Roll over Beethoven...

Chuck Berry

Chuck BerryCharles Edward Anderson Berry (born October 18 October 18 is the 291st day of the year (292nd in Leap years). There are 74 days remaining. Events 1009 - The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by the "mad" Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock.
..... Click the link for more information. , 1926 1926 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). Events

January-April
January 1 - Ireland's first regular radio service, 2RN (later Radio Ã?ireann), begins broadcasting.
January 8 - Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud becomes the King of Hejaz
January 12 - Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll premiere their radio program Sam 'n' Henry, in which the two white performers portrayed two black characters from Harlem looking for extra money during the Depression...... Click the link for more information. ), better known as Chuck Berry, is a highly influential American United States of Americaâ??also referred to as 'the United States', 'the US', 'the USA', 'America' (more loosely), 'the States' (colloquially), and 'Columbia' (poetically)â??is a federal republic of 50 states, located primarily in central North America. The United States has land borders with Canada and Mexico, and territorial water boundaries with Canada, Russia and the Bahamas.
..... Click the link for more information. guitarist guitar is a stringed musical instrument. It is generally played with the fingers of the left hand [1]. The right hand plucks the strings with either the fingers or a plectrum, (guitar pick). The sound is produced by vibrating strings, which in turn resonate the body and neck.

Guitars have a body (hollow in acoustic guitars, solid in most electric guitars) and a neck. Typically, a headstock extends from the neck for tuning.
..... Click the link for more information. , singer singer or vocalist is a type of musician who uses his or her voice as an instrument to make music.

A lead singer (in barbershop music simply called a lead) is one who sings the primary vocals of a song, as opposed to a backup singer who sings backup vocal(s) to a song or harmonies to the lead singer.
..... Click the link for more information. and composer composer is a person who writes music. The term refers particularly to someone who writes music in some type of musical notation, thus allowing others to perform the music. This distinguishes the composer from a musician who improvises. However, a person may be called a composer without creating music in documentary form, since not all musical genres rely on written notation. In this context, the composer is the originator of the music, and usually its first performer. Later performers then repeat the musical composition they have heard.
..... Click the link for more information. . Berry was born in St. Louis, Missouri Missouri, named after the Missouri Siouan Indian tribe meaning "canoe", is a Southern U.S. state in the United States with Jefferson City as its capital. It is a "Border State", with some Northern, Eastern, and Southern cultural influences. The state's nickname is the Show-Me State; the U.S. Post Office abbreviation for Missouri is MO and the state public university's main branch is located in Columbia. The Mississippi and Missouri rivers are the two large rivers which flow through this state.
..... Click the link for more information. and was part of the first group to be inducted into the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum and institution in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, dedicated, as the name suggests, to recording the history of some of the best-known and most influential rock and roll performers, producers, and other people who have in some major way influenced the industry.
..... Click the link for more information. on its opening in 1986. He received Kennedy Center Honors The Kennedy Center Honors have been awarded annually, since 1978 by the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The honorees are recognized for their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts.

Nominations are made to the Board of Trustees by past honorees and members of the center's national artists committee.
..... Click the link for more information. in 2000. Biography As a young man, Berry served a three-year term in reform school for attempted burglary. He was later arrested for stealing a car. Chuck Berry had been playing a form of the "blues" since his teens and by early 1953 was performing with "Sir John's Trio," a band that played at a popular club in St. Louis. In May of 1955, he traveled to Chicago where he met Muddy Waters McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1915 â?? April 30, 1983), better known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician and is generally considered "the father of Chicago blues."

Born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, Waters was first recorded on a Mississippi Delta plantation by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1940.
..... Click the link for more information. who suggested he contact Chess Records Chess Records was an American record label, based in Chicago, Illinois. It was run by the brothers Leonard Chess and Phil Chess. One of the most important record labels in rock and roll history, Chess Records released dozens of singles and albums now regarded as cornerstones of rock music, by the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry Bo Diddley and others.
..... Click the link for more information. . Signed to a contract, that September he released a unique version of the Bob Wills James Robert (Bob) Wills (March 6, 1905 â?? May 13, 1975) was an American country musician and songwriter.

