” 2
At Chess’s suggestion, “Ida Red” was renamed “Maybellene.” The new
title was inspired by the Maybelline cosmetics company, although Chess was
careful to change the spelling to avoid potential legal problems. The retitled
number was recorded at the Chess studio on May 21, with Johnnie Johnson
on piano and Johnson’s drummer Ebby Hardy, plus legendary Chess musician/
songwriter Willie Dixon on bass.
Most of the elements of Berry’s signature sound were already in place on
“Maybellene,” including his inventive blues/country picking style, his sly sing ing and the rhythm section’s propulsive backbeat. Meanwhile, Johnson’s rolling
boogie rhythms and distinctive right-hand technique were already fi rmly
in place, underlining the importance of the pianist’s contribution to Berry’s
sound.
Beyond its snappy sound, “Maybellene” showcase Berry’s already impressive
lyrical gifts. He invests the song’s simple story—an auto chase in pursuit
of a wayward lover—with such a wealth of crafty wordplay and evocative
detail that the narrative takes on the quality of an epic quest.
“Maybellene,” with the more pedestrian “Wee Wee Hours” as its B-side,
was released by Chess as Chuck Berry’s fi rst single in July 1955. By then,
“Maybellene” had mysteriously acquired a pair of co-authors. The fi rst was
infl uential rock and roll disc jockey Alan Freed, with whom Chess Records
had a close working relationship, and whose airplay could make a song a hit.
The other was Russ Fratto, the landlord of the building where Chess’s headquarters
were located as well as the Chess brothers’ partner in the pressing
plant that manufactured the company’s product. Credited as co-writers alongside
Berry, Freed and Fratto were entitled to equal shares of the song’s publishing
royalties. Such exploitive arrangements were common in rock and
roll’s early days, and Berry was unaware of the chicanery until the song was
released.

Great Groups and Solo Stars of the 1950s
Billy Ward was a Juilliard-trained musician and entrepreneur with an ear for
talent. In 1950, he formed the Dominoes and recruited a series of exceptional
singers to front the group. The fi rst was Clyde McPhatter (1932–72), who injected
the Dominoes’ 1952 smash “Have Mercy Baby” with a blend of youthful
abandon and adult sensuality, then later wept convincingly on their sentimental
ballad “The Bells” (1953).
McPhatter left the group shortly thereafter to make an even bigger impact
as lead singer for the Drifters on their number one R&B hits “Honey Love” and
“Adorable.” His successor in the Dominoes was a former Golden Gloves boxer
from Detroit named Jackie Wilson (1934–84), who announced his arrival on
the group’s version of “St. Therese of the Roses” in 1956. It was not a chart
hit, but Wilson’s bravura performance attracted enough attention to propel
him into a solo career soon after the record was released.
Frankie Lymon was a preternaturally gifted singer who became the fi rst
black teenage pop star at age thirteen when his group, the Teenagers, shot to
number one R&B and number six Pop in 1956 with their fi rst single, “Why Do
Fools Fall In Love.” Lymon’s rich vibrato and jazz-tinged phrasing would exert
a profound infl uence on artists ranging from Ronnie Spector to Michael Jackson,
and great things were expected from his solo career when he left the group
after just eighteen months. But neither he nor the other Teenagers ever repeated (or even came close to) their fi rst astounding success, and Frankie
Lymon was only twenty-six when he died from a drug overdose in 1968.
Amid the turbulent atmosphere of 1950s rhythm and blues, the Platters
were one of the few black vocal groups to establish a stable career in the mainstream
of show business. Under the careful guidance of manager and songwriter
Buck Ram, the group scored twelve Top Ten R&B hits from 1955 to
1959, four of which reached number one on the Pop chart. The Platters’ classic
ballads “Only You,” “The Great Pretender,” and “Twilight Time” all featured
the polished lead of Tony Williams within sumptuous male/female vocal
blends and lush orchestrations.
Another black vocal group to enjoy great popularity with young white audiences
was the Coasters, whose raucous, comedic musical mini-dramas were
the virtual opposite of the Platters’ staid elegance. In 1953, the L.A.-based
quartet then known as the Robins joined forces with two young white songwriter/
producers, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, in 1953 to create the groundbreaking
R&B protest number, “Riot in Cell Block #9.”
When the Robins split up, lead singer Carl Gardner and bass man Bobby
Nunn formed the Coasters, who continued to work with Leiber and Stoller. In
1957, the team struck gold with the two-sided hit single, “Searchin’ ” backed
with “Young Blood,” the former title topping the R&B chart for twelve straight
weeks and reaching number three Pop. The following year, the Coasters
scored a number one Pop hit with “Yakety Yak,” then extended their hot
streak with “Charlie Brown,” “Along Came Jones,” and “Poison Ivy.” These
songs, as carefully and imaginatively produced as any Madison Avenue television
commercial, represented the fi nal fl owering of the original black vocal
group sound.

