Who is chuck berry

Country-western music was big at the time, so Berry decided to use some of the riffs and create his own unique hillbilly sound. Since country was popular with white people, they began to come to the shows, and the audience was at some points almost 40 percent white. Later in , Berry went on a road trip to Chicago, where he chanced upon a club where his idol, Muddy Waters, was performing.

He arrived late and only heard the last song, but when it was over he got the attention of Waters and asked him who to see about making a record. Yeah, Chess Records over on Forty-seventh and Cottage.

It cemented his place in rock history and led to fame in the s. His popularity garnered him television and movie appearances and he toured frequently. At the height of his success, Berry was a year-old black man singing to a mostly white, teenage audience. A lot of people have done Chuck Berry songs, but to get that feel is really hard. It's the rock and roll thing--the push-pull and the rhythm of it.

His name is Chuck Berry. It was beautiful, effortless, and his timing was perfection. He is rhythm supreme. He plays that lovely double-string stuff, which I got down a long time ago, but I'm still getting the hang of. Later I realized why he played that way--because of the sheer physical size of the guy.

I mean, he makes one of those big Gibsons look like a ukulele! Why not keep doing it? They spent five days in county jail before Berry was allowed to call his father. Berry told the authorities everything. But these were young black men who had been terribly foolish. The trial lasted 21 minutes, and the judge sentenced each adolescent to 10 years, the maximum allowed.

In Algoa, Berry made friends with a prison ringleader, and that helped keep him safe. Black and white inmates were housed in separate dormitories, governed respectively by black and white guards. It was compulsory to call the white guards sir, and black inmates received greater punishments for infractions than whites, and fewer privileges.

Berry organized a singing quartet for church services Berry sang bass and took up boxing, traveling to St. Louis for a Golden Gloves tournament. He won a medal for being the heavyweight-novice runner-up from Algoa — but in the championship bout, he got knocked out by a bigger man, leading him to quit the ring.

When 30 white inmates noticed, they turned into a mob and rushed for Berry. He escaped through a hall, but he and the woman had to avoid each other after the incident.

A model inmate, Berry was paroled three years into his sentence, on October 18th, — his 21st birthday. He returned home to St. Louis and resolved to do better, to find work and romance. He started by doing carpentry with his father and made a down payment on a Buick Roadmaster. He was immediately attracted.

He spent all his spare money on her that day and, come evening, drove her around in his Roadmaster. He called her by the endearment Toddy. By this time, he had also acquired his own nickname: Chuck. He was taken by her kindness as much as her beauty. Berry wrote that, early in the marriage, every night was a time of new sexual activities; he was able to indulge fantasies and fetishes with her.

Though he was candid about it at points in his autobiography, he was also fiercely protective and private at other times. Berry, in fact, strayed from fidelity maybe countless times, and more than once, it led to the biggest troubles and humiliations of his life. The encounters and affairs started early. Because Themetta worked some hours daily that Berry did not, the time apart left him free to ramble the neighborhood, where one woman caught his eye.

He admitted it, in shame, to Themetta that same night. Berry worked for a time as a janitor and later studied to become a hairdresser. By the time Berry first played St. Louis clubs, big bands had largely faded, due in part to the expense of taking them on the road. Also, smaller ensembles could accomplish the same volume and effect with electric instrumentation.

In the early s, St. Sounds became punchier, crooning turned much sexier, and both worked well in smaller dim-lit clubs where bands played for dancers and lovers. The shows drew big crowds — black patrons were curious about the guy who sang hillbilly songs. Berry knew he wanted to make records. In May , he drove to Chicago with a friend. After the show, he asked Waters who he should see about making records.

The next morning, Berry approached Leonard as he was entering the studio building. Chess was impressed with his enthusiasm but told him he needed to hear some new music. Berry went back to St. Writer Glenn C. There had also been a jazzy version by blues singer Bumble Bee Slim in Whatever the case, Berry returned to Chess a week later with a demo of his four new songs.

It was a funny but complicated narrative about a man racing a woman in her Coupe Deville Cadillac with his V8 Ford. It would become the most famous and influential guitar break in history. Chess knew straightaway it was unlike anything else on radio. The term had been around for several years, and many artists — including Fats Domino and Bill Haley — had already made music under its umbrella.

It also inflamed cultural watchdogs who saw the music as incitement to crime and riots, and, more fearfully, as a gateway to race-mixing. He wrote about cars as symbols of freedom and acquisition; they afforded autonomy and a private place to listen to the new music while also looking for, and making, love. Teenagers had more money, license, leeway, and that metamorphosed into political capital.

An age of deference was ending. More important was how Berry said these things, the language he used. It was poetic, vivid, sometimes hilarious and sexy, but also implicitly threatening — and utterly original. I thought he was a white hillbilly. Little did I know he was a great poet too. Only later did I realize how hard it is to write those kind of lyrics. Right out of the gate, before the song was even pressed as a single, he lost two-thirds of the songwriting credit to people who had nothing to do with its composition though one of the people who appropriated credit, Alan Freed, also did a great deal to make the song a hit.

They gave me the first chance. By the late s Berry was an established star with several hit records, film appearances, and a profitable touring schedule.

In , however, his career was derailed when Berry was convicted of violating the Mann Act for allegedly transporting an underage girl across state lines for immoral purposes, a charge that Berry still disputes. After his release in Berry had a string of hits though none reached the popularity of his earlier recordings. By the s he was primarily in demand for rock and roll revival shows where he played his past hits. He continued touring but in his insistence on being paid in cash led to a third jail sentence of four months for tax evasion.

Charles, Missouri. They played at local Black nightclubs in St. Louis, and Berry quickly developed a reputation for his lively showmanship. At the end of , he met Jonnie Johnson, a local jazz pianist, and joined his band, the Sir John's Trio.

Berry revitalized the band and introduced upbeat country numbers into the band's repertoire of jazz and pop music. They played at the Cosmopolitan, an upscale Black nightclub in East St. Louis, which began attracting white patrons. In the mids, Berry began taking road trips to Chicago, the Midwest capital of Black music, in search of a record contract.

Early in , he met the legendary blues musician Muddy Waters , who suggested that Berry go meet with Chess Records. A few weeks later, Berry wrote and recorded a song called "Maybellene" and took it to the executives at Chess. They immediately offered him a contract; within months, "Maybellene" had reached No. With its unique blend of a rhythm and blues beat, country guitar licks and the flavor of Chicago blues and narrative storytelling, many music historians consider "Maybellene" the first true rock 'n' roll song.

Berry quickly followed with a slew of other unique singles that continued to carve out the new genre of rock 'n' roll: "Roll Over, Beethoven," "Too Much Monkey Business" and "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," among others. In the late s, songs such as "Johnny B. Goode," "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Carol" all managed to crack the Top 10 of the pop charts by achieving equal popularity with youths on both sides of the racial divide.

Berry's soaring music career was derailed again in when he was convicted under the Mann Act of illegally transporting a woman across state lines for "immoral purposes.

The next year, while traveling in Mexico, he had met a year-old waitress—and sometimes prostitute—and brought her back to St. Louis to work at his club.

However, he fired her only weeks later, and when she was then arrested for prostitution, charges were pressed against Berry that ended with him spending yet another 20 months in jail. When Berry was released from prison in , he picked up right where he left off, writing and recording popular and innovative songs.

Carl Perkins, his friend and partner on a British concert tour, observed, "Never saw a man so changed. He had been an easygoing guy before, the kinda guy who'd jam in dressing rooms, sit and swap licks and jokes.