He was born near Kosse, Texas; his father was a fiddle player who taught the young Wills to play the fiddle and the mandolin. In his 20s 'Bob' attended barber school, got married, and moved to Turkey, Texas, to be a barber. He regularly entered fiddle contests in West Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma and soon the fiddle had replaced the scissors in the young Wills' imagination. He headed to Fort Worth to pursue a career in music.
..... Click the link for more information. song, "Ida Red", under the title, "Maybellene." The song eventually peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis. Its most famous chart, the "Billboard Hot 100", ranks the top 100 songs regardless of genre and is frequently used as the standard measure for ranking songs in the United States.
..... Click the link for more information. charts. At the end of June, 1956 his song "Roll Over Beethoven "Roll Over Beethoven" is a 1956 hit single by Chuck Berry, notable as one of the earliest definitive rock and roll recordings. It was later covered by The Beatles for the album With the Beatles and by the Electric Light Orchestra.
..... Click the link for more information. " reached No. 29 on the Billboard charts. In the fall of 1957, Berry joined the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936â??February 3, 1959), better known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer, songwriter, and a pioneer of Rock and Roll. The change of spelling of Holley to Holly came about because of an error in a contract he was asked to sign, listing him as Buddy Holly. That spelling was then adopted for his professional career.
..... Click the link for more information. and other rising stars of the new rock and roll Rock and roll (also spelled rock 'n' roll, especially in its first decade), is a genre of music that emerged as a defined musical style in America in the 1950s. It later evolved into the various different sub-genres of what is now called simply 'rock'. Precursors and originsMain article: Origins of rock and roll
..... Click the link for more information. to tour the United States.

In December 1959 Berry had legal problems after he invited a 14-year-old Apache Apache is the collective name given to several culturally related tribes of Native Americans, aboriginal inhabitants of North America, who speak a Southern Athabaskan language. The modern term excludes the related Navajo people. The Apache peoples migrated from the Northern Plains into the Southwest relatively recently.
..... Click the link for more information. waitress he met in Mexico to work as a hat check girl at his nightclub (Berry's Club Bandstand) in St. Louis. After the girl was arrested on a prostitution Prostitution is the sale of sexual services, such as oral sex or sexual intercourse, for money. A person selling sexual services is a prostitute, a type of sex worker. In a more general sense of the word, anyone selling their services for a cause thought to be unworthy can be described as prostituting themselves.
..... Click the link for more information. charge, so was Berry, who stood accused under the Mann Act The United States White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 prohibited so-called white slavery. It also banned the interstate transport of females for immoral purposes. Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution and immorality. The act is better known as the Mann Act, after James Robert Mann, an American lawmaker.
..... Click the link for more information. of transporting a minor across state lines for sexual purposes. Berry was convicted to five years in prison and fined $5,000. He was released in 1963 but his best years were now behind him.

Chuck toured for many years carrying only his Gibson Gibson Guitar Corporation is one of the world's best-known manufacturers of acoustic and electric guitars.

Orville Gibson (born 1856, Chateaugay, N.Y.) started making mandolins in 1894 in Kalamazoo, Michigan USA. The mandolins were distinctive in that they featured a carved solid top and back and carved wood sides.
..... Click the link for more information. guitar, confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went. Among the many bandleaders performing this backup role were Bruce Springsteen Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He has frequently recorded and toured with The E Street Band. Springsteen is most widely known for his brand of heartland rock, rock and roll infused with Americana sentiments. His eloquence in expressing ordinary, every-day problems has earned him a huge fan base.
..... Click the link for more information. and Steve Miller Steve Miller (born October 5, 1943) is a blues and rock and roll guitarist and performer. He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but attended high school in Dallas. While at St. Mark's School of Texas, he formed his first band, The Marksmen. Miller taught one of his classmates, Royce Scaggs, a few guitar chords so that he could join the band; Scaggs became better known by his nickname, Boz. Miller attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the 1960s, where he formed The Ardells. Scaggs joined the Ardells the next year. Ben Sidran was added to the Ardells as a keyboardist the following year.
..... Click the link for more information. . Springsteen backed Chuck again when he appeared at the "Concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" in 1995 1995 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. It was the first year of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People (1995-2005): [1]