Not surprisingly, Freed played “Maybellene” enthusiastically on his popular
show on New York’s WINS. The exposure helped “Maybellene” to become
one of the fi rst national rock and roll hits, rising to the number one slot on
Billboard ’s R&B chart and number fi ve on the pop chart.
The crossover success of “Maybellene” demonstrated Berry’s ability to transcend
the racial barriers that ruled the music industry in the 1950s. At a time
when it was common for discs by black performers to be outsold by watereddown
cover versions by white acts, it was Berry’s original that white teenagers
bought, beating out cover attempts by Jim Lowe and Johnny Long, as well as
one by future country star Marty Robbins.
Beyond the issue of writing credits, Berry would maintain an ongoing association
with Alan Freed. After making his New York stage debut at Freed’s
all-star show at the Brooklyn Paramount theater during Labor Day weekend
1955, he would perform on several of Freed’s multi-artist tours and appear
with him in the quickie movie musicals Rock Rock Rock , Mister Rock and Roll, and Go Johnny Go . Berry had a substantial speaking role in the latter
fi lm.
Thanks to the stage chops he’d honed in the clubs of East St. Louis, Berry
quickly established himself as a magnetic, high-energy live performer, with
such memorable trademark stage moves as his famed duckwalk. On some
occasions, Berry would claim to have introduced the duckwalk during his
Brooklyn Paramount debut. But he would also claim to have originated it as
a child to entertain his mother and her friends.
Berry initially had trouble following up the crossover success of “Maybellene.”
“Roll Over Beethoven,” a highly original ode to rock and roll’s appeal
invoking the names of classical composers, reached number twenty-nine on
Billboard ’s pop chart in May 1956. But otherwise, the string of singles that
Berry released in 1955 and 1956—songs like “Too Much Monkey Business,”
“You Can’t Catch Me,” “Thirty Days,” and “No Money Down,” all
now acknowledged as classic examples of Berry’s genius—performed well
on the R&B charts, but failed to catch on in the more lucrative rock and roll
market.
If those songs were less commercially successful than their predecessors,
they were every bit as inventive and compelling, demonstrating Berry’s eye for
detail and knack for singular turns of phrase. “Too Much Monkey Business,”
for instance, cataloged an array of everyday irritations and injustices. If it
wasn’t exactly a protest song, it was certainly a masterful example of Berry’s
ability to use of humor to transcend life’s indignities.
The B-side of “Too Much Monkey Busines,” “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,”
was equally noteworthy. The song is often cited as rock’s fi rst black-pride
anthem, subtly acknowledging institutionalized racism while maintaining a
sunny sense of optimism.
In the fall of 1956, Berry split with his original touring band of Johnnie
Johnson and Ebby Hardy. Johnson and Hardy returned to the East St. Louis
club scene, although both would work with Berry in the studio and on stage
at various points in the future. Johnson’s piano work would remain prominent
on many of Berry’s future Chess releases, although pianists Lafayette
Leake and Otis Spann would also play on some Berry sessions. For rest of his
career, Berry would usually travel alone and use local pickup bands as backup—
an approach that would frustrate fans and critics to no end.
Berry’s chart fortunes turned around decisively in early 1957, when “School
Day”—an irresistible evocation of adolescent frustration and the transcendent
uplift of rock and roll—reached number fi ve on the Billboard pop chart.
The song’s success established Berry as a top draw on the live circuit, leading
to him playing no fewer than 240 one-nighters that year.
Over the next two and a half years, Chuck Berry scored an impressive run
of Top Ten hits—“Rock and Roll Music,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Carol,” and
the seemingly autobiographical “Johnny B. Goode”—that neatly encapsulated
the teenage experience and rock and roll’s mythic pull. His minor hits during this period—for example, “Sweet Little Rock and Roller,” “Almost Grown,”
and “Back in the U.S.A.”—were no less memorable.
“Back in the U.S.A.” was one of Berry’s most impressive achievements. A
vibrant ode to the artist’s homeland, written upon his return from his fi rst
tour of Australia, the song painted America as a day-glo wonderland of blaring
jukeboxes, fl ashing neon signs and twenty-four-hour burger joints. Its
original B-side, the slyly sentimental “Memphis,” was one of Berry’s most
poignant efforts, and became a Top Ten hit after disc jockeys began fl ipping
the single.
Berry also revealed an inclination for playful experimentalism that manifested
itself both in offbeat lyrical subject matter, such as the Italian American
themes of “Anthony Boy,” and the exotic musical elements heard in the Latin
excursions “Havana Moon” and “La Juanda.” But he wasn’t above padding
such early LPs as One Dozen Berrys (1958), After School Session (1958),
and Chuck Berry Is on Top (1959) with silly novelties and throwaway blues
numbers.
Berry toured extensively through the late 1950s, often performing on multiact
road shows alongside such fellow rock and roll pioneers as Buddy Holly,
the Everly Brothers, Bill Haley and the Comets, Little Richard, and Carl Perkins.
