Chuck Berry was the most important guitarist in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.
Also one of the best.
Now that he’s gone, at the age of 90 still too soon, that’s one part of the legacy he leaves.
He was also one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most skilled lyricists, peppering his dozens of songs with hundreds of indelible and seemingly effortless lines from “She’s too cute to be a minute over seventeen” and “He never learned to read or write so well / But he could play a guitar like a-ringin’ a bell” to “Long as she got a dime, the music won’t never stop.”
When you talk about “car radio records,” songs that almost physically force you to turn the volume knob all the way to the right and forget about everything else for the next three minutes, you’re talking Chuck Berry records.
You’re talking about a foundation on which virtually every rock ‘n’ roll artist of the 1960s, from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones to Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys and Eric Clapton, went to school.
Nor was Chuck Berry a cult guru. He wrote songs for the rock ‘n’ roll masses, and they just happened to have such depth and resonance that “Johnny B. Goode” sounds as good today as it did March 31, 1958 — the day it was released.
Berry scored his first hit with “Maybellene” in the autumn of 1955. He was almost 30 by then, but while he came from a background of jazz, blues, big bands, R&B, country, pop and Latin music, he and his pianist Johnnie Johnson distilled all that into songs that riffed on the life of a teenager.
Some early rock ‘n’ roll teenage songs dripped with desperate angst. Berry’s were knowing, clever and funny.
“School Day” talked about how “even the teacher don’t know how mean she looks” and lamented that come lunch period, “You’re lucky if you can find a seat / You’re fortunate if you have time to eat.”
“Sweet Little Sixteen” painted a wonderful picture of a girl who had flipped for the music, but “Come tomorrow morning / She’ll have to change her trend / Be sweet sixteen / And back in class again.”
Berry was perpetually bemused by the subjects of his songs, including himself.
In “Maybellene,” his pursuit of a Coupe De Ville and his girl Maybellene become one and the same. In “Carol,” he’s afraid he’ll lose his girl because he forgot to learn to dance.
“No Particular Place To Go” has the girl in his car, but they’re stymied because her seat belt is stuck. “All the way home I held a grudge,” he grumbles, “for the safety belt that wouldn’t budge.”
Yet for all this humor, Chuck Berry never wrote novelty songs. He wrote songs about people and moments, and he nailed them all. Lesser-known songs like “Anthony Boy,” “Drifting Heart” or “Havana Moon,” which often explored different musical turf, were no less accomplished than the hits.
While he didn’t write overtly topical songs, he didn’t completely separate his music from the changing world around him.
“Brown-eyed Handsome Man” starts with the deceptively pointed line, “Arrested on charges of unemployment,” and one of his last hits, “Promised Land,” was more than just a marvelous three-minute travelogue.
Released in 1964, a flashpoint in the civil rights movement, it has his narrator taking public transportation cross-country. When his bus gets stuck in Alabama, he sings, “Right away I bought me a through train ticket / Right across Mississippi clean.”
Wise move in 1964.
To the question, “What’s rock ‘n’ roll?”, there remains no better answer than a blue label 45 rpm Chess record by Mr. Chuck Berry. Long as we got a dime, his music won’t never stop.