EventsJanuary
January 1
Austria, Finland and Sweden enter the European Union

..... Click the link for more information. .

After travelling the oldies circuit in the 1970s, he was in trouble with the law again in 1979, when he pled guilty to income tax evasion and was sentenced to four months imprisonment and 1,000 hours of community service doing benefit concerts.

In the late 1980s
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Events and trendsThe 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the '60s and '70s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. This decade has been somewhat derided since its closing for its perceived "greed" among Yuppies, certain clothes/music/hairstyles which seem outlandish by modern standards, overall high crime rates in many countries, and of course the onset of the AIDS virus in the early part of the decade.
..... Click the link for more information. , Berry owned a restaurant in Wentzville Wentzville is a city located in St. Charles County, Missouri. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 13,825. The city is the home of a General Motors Truck Group van assembly plant. Geography

Wentzville is located at 38Â°48'58" North, 90Â°51'26" West (38.816010, -90.857198)1.
..... Click the link for more information. , Missouri Missouri, named after the Missouri Siouan Indian tribe meaning "canoe", is a Southern U.S. state in the United States with Jefferson City as its capital. It is a "Border State", with some Northern, Eastern, and Southern cultural influences. The state's nickname is the Show-Me State; the U.S. Post Office abbreviation for Missouri is MO and the state public university's main branch is located in Columbia. The Mississippi and Missouri rivers are the two large rivers which flow through this state.
..... Click the link for more information. , called The Southern Air. Berry also owns an estate in Wentzville called Berry Park. For many years, Berry hosted rock concerts throughout the summer at Berry Park. He eventually closed the estate to the public due to the riotous behavior of many guests.

Although in his late 70s, Berry continues to perform regularly, playing both throughout the United States and overseas. He performs one Wednesday each month at Blueberry Hill Blueberry Hill is a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri. Chuck Berry performs there one Wednesday each month.
..... Click the link for more information. , a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop The Delmar Loop is an eclectic entertainment, cultural and restaurant district located mostly on the western edge of Saint Louis, Missouri and the small city of University City, Missouri but that is recently expanding eastward into the City of Saint Louis.

The area gets its name from the streetcar turnaround, or loop, formerly located in the area. Most of the attractions are located along Delmar Boulevard, a major east-west thoroughfare that continues east all the way to downtown Saint Louis.
..... Click the link for more information. neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri.

A documentary was made about Chuck and a concert he did in 1987 called "Hail Hail Rock and Roll".

Berry was also the subject of attention in the early 1990s for his alleged voyeurism Voyeurism is a practice in which an individual derives sexual pleasure from observing other people. Such people may be engaged in sexual acts, or be nude or in underwear, or dressed in whatever other way the "voyeur" finds appealing.

Voyeuristic practices may take a number of forms but its characteristic
..... Click the link for more information. of female guests in the bathrooms A bathroom is a room that may have different functions depending on the cultural context it is used in.
In the United States of America a bathroom commonly refers to the room containing a toilet. This is not the case in other countries where a room containing a toilet might be called a water closet (or WC), a lavatory or just a toilet.

..... Click the link for more information. of his home and restaurant. Influence A pioneer of Rock and Roll, Chuck Berry had a significant influence on others. When Keith Richards inducted Berry into the Hall of Fame, he said, "It's hard for me to induct Chuck Berry, because I lifted every lick he ever played!" John Lennon, another devotee of Berry, took things further and wrote "Come Together" around the lyrics of Berry's own "You Can't Catch Me," for which he was subsequently sued. Angus Young of AC/DC, who has cited Berry as one of his biggest influences, is famous for using Berry's duckwalk as one of his gimmicks.