On one such package tour, a seventy-fi ve-day trek hosted by Alan Freed,
Berry was drawn into a rivalry with volatile piano pounder Jerry Lee Lewis,
which gave rise to some memorable but largely apocryphal anecdotes. On a
Boston date during that tour, fi ghts broke out in the audience during Berry’s
set. When the police turned on the theater’s house lights, Freed made some
unfl attering comments about the cops, which led to him being arrested for
inciting a riot.
Berry’s 1958 appearance at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival—an early
example of rock and roll being accorded respect from the high-brow jazz
world—was much calmer. The set, on which Berry was backed, somewhat
awkwardly, by Jack Teagarden’s ten-piece jazz band, was captured for posterity
in the acclaimed documentary fi lm Jazz on a Summer’s Day .
With nearly twenty chart hits between 1957 and 1960, Berry became Chess
Records’ best-selling artist, and the fi rst Chess act to cross over to sell large
quantities of records to white teenagers. Despite his success, Berry was still
subject to the fi nancial ripoffs and personal humiliations that routinely confronted
rock and roll performers at the time.
When Berry discovered that his fi rst road manager, Teddy Reig, was skimming
money from his live appearances, he immediately fi red Reig along with
manager Jack Hooke, and took control of his own business affairs. Such
experiences made a permanent imprint on Berry’s personality, making him
suspicious of outsiders and causing him to maintain an obsessive level of control
in fi nancial matters.
“Let me say that any man who can’t take care of his own money deserves
what he gets,” Berry later declared in a Rolling Stone interview.Berry’s frugal on-the-road habits—sometimes sleeping in his car rather than
hotels, and cooking meals on his own hotplate rather than dining in restaurants—
would soon become legendary. But they likely had as much to do with
a desire to avoid the indignities that faced an African American man traveling
alone in 1950s America as they did with saving money.

HAVE MERCY, JUDGE
Berry’s success allowed him the fi nancial independence that his parents had
always aspired to. In April 1957, he purchased thirty acres of land in rural
Wentzville, Missouri, about thirty miles west of St. Louis. There, he built
Berry Park, an amusement park complex that would open to the public in the
summer of 1961, encompassing a hotel, a nightclub, a golf course, an outdoor
bandstand, a recording studio, a guitar-shaped swimming pool, and Berry’s
fl eet of Cadillacs.
In 1958, Berry opened Club Bandstand in a largely white business district
of St. Louis. Not surprisingly, the presence of a racially integrated nightclub
owned by a successful black entertainer in a city with St. Louis’s troubled
racial history didn’t sit well with the local power brokers, and it didn’t take
long for Berry to come under the scrutiny of the authorities.
On December 1, 1959, following an engagement in El Paso, Texas, Berry
visited nearby Juarez, Mexico. There, he met Janice Escalanti, a fourteenyear-
old Native American waitress and sometime prostitute from Yuma, Arizona,
and hired her to work as a hat-check girl at Club Bandstand. Berry
brought her back to St. Louis, but fi red her after two weeks. On December 21,
Escalanti was arrested on a prostitution charge at a St. Louis hotel, leading to
charges being fi led against Berry for violating the Mann Act, which forbade
interstate transport of women for “immoral purposes.”
When the case fi rst came to trial, Berry was found guilty, but some overtly
racist courtroom remarks by the judge led to the verdict being overturned.
A second trial in October 1961 arrived at the same verdict, and Berry was
sentenced to three years in prison and a $10,000 fi ne.
Berry began serving his sentence on February 19, 1962. While in prison, he
took courses to earn his high school degree and continued to write songs. In
his absence, his infl uence continued to be felt in the rock and roll world. In early
1963, for instance, the Beach Boys scored a hit with “Surfi n’ U.S.A.,” a fairly
blatant rewrite of “Sweet Little Sixteen.” When Chess Records threatened
legal action, Berry was granted writing credit for the song.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a new generation of British guitar bands
was making the most of Berry’s infl uence, as well as covering his compositions
on a regular basis. In June 1963, for example, the Rolling Stones released
their fi rst single, an earnest cover of Berry’s “Come On,” which they would
follow with versions of nearly a dozen more Berry tunes. The Beatles also cut popular versions of “Rock and Roll Music” and “Roll Over Beethoven,”
while the Animals would dip into the Berry songbook more than half a dozen
times. Indeed, of the countless U.K. rock and roll combos who sprang to life
in the fi rst half of the 1960s—not to mention the legion of American garage
bands who would emulate them—it would be hard to fi nd many whose set list
didn’t include at least one Berry number.
After serving twenty months of his sentence at the Indiana Federal Prison,
Leavenworth Federal Prison in Kansas, and the Federal Medical Center in
Springfi eld, Missouri, Berry was released on his thirty-seventh birthday, October
18, 1963.
Although he would successfully resume his musical career following his
release, most observers agreed that Chuck Berry’s experiences with the law
left him bitter, distrustful, and suspicious of all but his closest friends. He felt,
with some justifi cation, that he had been unfairly targeted and persecuted by
a bigoted legal system, and hounded by the press.
