Rock 'n' roll legend Chuck Berry dies at 90
He was instrumental in the early years of rock ’n’ roll with his showmanship, storytelling and such hits as ‘Johnny B. Goode.’
Chuck Berry, the perpetual wild man of rock music who helped define its rebellious spirit in the 1950s and was the sly poet laureate of songs about girls, cars, school and even the “any old way you choose it” vitality of the music itself, died Saturday at his home just west of St. Louis. He was 90.
St. Charles County, Mo., police announced his death in a Facebook post, saying officers responded to a medical emergency at Berry’s home, administered lifesaving techniques but could not revive him. No further information was available.
“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,” reads Berry’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its inaugural class in 1986.
His songs and the boisterous performance standards he set directly influenced the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named him No. 6 on its list of the greatest guitarists of all time. Berry so embodied the American rock tradition that his recording of “Johnny B. Goode” was included on a disc launched into space on the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1977.
Even after being acclaimed as a rock legend, Berry remained an indefatigable performer, playing concerts all over the world well into his 80s.
Despite John Lennon’s oft-quoted quip — “If you tried to give rock-and-roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’ “— Berry was an unlikely idol for the burgeoning teen subculture he sang about at the dawn of the rock era.
He was 30, married and the father of two when he made his first recording, “Maybellene” in 1955. The song charted No. 1 on Billboard’s rhythm-and-blues chart and No. 5 on the pop music charts.
It was soon followed by “Rock and Roll Music” (“it’s got a backbeat, you can’t lose it”) and “Sweet Little Sixteen,” whose astute reference to the teen-oriented TV show “American Bandstand” (“Well, they’ll be rockin’ on Bandstand, Philadelphia, P.A.”) helped him connect to adolescent record-buyers.
With his lithe, athletic body, high cheekbones and perfectly pomaded hair, Berry personified the dangerous appeal of rock. He’d grin salaciously and telegraph the lyrics with a wideeyed, almost childlike exuberance, then shoot across the stage, unleashing a staccato burst of bright, blaring guitar notes.
When he went into his signature “duck walk,” his legs seemed to be made of rubber, and his whole body moved with clocklike precision — the visual statement of his music’s kinetic energy.
Berry was credited with penning more than 100 songs, the best known of which used carefully crafted rhymes and offered tightly written vignettes about American life. They became an influential part of the national soundtrack for generations of listeners and practitioners.
“Back in the U.S.A.” (1959) delighted in an America where “hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day.” And “School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes the Bell)” (1957), written about the overcrowded St. Louis schools of Berry’s youth, became an anthem for bored, restless kids everywhere.
The Beach Boys had a hit record with “Surfin’ USA” (1963), its melody borrowed without credit from “Sweet Little Sixteen.” The Beatles began their first U.S. concert, at the Washington Coliseum, with “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956).
Perhaps the most performed of his songs was “Johnny B. Goode” (1957). Its storyline embodied Berry’s experience as an African-American born into segregation who lived to see “his name in lights.”
“I’d been told my grandfather lived ‘back up in the woods among the evergreens’ in a log cabin,” Berry wrote in his self-titled 1987 memoir. “I revived the era with a story about a ‘colored boy named Johnny B. Goode.’ ”
Berry said he knew the song could have a wider appeal. “I thought it would seem biased to my white fans to say ‘colored boy’ so I changed it to ‘country boy,’ “he added.
In an interview this year, rock historian Albin Zak called Berry a “very literate” wordsmith but that more important was the “durability” of his songs.
“In early rock-and-roll, there were so many one-hit wonders, but Chuck had so many hits that he was one of the most recognizable stars in the business,” Zak said. “When rock became solidified in 1964 and the British invasion comes along with bands like the Beatles and Rolling Stones performing Chuck Berry songs, it seals the deal on the vitality of that repertoire. His music became tradition at that point.”
In 1987, in the wake of his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Berry released his memoir and was the subject of “Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a documentary and concert film directed by Taylor Hackford and featuring guest performers including Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Linda Ronstadt.
At the time, Berry said he was wary of accepting a crown — bestowed by critics or peers — as “king” of rock music.
“It’s not me to toot my horn,” he said. “The minute you toot your horn, it seems like society will try and disconnect your battery. And if you do not toot your horn, they’ll try their darnedest to give you a horn to toot, or say that you should have a horn.”
Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born on Oct. 18, 1926, in St. Louis. His father was a carpenter and handyman.
Although his parents and three of his sisters sang in a Baptist choir, Berry’s own youthful tastes gravitated to more secular pop music. He was 14 when he began playing guitar and performing at parties, but that was interrupted by a three-year stint in reform school for his role in a bungled armed robbery.
After his release, he worked for his father and on an automobile assembly line while studying for a career in hairdressing. On weekends, he sang at the Cosmopolitan Club in East St. Louis, Ill..
Berry used a tape recorder to work on his songwriting, and at the urging of blues legend Muddy Waters, he took his demo tapes to Chess Records, the Chicago label that specialized in urban rhythm-and-blues. Owner Leonard Chess was impressed by “Ida May,” a country-and-western-styled tune, and said he would allow Berry to record it if he would change the name to “Maybellene.”
The song’s countrified style and Berry’s nonbluesy intonation reportedly led many disc jockeys to assume he was white, and the song’s popularity with white record-buyers helped spur his quick rise in the music industry.
His burgeoning career was nearly derailed in 1959, when he was arrested on a federal charge of taking a 14-yearold girl across state lines for immoral purposes. He claimed that he didn’t know the girl’s age and had hired her to work as a hat-check girl in his nightclub. Berry eventually served 18 months of a three-year sentence and paid a $10,000 fine.
He was released in 1963, soon to find his career overtaken by a second wave of rockers and the so-called British invasion of bands, such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He rebounded quickly in the music scene, but at times continued to be drawn into the headlines by legal troubles.
In 1979, he served four months in federal prison for tax evasion. And in 1989, he was hit with a class action suit by women who claimed he secretly videotaped them in the restroom of his St. Louis restaurant. Berry denied any wrongdoing but settled out of court in 1995 for $1.5 million.
In 1948, Berry married Themetta Suggs. Information on survivors was not immediately available.