Chuck Berry, Father of Rock & Roll

Thanks @Lynn!

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Johnny B. Good by Chuck Berry. Cover by Crockets Rockets. Queens 70's Jubilee Party, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK.
 
Chuck Berry's Keyboard Player, Daryl Davis, has become quite a force for change.

For decades, he has been influencing KKK members to leave the Klan, through simple human friendship!!!

Started out because he was playing in a club. Took a break. Had a drink at the bar with some guy who absolutely loved his music.

That guy started coming to his shows, whenever he was in town. They became friends.

The guy finally admitted to Daryl that he was a member of the Klan. Instead of walking away, Daryl maintained the friendship and eventually the KKK guy just left the Klan...fascinating story...

and then Daryl used that experience, to start doing that generally, with other members of the Klan!!!


Why I, as a black man, attend KKK rallies. | Daryl Davis | TEDxNaperville​

​

 
Father of Rock and Roll? He was certainly a great contributor, as was Elvis, but Rock and Roll had already been annoying parents for years before the big names showed up. What comes to my mind is Rock Around the Clock, by Bill Haley and the Comets. I remember my parents shocked by that song. Granted Bill Haley was not all that good, and the equipment back then was limited, but I think he was there earlier. I could be wrong. Although, I wouldn't call Bill Haley the Father of Rock and Roll either. I suppose every genre needs a "Father of", but I'm thinking that going from "Swing" to "Rock and Roll" was more of a transition, with no real father, but just a bunch of innovators reaching out to those that were moved by something new, probably some of the early Blues Men that took Blues in a new direction that caught on.
 
RadishRose said:
My father loved Chuck Berry. He wore out the record Johnny B Goode, and I'm still tired of it.

I did like Chuck Berry, but Father of Rock and Roll? I dunno. I vote Little Richard for that title.
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The true Father of Rock n Roll was way before Chuck. Maybe Arthur Crudup or Howlin Wolf or numerous others. Chuck Berry was a blues guitarist who jumped on the RnR train after he saw it being successful. He was obviously great at it but certainly not "the father". Chuck's first record "Maybelline" came out in 1955 and Elvis already had "That's All Right " out in 1954 and Bill Hailey and the Comets had "Crazy Man Crazy" out in 1953. And there were lots of RnR sounding songs before that.
 
JustDave said:
Father of Rock and Roll? He was certainly a great contributor, as was Elvis, but Rock and Roll had already been annoying parents for years before the big names showed up. What comes to my mind is Rock Around the Clock, by Bill Haley and the Comets. I remember my parents shocked by that song. Granted Bill Haley was not all that good, and the equipment back then was limited, but I think he was there earlier. I could be wrong. Although, I wouldn't call Bill Haley the Father of Rock and Roll either. I suppose every genre needs a "Father of", but I'm thinking that going from "Swing" to "Rock and Roll" was more of a transition, with no real father, but just a bunch of innovators reaching out to those that were moved by something new, probably some of the early Blues Men that took Blues in a new direction that caught on.
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Exactly. No one invented RnR. It just morphed over time. On one side you had black R&B turning RnR and on the other you had Western Swing turning that way too. That was one of the things with Elvis , he combined both sides in his early Sun sessions with R&B songs like "Good rockin' Tonight" and "That's All Right" and rocking up country songs like "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and "I'm Left,You're Right, She's Gone". Check out that album if you want to hear some great early RnR.
 
Damaged Goods said:
Anyone who thinks that Chuck's main focus wasn't commercialism need only to reference his release of the novelty trash "My Ding-A-Ling." He finally got a no. 1 Billboard pop hit.

Not saying there's anything wrong with commercialism, just sayin'.

I think he should've been embarrassed though when later albums and concert tours listed "Surfin' USA" as one he wrote. Yes I know that Brian Wilson admitted that the song's source was "Sweet Little Sixteen" and Chuck deserved a part credit for writing it, but still .... Frankly, I think that Chuck's "Promised Land" is a clearer rip-off of the old "Wabash Cannonball" although "Wabash" may have been in the public domain at the time Chuck wrote his song.