“Never saw a man so changed,” observed rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins,
who’d shared bills with Berry in the past and worked with him again on his
British comeback tour in 1964. “He had been an easygoing guy before, the
kinda guy who’d jam in dressing rooms, sit and swap licks and jokes. In England
he was cold, real distant and bitter. It wasn’t just jail, it was those years
of one nighters, grinding it out like that can kill a man, but I fi gure it was
mostly jail.” 4
However much his experiences had affected his personality, they didn’t
diminish the quality of Berry’s songwriting. Between February 1964 and
March 1965, he placed six singles in the Billboard Top 100, including the
shaggy-dog tour de force “Nadine,” the rollicking “No Particular Place To
Go,” the witty, French-themed “You Never Can Tell,” and the poignantly
autobiographical “Promised Land,” which chronicles a cross-country journey
from Norfolk, Virginia, to California.
The latter song was one of Berry’s most impressive achievements, a richly
detailed, partially autobiographical account of a rock and roll pilgrim’s progress.
The song’s sense of aspiration and optimism was all the more impressive
in light of its author’s harsh experiences with his homeland’s darker side.
For a while, Berry was one of a small handful of American rock and rollers
to maintain chart success during the British Invasion. But 1965’s “Dear Dad”
would be his last chart entry for seven years.
In 1966, Berry left Chess to sign with Mercury Records. Although the deal
was a lucrative one for Berry, the move proved disastrous in nearly every
other respect. Where the small, family-owned Chess could accommodate the
artist’s idiosyncratic personality and contrary streak, Mercury’s more formal
corporate structure was a much less comfortable fi t. And without the sympathetic
studio treatment he received from the Chess brothers, Berry foundered
musically.
Berry’s four-year stint with Mercury began unpromisingly with Chuck Berry’s
Golden Hits , a pointless collection of lackluster remakes of his Chess
classics, and continued with such underwhelming LPs as Chuck Berry in
Memphis , From St. Louie to Frisco, and the bloated, jam-dominated Concerto
in B. Goode . Far better was 1967’s Live at the Fillmore , on which Berry
received backup from the Steve Miller Band and demonstrated that he was
still capable of turning in solid performances in the right circumstances. Otherwise,
his Mercury output mainly served to make Berry sound like a disengaged
relic of a bygone era.
It’s unfortunate that Berry’s recordings during this period were so shoddy,
since his series of well-received appearances at San Francisco’s Fillmore—a
revered bastion of the new hippie musical culture—demonstrated that he could
still appeal to the new underground rock audience. But Berry, still making
good money performing one-nighters, seemed largely unconcerned with reinventing
himself creatively or maintaining momentum as a contemporary artist.
Berry re-signed with Chess Records in 1970, and the change made for an
upswing in the quality of his output. The three studio LPs he released after his
return— Back Home, San Francisco Dues , and Bio —were something of a return
to form, adapting Berry’s sound somewhat to fi t changing times without
sacrifi cing his personality or songwriting style.
Berry’s reignited inspiration was evident on Back Home ’s hippie-themed
“Tulane,” whose tale of a pot-dealing couple adapted his storytelling approach
to the Woodstock era. Tulane’s boyfriend Johnny is busted, and fi nds himself
in court on the song’s sequel, “Have Mercy Judge.” That song, also included
on Back Home , was one of Berry’s more successful attempts to write in a
blues vein.
But Chess Records was no longer the small family operation that Berry had
originally known. The company had recently been sold to tape-manufacturing
giant GRT, and Chuck’s main mentor Leonard Chess had died of a heart
attack a few months prior to his return. Leonard’s brother Phil and son Marshall
would leave the company by 1972, and Berry would soon follow.
By then, a widespread resurgence of interest in 1950s rock and roll had
revitalized the careers of many vintage performers, and Berry found himself in
increased demand as a live act. The revival actually had actually begun to
gather steam in late 1969, when New York promoter Richard Nader staged a
pair of all-star concerts at Madison Square Garden, with a bill that included
Berry, Bill Haley, the Coasters, the Platters, and the Shirelles. Although Berry’s
sets were marred by business disputes with Nader, the shows were a smash,
and Nader continued to stage similar events around the country, often with
Berry on the bill.
Although Chess Records was on its last legs, Berry would score the biggest
hit of his career in 1972. That year, he released The London Chuck
Berry Sessions , which combined tracks recorded at a concert in Coventry, England, with studio recordings made with British players including Faces
members Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones. Although the album was patchy
and unmemorable, it spawned an unlikely smash single in an edited version of
the live “My Ding-A-Ling,” a sophomoric, double entendre–laden ode to
masturbation.
While “My Ding-A-Ling” (which Berry had fi rst recorded as “My Tambourine”
on his 1968 Mercury LP From St. Louie to Frisco ) credited Berry as writer,
the song was actually written and recorded by noted New Orleans R&B
bandleader Dave Bartholomew in 1952 and covered by the Bees as “Toy Bell”
the following year.
