May 21, 1955, 70 years ago: Chuck Berry records "Maybellene" at Chess Records' studio, at 2120 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. It was his 1st professional release, and it became one of the building blocks of rock and roll.
Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born on October 18, 1926 in St. Louis. While in high school, he was already a renowned electric guitarist, but also a criminal, spending 3 years in a reform school on an armed robbery charge.
In 1953, he began playing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio, and in 1955, they went to Chicago, meeting the great blues singer and guitarist McKinley Morganfield, a.k.a. Muddy Waters. Waters sent them to his recording company, Chess Records.
Leonard Chess signed them, and they took the Bob Wills country song "Ida Red," and rewrote it as "Maybellene," a story about a man driving a Ford, trying to catch his untrustworthy girlfriend in her Cadillac. Johnson played piano. Willie Dixon, one of the great Chicago blues singers and songwriters, played the upright bass fiddle. Jerome Green played maracas, Chess coming up with the idea to add them, an idea he borrowed from "Bo Diddley," which Ellas McDaniel, a.k.a. Bo Diddley, recorded earlier in the year for Chess' subsidiary label, Checker Records.
The song had tremendous crossover appeal, reaching Number 1 on the Rhythm & Blues chart, and Number 5 on the pop (mostly white) chart. Carl Perkins, another of the first group of great rock and roll guitar players, said, "The first time I heard 'Maybellene,' I thought, Here is a black man who likes country music."
This was a few years before Charley Pride became the 1st successful black country singer: At the time, he was pitching in minor-league baseball, having previously played in the Negro Leagues. An injury ended his career, leading him to switch to music full-time.
In 1956, Chuck wrote and recorded "Roll Over Beethoven," a shot across the bow at fans of classical music, who thought that rock and roll was just a passing fad that kids would get tired of: "Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news!"
Of course, Ludwig van Beethoven and Pyotr Tchaikovsky composed some of the hardest-rocking music in the classical canon -- or "cannon," in Tchaikovsky's case. No less a rocker than Billy Joel said, in a 2025 interview with Far Out magazine, "From early on, I felt Beethoven. I still think he is the greatest composer who ever lived. To me, he was the most human composer."
And Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek admitted that Johann Sebastian Bach was a big influence on his organ playing, along with the bluesmen he saw growing up on the South Side of Chicago. And being of Polish descent, he said he heard something in the blues that sounded Slavic to him, like Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and other Eastern European composers on whom he had been raised.
In 1957, Chuck recorded "School Day," with its refrain of "Hail, hail, rock and roll!" This would become the title of a documentary that covered a concert celebrating Chuck's 60th birthday. Also that year, Chuck had a hit with a song titled "Rock and Roll Music."
In 1958, Chuck recorded "Sweet Little Sixteen," which reached Number 2, his highest charter yet on the pop charts; "Johnny B. Goode," which came to be regarded as one of the greatest early rock songs; and "Run, Rudolph, Run," one of the first rock and roll Christmas songs.
But he got in legal trouble again. In 1959, he was arrested for violating the Mann Act, for transporting a woman across a State Line "for immoral purposes." She was a 14-year-old waitress at his racially integrated St. Louis music club. After his initial conviction was overturned, he was convicted again in 1961, and served a year and a half in prison.
Upon his release in 1964, he had a few more hits, including "No Particular Place to Go" and "You Never Can Tell." But he was never again a consistent hitmaker. He made more money touring Britain and Europe than in America. In 1972, he released the novelty song "My Ding-a-Ling" -- and it became his one and only Number 1 hit. In 1986, he was a charter inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Leonard Chess died of a heart attack in 1969, only 52 years old. Jerome Green died in 1973, Willie Dixon in 1992, and Johnnie Johnson in 2005. I can find no record of when Ebby Hardy died, or even if he is still alive as of May 21, 2025.
There were very few guitar players after Chuck who could play Chuck Berry riffs as well as he could. Carl Wilson of The Beach Boys was one, as he showed when turning "Sweet Little Sixteen" into "Surfin' U.S.A," and "Roll Over Beethoven" into "Fun, Fun, Fun." George Harrison of The Beatles was another, playing and singing lead on a cover of "Roll Over Beethoven." The Beatles also covered "Rock and Roll Music," with John Lennon singing lead.
In 1972, John and his wife, Yoko Ono, co-hosted The Mike Douglas Show for a week. Douglas gave John lots of leeway into who he wanted as guests. John wanted Chuck, and, together, they sang "Johnny B. Goode." At some point, John Lennon said, "If you wanted to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry.'"
In the 1970s, the Pioneer and Voyager probes were launched into space, with recordings of several pieces of Earth music considered to be groundbreaking. "Johnny B. Goode" was included. In 1985, the film Back to the Future featured Michael J. Fox playing "Johnny B. Goode" in a scene set on November 12, 1955, with the leader of the backing band making a phone call backstage: "Chuck? It's Marvin! Your cousin, Marvin Berry! You know that new sound you've been looking for? Well, listen to this!" It was a cheap joke, especially given that "Maybellene" had been released 4 months earlier.
On October 18, 2016, Chuck turned 90. That day, I was babysitting my niece, 5 months old. I played "Johnny B. Goode" for her. She couldn't stand up yet, but she moved her arms around as if she just had to dance to it. Just 5 months after that, on March 18, 2017, Chuck Berry died. In 2022, with my niece now 6, I played "Johnny B. Goode" for her again... and she didn't like it! Where did I go wrong?
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