Recall reading in "Ramparts" magazine as well as "Chuck Berry -- The Autobiography" that early promoters ripped him off and he always demanded payment up front. He once told a promoter that if he was ever offered less than $1K for a performance he would say, "Congratulations sir, you have just retired the great Chuck Berry."
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Chuck's hit "Maybelline" was basically a rewrite of the song "Ida Red"
 
Bonnie said:
I loved Elvis, but even he called Chuck Berry the Father of Rock n Roll .....

https://www.thetoptens.com/rock/father-of-rock-and-rill/
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Nothing in that link where Elvis calls Chuck the Father of RnR. Elvis was very nice when it came to discussing other RnR stars , never saying a bad word about anybody. He said he wished he could write a song like Chuck, said he couldn't sing rock as well as Fats Domino ( which I think is ridiculous, Elvis was 10 times the singer Fats was)etc.
It's just silly to call Chuck the Father when that connotates being the first and as I've already stated Elvis, Bill Haley, and lots of other acts had RnR records out before Chuck. Call him the greatest if you want, or most influential, etc but he can't be the Father of RnR.
 
garyt1957 said:
Nothing in that link where Elvis calls Chuck the Father of RnR. Elvis was very nice when it came to discussing other RnR stars , never saying a bad word about anybody. He said he wished he could write a song like Chuck, said he couldn't sing rock as well as Fats Domino ( which I think is ridiculous, Elvis was 10 times the singer Fats was)etc.
It's just silly to call Chuck the Father when that connotates being the first and as I've already stated Elvis, Bill Haley, and lots of other acts had RnR records out before Chuck. Call him the greatest if you want, or most influential, etc but he can't be the Father of RnR.
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Elvis' beginnings were Rockabilly .... "That's All Right Mama" , etc. ... '54, '55 ..... Chuck Berry was strictly Rock n Roll.

In July 1954, in his first session for Sam Phillips’s Sun label of Memphis, Tennessee, Presley recorded two songs that would lay the foundation for rockabilly: “That’s All Right,” written by Mississippi bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, and a hopped-up version of “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” a mid-tempo waltz by Bill Monroe, the creator of bluegrass. Presley sang with African-American inflections and more emotional intensity than country singers of the time. He accompanied himself on strummed acoustic guitar, Scotty Moore provided fills with electric guitar, and Bill Black added propulsive upright bass as the trio established rockabilly’s quintessential instrumentation. Following this blueprint, rockabilly records typically featured a wildly expressive vocalist tearing into a bluesy song while flailing away on an acoustic guitar. Backing was provided by a bass played in the slapping style, frequently supported by a drummer; an electric guitarist filled the gaps and took an energetic solo; and the whole sound was enlarged by a studio effect called slap-back, or “Sun echo,” developed by Phillips.



https://www.britannica.com/art/rockabilly
 
Chuck Berry was a real showman. Never wore torn jeans nor showed the audience his undershirt. The nice thing is that I can understand all the words to his songs. That's impossible today in most songs. Some of the modern singers sound like that have a baby sooder in their mouths when they sing and the band is so loud that their voice cannot be heard! Perhaps it's a good thing?
 
Bonnie said:
Elvis' beginnings were Rockabilly .... "That's All Right Mama" , etc. ... '54, '55 ..... Chuck Berry was strictly Rock n Roll.

In July 1954, in his first session for Sam Phillips’s Sun label of Memphis, Tennessee, Presley recorded two songs that would lay the foundation for rockabilly: “That’s All Right,” written by Mississippi bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, and a hopped-up version of “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” a mid-tempo waltz by Bill Monroe, the creator of bluegrass. Presley sang with African-American inflections and more emotional intensity than country singers of the time. He accompanied himself on strummed acoustic guitar, Scotty Moore provided fills with electric guitar, and Bill Black added propulsive upright bass as the trio established rockabilly’s quintessential instrumentation. Following this blueprint, rockabilly records typically featured a wildly expressive vocalist tearing into a bluesy song while flailing away on an acoustic guitar. Backing was provided by a bass played in the slapping style, frequently supported by a drummer; an electric guitarist filled the gaps and took an energetic solo; and the whole sound was enlarged by a studio effect called slap-back, or “Sun echo,” developed by Phillips.



https://www.britannica.com/art/rockabilly
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Chuck's beginnings were blues, everybody started somewhere. "That's All Right " wasn't rockabilly at all. It was an old Arthur Crudup blues song. "Baby Let's Play House " was certainly rockabilly though. Rockabilly was a precursor to RnR.
By the early 1950s, Berry was working with local bands in clubs in St. Louis as an extra source of income.[21] He had been playing blues since his teens, and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from the blues musician T-Bone Walker.[23] He also took guitar lessons from his friend Ira Harris, which laid the foundation for his guitar style.[24]

By early 1953 Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson's trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist.[25][26] The band played blues and ballads as well as country. Berry wrote, "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?' After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."[12]
 
Chuck Berry 'Memphis Tennessee' live 1965 hi-res remaster
 

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