Whatever its pedigree, the lightweight novelty tune became the best-selling
single of Berry’s career in the summer of 1972, topping the pop charts on both
sides of the Atlantic. Adding to the irony was the fact that it kept “Burning
Love” by fellow 1950s icon Elvis Presley—who was then also in the midst of a
chart resurgence—out of the number one slot in the United States. In England,
the song’s risqué lyrics made it the fi rst number one song not to be performed
on the venerable TV pop institution Top of the Pops .
Veteran rock critic Robert Christgau noted the discomfort that the left-fi eld
hit had caused to many longtime Berry fans. “A lot of his raving fanatics are
mortifi ed,” Christgau wrote at the time. “We’ve always dreamed of another
big single for our hero—his last was ‘You Never Can Tell’ in the Beatle summer
of 1964—but ‘My Ding-a-Ling’ has been embarrassing us at concerts for
years, and not because we wouldn’t sing along. It was just dumb, inappropriate
to the sophistication of his new, collegiate audience. Anyway, that’s how
the rationalization went.”
“Obviously,” Christgau reasoned,
what we meant was that it wasn’t sophisticated enough for us—his other stuff
was so much better. But popularity has changed the song. I feel sure that it’s
delighting all the twelve-year-olds who get to fi gure out that they’ve snuck something
dirty onto the AM radio—a rock ‘n’ roll tradition that has been neglected
since the concept of dirty became so passé—because I’m fairly delighted myself.
Believe me, twenty-one thousand rock ‘n’ roll revivalists fi lling Madison Square
Garden to shout along with a fourth-grade wee-wee joke constitutes a cultural
event as impressive as it is odd, a magnifi cent and entirely apposite triumph in
Chuck Berry’s very own tradition. . . . Unless we somehow recycle the concept
of the great artist so that it supports Chuck Berry as well as it does Marcel
Proust, we might as well trash it altogether. 5
The London Chuck Berry Sessions produced another minor hit, a live version
of “Reelin’ and Rockin’ ” that reached the U.S. Top Thirty. But it and
“My Ding-A-Ling” marked Berry’s farewell to the charts. Thereafter, he
would focus the bulk of his musical energies on live performing. Through the
1970s, he was a regular presence on the rock and roll revival circuit, playing
numerous multi-act nostalgia concerts, including the Richard Nader concerts
that were fi lmed for the popular 1973 theatrical documentary Let the Good Times Roll . He also appeared as himself in American Hot Wax , a fi ctionalized
1978 Alan Freed biopic whose narrative climaxed with the Brooklyn Paramount
shows that had helped to make Berry a star.
ALL ALONE
By now, Berry had developed a reputation for delivering sloppy, indifferent
live performances, usually backed by local pickup bands whom he’d rarely
met (let alone rehearsed with) before taking the stage. His standard touring
method involved traveling alone with his guitar to gigs, where his standard
performance contract called for promoters to provide two Fender Dual Showman
amplifi ers, a backup band, and payment in cash prior to the show. Promoters
who violated the terms of the contract, even inadvertently, found themselves
forced to pay additional fi nes before Berry would agree to perform.
Berry’s cut-rate touring methods provided amusing and harrowing anecdotes
for multiple generations of musicians who’d found themselves playing
behind the prickly legend. One of those was Bruce Springsteen, who in the
1986 Berry documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll related his early experience
of being hired to play guitar behind Berry, who showed up alone fi ve
minutes before show time, collected his cash, unpacked his guitar on stage,
and barely acknowledged the musicians, who, in lieu of a set list, were left to
pick up their cues from Berry’s inscrutable onstage signals.
While some artists might fi nd that story unfl attering, Berry was proud
enough to quote Springsteen’s anecdote as the introduction to his autobiography.
Springsteen, by the way, would back Berry once more, at a 1995 concert
inaugurating the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Chuck Berry would release only more album of new material in the twentieth
century. 1979’s Rockit was recorded in two days in Berry Park’s in-house
studio with several longtime cohorts including Johnnie Johnson. Berry delivered
the fi nished album to Atco Records, accepting no A&R input from the
label. Rockit was solid and workmanlike if not particularly inspired, and featured
some scattered fl ashes of Berry’s original wit and energy, including, the
sly “Oh What a Thrill.”
Not long after Rockit ’s release, Berry pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion
and fi ling false tax returns. The charges stemmed from his habit of taking
undocumented cash payments for his live performances. The judge suspended
his original three-year sentence, and instead sentenced Berry to serve four
months in prison and perform 1,000 hours of community service. Berry would
end up spending just over three months at Lompoc Prison Camp in California.
Just three days before his sentencing, Berry had performed at the White
House, as part of an event staged by the Black Music Association.
While serving his sentence at Lompoc, Berry began writing his version of
his life story, which would be published in 1987 as Chuck Berry: The Autobiography
. The book presented a colorful account of the author’s musical, legal, and sexual exploits, but glossed over many of his life’s more troublesome
issues, and ultimately did little to reveal what really made him tick.
