# Chuck Berry



## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/arts/chuck-berry-dead.html

Chuck Berry, who with his indelible guitar licks, brash self-confidence and memorable songs about cars, girls and wild dance parties did as much as anyone to define rock 'n' roll's potential and attitude in its early years, died on Saturday. He was 90.

The St. Charles County Police Department in Missouri confirmed his death on its Facebook page. The department said it responded to a medical emergency at a home and Mr. Berry was declared dead after lifesaving measures were unsuccessful.

While Elvis Presley was rock's first pop star and teenage heartthrob, Mr. Berry was its master theorist and conceptual genius, the songwriter who understood what the kids wanted before they knew themselves. With songs like "Johnny B. Goode" and "Roll Over Beethoven," he gave his listeners more than they knew they were getting from jukebox entertainment. <cont.>


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)




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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)




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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)




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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)




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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)




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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)

"What's a Matter With the Mill" by Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie is the type of blues that informed Berry's rocknroll. In this song, you can hear the future strains of "Johnny B. Goode", "Roll Over Beethoven", "Nadine" and others.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)

Berry is one of those guys where you can't possibly imagine what the world would have been like without him. It's truly inconceivable. A guy whose songs were so well known, so fundamental to anybody learning music from the 50s onward that he didn't even need a traveling band. He'd just show up with his guitar and whatever band was there could back him with a couple of minutes of warm-up. If you knew what a I-IV-V progression was or how to substitute a ii for the IV, then you could play virtually anything by Chuck Berry (or Little Richard or Fats Domino). It's the essential chord structure of guitar-driven rocknroll. Before Hendrix, Chuck Berry was the first black guitarist and songwriter to take a white audience head-on and win. RIP Chuck Berry, you earned it.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Chuck Berry was a titanic force changing popular music for me in my teens. _ Maybellene_, of course, was his first big hit, the one that propelled him to the forefront of what then was called "race music", but right after Maybellene came his sly classic _No Money Down_, the lyrics to which have never left me. At about the the same time he released _Downbound Train_, a classic tale of redemption found in the barroom, and a song quite similar in message to the earlier Western hit for Vaughn Monroe (and others), _Ghost Riders in the Sky_, and certainly its equal. Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Wilbur Harrison, so many great, early giants of what was evolving as Rock and Roll.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)

We're so used to hearing Berry-type music that we take it for granted but it would have been great to have been a kid in the 50s turning on his radio after getting home from school and hearing "Johnny B. Goode" blasting out of the speaker. That must have knocked kids on their butts back then.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)

Beach Boys virtually rip-off "Sweet Little Sixteen." If Berry had sued everybody that stole his chops, he could have retired filthy rich but he never sued anyone which is part of why his music spread around so much--everyone took something from it.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)

The music on this one is a straight rip-off of Johnny B. Goode but the vocal melody and lyrics do a brilliant job of disguising it. But that opening guitar line is taken note-for-note from "Johnny."


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

Chuck Berry was always the 'King of Rock and Roll', not that white boy from Mississippi.

If I had to pick one...






...or two






Best wishes
Metairie Road


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

R.I.P. He seemed like a nice person.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Metairie Road said:


> Chuck Berry was always the 'King of Rock and Roll', not that white boy from Mississippi.


I don't think Elvis would argue with that. Chuck Berry invented the rock n roll guitar style, and he was a very clever lyricist as well. Berry, along with Robert Johnson created the blueprint for millions of modern blues and rock guitarists.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

regenmusic said:


> R.I.P. He seemed like a nice person.


don't make my mistake, don't read about his life.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I got most of my Chuck Berry from other's covers. Here is a great cover of Chuck's famous tune:


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)

Elvis never accepted the title of king and always deferred it to Fats Domino.


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

norman bates said:


> don't make my mistake, don't read about his life.


He was no angel by any means.


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## yetti66 (Jan 30, 2017)

All of the above mentioned covers are excellent. I came to love Chuck Berry and taught myself guitar listening to CAROL and LITTLE QUEENIE off the Rolling Stones live Get Yer Ya Yas Out (live) album when I was in elementary school. Hard rockin' - great versions. Another great cover is David Bowie - ziggy stardust era - playing ALMOST GROWN.

The single purest, rawest, and in your face electric guitar track I know of in the history of rock is Jimi Hendrix playing Johnny B Goode - live at Berkley (1970). An opinion I've held since I first heard it over 30 years ago.

Long live the king Chuck Berry.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2017)

I just remembered at the tail end of "Now I'm Here" by Queen, the band sings what sounds like, "Go Go Go Little Queenie" while Brian May plays a Berry-like lead riff.


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

Favorite covers?

The first one is not a cover, but it's as close as makes no difference.

*Bob Seger - Get Out of Denver*





Don't know much about this band, but this is great. I bought the 45 back in the stone age.
If they ever make a film bio of Marc Bolan, Johnny Depp would be perfect for the part.
*Steve Gibbons Band - Tulane*





Best wishes
Metairie Road


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Hail, hail, rock and roll. And another music giant leaves us. Sadly the older I get the more of these things I'm going to read. Old age - not for the faint hearted!


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## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

I think we should have a sticky (who's dead this week?) and start our own digital graveyard. RIP Chuck.


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## Guest (Mar 21, 2017)

Chuck had his heroes too. Here's where he got his distinctive guitar intro:






And when you get right down to it, this horn intro is also Berryian. I've played this enough times to last me the rest of my life. Berry's intros were just the horn intro to swing and jump numbers converted to guitar:


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Berry was certainly a giant. Even when rock-n-roll is merely a footnote Berry's music will be alive and well. In fact, that rock-n-roll footnote will be one in reference _to_ Chuck Berry's music.


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