Chuck Berry was one of the best-known of the Chess artists in the fifties and sixties. He joined the Johnny Johnson Trio in 1952 and started to develop his interest in the Blues alongside pianist Johnson and drummer Ebby Hardy. He came to Chess in 1955, hoping to make his name as a Blues guitar man but found his niche with a Blues-based form of R&B that took him into the Pop charts around the world.
At his first studio session Berry played four songs, including a version of an old song “Ida Red” that had been a hit for Bob Wills in 1938, which Leonard Chess chose as the first single release. Berry had re-worked the lyrics and up-dated the Western swing of the original, so that the song was now an up-tempo R&B number entitled “Ida May”. Chess pushed for a better name and got “Maybellene”.
The band at the session consisted of the trio, Berry, Johnnie Johnson (piano) and Ebby Hardy (drums), plus Willie Dixon (bass) and Jerome Green (maracas). Leonard Chess’ judgement was pretty good. The song reached number one on Billboard’s R&B Singles Chart and number five on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles listing, selling over a million copies.
The lyrics focused on topics of interest to young record-buyers and the beat was infectious. Over the next three years, Berry wrote three more major hits, all in the same style: “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956), which reached number twenty-nine on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart, “Rock and Roll Music” (1957) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958). They earned him the title of the father of rock and roll.
The flow of up-tempo irresistible dance tunes was maintained until 1963, with Chess issuing recordings from earlier sessions. One of the last singles released was “Sweet Little Sixteen”.
Berry had in fact left Chess Records in 1962, when he was sentenced to three years in prison. He had already been convicted of armed robbery as a young man in 1944, and now he was convicted of contravening the Mann Act, the USA’s anti sex trafficking legislation. On his release in 1963, Berry joined Mercury Records, where he enjoyed further chart success, although the impact of the new songs was reduced.
He returned to Chess in 1970, releasing his only number one hit song “My Ding-a-Ling” in 1972. His live shows still attracted an audience, but the magic was gone. He had several more brushes with the law, including pleading guilty to tax evasion in 1979.
Chuck Berry died in 2017.