In 1986—the same year that he became one of the new Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame’s fi rst set of inductees—Berry was honored with a pair of star-studded
sixtieth-birthday concerts that became the jumping-off point for Hail! Hail!
Rock ‘n’ Roll , a high-profi le feature fi lm documentary that chronicled the
shows and delineated Berry’s musical legacy. The shows took place at St. Louis’s
Fox Theater, a venue that had once refused entrance to a young Berry and
his father due to their skin color.
Rolling Stone Keith Richards, perhaps the most prominent acolyte of Berry’s
guitar style, signed on as the event’s musical director. Richards assembled
a fi rst-rate band, with Johnnie Johnson on piano, determined to present his
idol’s songs with the respect they deserved.
But Berry, uncomfortable ceding control to others, had other ideas. He
clashed constantly with Richards, with whom he’d tangled in the past (he’d
punched Richards in the face at a New York show in 1981). Further tensions
erupted between Berry and the fi lm crew that director Taylor Hackford had
assembled to document the shows.
“I signed on to this as a celebration of somebody who had had a major impact
on our lives,” Hackford said twenty years later, on the occasion of the fi lm’s
DVD release. “So we went there to celebrate him, and we had every expectation
to expect a lot of cooperation. . . . We found quite a different situation.” 6
Berry reportedly ate up a substantial percentage of the fi lm’s $3 million
budget by demanding daily cash payments just to show up for fi lming, despite
being one of the fi lm’s producers. When the fi lmmakers and Berry visited a
prison where he’d served time on his armed robbery conviction, the presence
of Berry’s provocatively attired girlfriend nearly drove the prisoners to riot,
until Berry calmed the captives by playing for them. Although Hackford captured
the dramatic incident on fi lm, Berry refused to allow the director to use
the footage in the fi lm.
When it came time for the concerts, Berry—who’d lost much of his voice
arguing with Richards during rehearsals—played out of tune, as well as changing
arrangements and keys in mid-song, throwing the carefully rehearsed allstar
backup band into chaos.
Most who witnessed the shows described them as disasters. But some substantial
post-production retooling—including Berry rerecording his vocals in
the studio, for which he charged the producers once again—made the performances
presentable enough for the fi lm and its soundtrack album.
Despite being put through the wringer by his subject, Hackford couldn’t
bring himself to speak ill of Berry. The director also suggested that no fi lm
could ever really do justice to Berry’s essence.
“Nobody is ever gonna know what really goes on inside that head,” Hackford
stated. “No one’s ever gonna do the entire picture of Chuck Berry because
it’s just too deep and dark.”

In the fi lm, Richards expressed a similar mixture of irritation and fondness.
Despite his frustrations working with Berry, Richards was thrilled to
have the opportunity to work with Johnson, who had retired from music and
was driving a van for the elderly at the time.
“I knew Johnnie and Chuck hadn’t been together for years and years, and I
didn’t honestly know if Johnnie was still playing,” Richards recalled. “The most
surprising thing was Chuck said, ‘Yeah, he’s in town, I’ll give him a call.’ ” 8
“Johnnie had amazing simpatico. He had a way of slipping into a song, an
innate feel for complementing the guitar,” Richards said. “I was fascinated by
those huge hands, doing such incredibly precise, delicate work. I always compared
(his fi ngers) to a bunch of overripe bananas. But he could do amazing
things with those bananas.”
Beyond its troubled production process and fl awed concert performances,
Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll! ’s blend of live footage, interviews, and candid footage
of Berry’s contentious interactions with Richards proved to be both a
heartfelt tribute to, and a revealing portrait of, its prickly subject. Its highlights
included some new performances fi lmed at the long-shuttered Cosmopolitan
Club, interview footage shot at the now-crumbling Berry Park and
enthusiastic testimonials from the likes of Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Bruce
Springsteen, and even old rival Jerry Lee Lewis, who revealed that his own
mother preferred Berry’s music to her son’s.

The Diva and the Dynamos: Little Richard, Ruth Brown, and
Bo Diddley
Rhythm and blues and rock and roll brought forth a host of singular talents
throughout the 1950s. Some, like Little Richard and Bo Diddley, were daring
iconoclasts who broke or bent musical conventions to shape their own unique
styles. Others, like Ruth Brown, were more conservative but still signifi cant
transitional fi gures bridging the gap between pre-rock popular music and the
new big-beat sound.
Little Richard was born Richard Wayne Penniman in Macon, Georgia, in
1932. His early recordings (1951–54) were unexceptional blues numbers, but
in 1955 Little Richard made an unexpected leap into fl at-out rock and roll with
“Tutti Frutti.” Much infl uenced by female gospel shouters like Sister Rosetta
Tharpe, Richard seemed to be singing himself hoarse on this raving, almost
nonsensical rocker that not only reached number two R&B but crashed into
the Pop Top Twenty.
“Tutti Frutti” spawned a series of similar-sounding but no less potent followups:
“Long Tall Sally,” “Rip It Up,” and “Lucille” were all number one R&B hits.