While there is debate about who recorded the first rock and roll record, Chuck Berry's early recordings, including "Maybellene" (1955) fully synthesized the rock and roll form, combining blues and country music with teenaged lyrics about girls and cars, with impeccable diction alongside distinctive electric guitar solos and an energetic stage persona. Chuck Berry also popularized use of the boogie in rock and roll.

Most of his famous recordings were on Chess Records with pianist Johnnie Johnson from Berry's own band and legendary record producer Willie Dixon on bass, Fred Below on drums and Berry's guitar, arguably the epitome of an early rock and roll band.

Producer Leonard Chess recalled laconically:

"I told Chuck to give it a bigger beat. History the rest, you know? The kids wanted the big beat, cars, and young love. It was a trend and we jumped on it."

Berry's musical influences were Nat King Cole, smooth singer and master pianist, Louis Jordan, very much Chuck's model, and Muddy Waters, singer and guitarist vital in the transformation of Delta blues into Chicago blues and the man who introduced Berry to Leonard Chess at Chess Records.

Throughout his career Berry recorded both smooth ballads like "Havana Moon" and blues tunes like "Wee Wee Hours." but it was his own mastery of the new form that won him fame. He recorded more than thirty Top Ten records and his songs have been covered by hundreds of blues, country, and rock and roll performers. Chuck Berry songs Many of his songs are among the leading rock and roll anthems:
"Johnny B. Goode", the autobiographical saga of a country boy who could "play a guitar just like ringing a bell". It was chosen as one of the greatest achievements of humanity for the Voyager I collection of artifacts. The song was also prominently featured in the movie "Back to the Future."
"Rock and Roll Music", one of the first tunes recorded by The Beatles
"Sweet Little Sixteen", with new lyrics it became a hit for The Beach Boys as "Surfin' USA".
"Roll Over Beethoven" (... tell Tchaikovsky the news), a cheeky announcement if ever there was one.
"School Days", whose chorus, "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll", was chosen as the title of a documentary concert film organized by Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones as his tribute to Chuck, who appears in the film with many others.
"Let It Rock", fantasia of gambling railroad workers that lives up to the title, written under the pseudonym E. Anderson. Turning a line like "there's an off-schedule train coming two miles out" into a cry for Dionysian revelry is not a skill given to all singers.

His other hits, many of them novelty narratives, include:
"Maybelline" -- car, girl, rival, jealousy -- based on the country tune, "Ida Red", performed originally by Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys.
"Too Much Monkey Business", teenaged attitudes, predecessor to rap, "Same thing every day, gettin' up, goin' to school, no need of me complaining, my objection's overruled". Also inspired the Bob Dylan song, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", Johnny Thunders' "Too Much Junky Business" play on title
"Brown Eyed Handsome Man", adult attitudes, racism, "arrested on charges of unemployment"
"Back in the U.S.A.", which inspired The Beatles' "Back in the USSR".
"No Particular Place To Go" --car, girl, frustration
"Memphis", unique beat, sweet story. Lonnie Mack and Johnny Rivers both built entire careers starting with this song.
"My Ding-a-Ling", his only #1, a New Orleans novelty song that he had been singing for years and fortuitously included on a live recording in London in 1970.

Among his blues tributes:
"Confessing the Blues", signature tune of the famed Kansas City, Missouri jazz band of Jay McShann
"Merry Christmas, Baby", originally by Charles Brown
"Route 66", written by Bobby Troup, originally performed by Nat King Cole, but commonly associated with Berry.
"Things I Used to Do", by Louisiana's Guitar Slim

See also:
The Great Twenty-Eight, Berry's definitive Greatest Hits album.