music friday: chuck berry

Chuck Berry died on this date in 2017 at the age of 90. If you want to pick the #1 exemplar of rock and roll, Chuck would be the man. Yes, Elvis was the King. But Chuck Berry wrote the story of Elvis in song ... "Johnny B. Goode" is the greatest rock and roll song, and it tells an important story in that Berry was writing about himself, but it was Elvis who personified the story as America perceived it. Berry's original lyrics were about a "colored boy", although he changed them to "country boy" to get it on the radio. "Johnny B. Goode" was also placed on the Voyager Golden Record that was launched into space in 1977, giving future extraterrestrials a peek at the culture of Earth. As John Lennon said, "If you had tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."

Here is Chuck in the film Rock, Rock, Rock!:

And two versions of "Johnny B. Goode". First, live, from 1958:

And again, in 1995, backed by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Look at Bruce's face ... it speaks multitudes:

Here's a Spotify playlist of some of Berry's best. I included one track from a live album recorded at the Fillmore in 1967, which happened to be my very first rock concert.

Comments

[Tomás]

I love that it's hard to hyberbolize him and his significance.

[Steven Rubio]

Ain't it the truth!

[Papa G]

One of my favorite "jokes" of all time:

We got a message from outer space, someone(thing) found Voyager. It took a huge team of linguists to translate but the finally did: "Send more Chuck Berry"