A cross-over sensation, Little Richard performed the title song in the 1956
fi lm The Girl Can’t Help It and thrilled audiences with his campy, high-energy
stage shows. Suddenly, in late 1957, he left the music business to enter an
Alabama Bible college; his subsequent gospel recordings passed unnoticed.
But in 1962 he returned to rock and roll for a rapturously received U.K. tour,
and two years later the Beatles’ cover of “Long Tall Sally” reintroduced his
classic sound to a new generation. Although he never had another major hit
record, his original seismic impact was enough to earn Little Richard a place
among the fi rst group of artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in 1986.
There was nothing especially wild or unpredictable in the blues and ballad
singing of Ruth Brown. But she projected a sassy, proto-feminist energy on
infectiously danceable songs like her number one R&B classic “Mama, He
Treats Your Daughter Mean.” In the decade from 1949 to 1959, Brown accumulated
twenty Top Ten R&B hits including the chart-toppers “Teardrops
from My Eyes,” “5-10-15 Hours,” and “Oh What a Dream.” Her label, Atlantic
Records, became known in the music industry as “The House That Ruth Built.”
None of these Ruth Brown recordings reached the Pop Top Forty, however,
due in part to the release of competing cover versions on bigger labels. In her
autobiography, Brown recalled that throughout her hit-making period she
was forced to stand by as white singers copied her note for note and were
featured on top television shows from which she was excluded.
Brown’s career declined after 1960, and eventually one of the leading female
stars of 1950s R&B was forced to seek work as a home health care aide.
But beginning in the late 1970s Ruth Brown embarked on a new career in
musical theater, including roles in the Broadway revue Black and Blue (for
which she won a Tony Award) and in the John Waters fi lm Hairspray . This exposure
led to a new recording contract with Fantasy Records and in 1989 her
album Blues on Broadway won the Grammy Award for Best Female Jazz Vocal
Performance. The singer also waged a protracted struggle on behalf of royalty
rights for veteran rhythm and blues artists, embodied by her own personal
legal battle with Atlantic Records. Ruth’s determined efforts led to the creation
of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, with funding from Atlantic and other
major labels. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
Following surgery in October 2006, Ruth Brown suffered a heart attack and a
stroke; she died a few weeks later, on November 17, at age seventy-eight.
On Bo Diddley’s fi rst self-titled hit “Bo Diddley” (which reached number
two R&B in 1955), the singer/guitarist popularized an African-based rhythm
pattern soon known as “the Bo Diddley beat.” This beat became the basis for
rock and roll classics ranging from “Not Fade Away” by Buddy Holly and “Willie
and the Hand Jive” by Johnny Otis to the Who’s “Magic Bus” and Bruce
Springsteen’s “She’s the One.” On “Say Man” and “Who Do You Love,” Bo
Diddley combined rock and roll music with a type of African American street
slang known as “the dozens.” His ritualized bragging and playful insults on
these songs made him an early progenitor of rap.
He also designed and built his own rectangular-shaped guitars, constructed
his own home recording studio, and was an early experimenter with futuristic
guitar effects like sustain and feedback. In an essay written a few years after
the artist’s 1987 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Robert Palmer
called Bo Diddley “a singularly important catalyst in one of the most far-reaching
transformations of post-World War II American music” and “one of the most
versatile, innovative, and complete musical talents of our time.”

Some of the fi lm’s most compelling moments were provided by Berry’s
onscreen refusal to address such topics as his prison terms and his extramarital
affairs. At one point, he angrily cuts his wife off in mid-interview.
In one memorable scene shot during the concert rehearsals, Berry and Richards
clash over the chords for “Carol,” which the Rolling Stones covered
early in their career. In another segment, Richards accompanies Berry on a
casual rendition of the pop standard “I’m Through with Love,” and Berry
graciously compliments Richards on his guitar work. That brief, unguarded
moment provides a rare glimpse into a more gentle, generous side that’s sometimes
been described by Berry’s close friends but rarely displayed in public.
Berry was in more legal jeopardy in 1990, when several women alleged that
he had videotaped them in the bathrooms at Berry Park and the Berry-owned
Southern Air restaurant in Wentzville. When a former employee alleged that
Berry had been traffi cking in cocaine, Berry’s estate was raided by DEA agents
who confi scated marijuana, hashish, and various pornographic fi lms and videotapes.
But Berry denied the cocaine charge, and no evidence was ever presented
to suggest that it had any merit.
In November 2000, just a few days before Berry was awarded a prestigious
Kennedy Center Honor in Washington, D.C., Johnnie Johnson sued Berry,
claiming co-authorship of fi fty-seven vintage Berry songs. According to many
reports, the lawsuit was initially inspired by observations that Keith Richards
had made in Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll , regarding Johnson’s neglected contributions
to Berry’s music. But a judge ruled that too much time had passed
since the songs were written, and the matter never came to trial.
While Johnson wasn’t able to collect on his claims of co-writing Berry’s
songs, his appearance in Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll helped to spark a lateblooming
career resurgence for the veteran musician. The resulting attention
led to him releasing a series of solo albums—including 1992’s Johnnie B. Bad ,
on which Richards produced two tracks—and performing as a sideman on
high-profi le projects with a variety of artists.
In addition to playing on Richards’s 1988 solo debut Talk Is Cheap , Johnson
was featured on subsequent albums by Eric Clapton, Aerosmith, Bo Diddley,
Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Al Kooper, Styx, Susan Tedeschi, and
George Thorogood. Johnson also played live shows fronting his own band,
up until his death on April 13, 2005. One of his last live appearances was sitting
in with the Rolling Stones to play “Honky Tonk Women” on a Houston
gig during their 2003 tour.

Regardless of the controversies that continue to surround him, Berry’s musical
contributions continued to be widely honored, and his classic work continued
to inspire new generations of listeners. MCA’s acquisition of the Chess
catalog in the 1980s allowed Berry’s greatest recordings to gain new exposure
in the CD format, thanks to a lengthy series of digital reissues, including an
acclaimed 1989 box set.
But Berry’s ongoing prestige as one of rock and roll’s living legends and elder
statesmen didn’t alter his approach to his musical career. He’s maintained his
working routine, continuing to play an endless stream of half-hearted onenighters
with an equally endless series of subpar pickup bands. Other than the
Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll soundtrack album, he released no new music in the
quarter-century that followed Rockit ; sporadic talk of new material has
yielded no tangible results as of this writing, although new songs have occasionally
found their way into Berry’s live sets.
St. Louis residents have had regular opportunities to see Berry perform lowkey
club gigs in his hometown, where he still plays regularly at a club called
Blueberry Hill, performing in the club’s Duck Room (named after his famous
stage walk) backed by a regular group of musicians familiar with his material
as well as his moods.
Otherwise, Berry, in his sixth decade in music and his eighth decade of life,
continues to operate, for better or worse, on his own terms, continuing to
exasperate club owners and sidemen as well as his own fans, who continue to
hold out hope of catching him on a good night. Considering the magnitude of
his infl uence and the life-affi rming brilliance of his greatest music, one can
hardly fault them for keeping the faith.
Regardless of what Chuck Berry does in the rest of his time on Earth, his
music has already transcended the bounds of his home planet. When NASA
scientists assembled a record of music to travel on its Voyager I spacecraft to
deliver the sounds of the human race to alien civilizations, the space agency
chose Berry’s original Chess version “Johnny B. Goode” to represent rock and
roll alongside pieces by Bach, Mozart, and Stravinsky and ethnic recordings
from around the world. As if his earthly achievements weren’t impressive
enough, Berry is now also the fi rst rocker in outer space.

TIMELINE
December 31, 1952
Pianist Johnnie Johnson hires Chuck Berry to fi ll in with his band, Sir John’s Trio, for
a New Year’s Eve gig at the Cosmopolitan Club in East St. Louis.
May 1, 1955
Chuck Berry signs with Chess Records.
May 21, 1955
Chuck Berry records “Maybellene” as his fi rst Chess single.
August 1, 1955
“Maybellene” reaches number fi ve on Billboard ’s pop chart.
September 1955
Berry makes his New York stage debut at disc jockey Alan Freed’s all-star show at the
Brooklyn Paramount theater.
May 1, 1957
Chuck Berry’s fi rst album, After School Session , is released.
June 14, 1958
“Johnny B. Goode” enters the Top Ten.
May 31, 1961
Chuck Berry’s entertainment complex Berry Park opens in the St. Louis suburb of
Wentzville, Missouri.
February 19, 1962
Berry begins serving a prison sentence for violating the Mann Act.
October 18, 1963
Berry is released from prison.
May 25, 1963
The Beach Boys score their fi rst Top Ten hit with “Surfi n’ USA,” Brian Wilson’s reworking
of Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen.”
June 1, 1966
Chuck Berry leaves Chess to sign with Mercury Records.
October 21, 1972
Chuck Berry achieves the biggest-selling single of Berry’s career with the risqué novelty
song “My Ding-A-Ling.”
March 1, 1978
American Hot Wax , a fi lm biography of seminal rock and roll disc jockey Alan Freed,
with Berry playing himself, premiers.
June 1, 1979
Chuck Berry performs at the White House at the request of President Jimmy Carter, a
month before he begins serving a four-month sentence for income tax evasion. While
in prison, Berry begins writing his autobiography.
February 26, 1985
Chuck Berry receives a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Twenty-Seventh Annual
Grammy Awards. He is cited as “one of the most infl uential and creative innovators
in the history of American popular music.”
January 23, 1986
Chuck Berry becomes one of the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s fi rst set of inductees.
He’s inducted by Keith Richards, who in his induction speech confesses to borrowing
every guitar lick Berry’s ever played.
October 8, 1987
Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll , director Taylor Hackford’s documentary tribute to Berry,
with Keith Richards as musical director, makes its theatrical debut.
November 2000
Chuck Berry receives a prestigious Kennedy Center Honor in Washington, DC.