Roll Over Elvis, Chuck Berry Is The Real King Of Rock & Roll!

What musician can best define what Rock & Roll music truly is? John Lennon once said, “If you tried to give Rock and Roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry.” When I was a young man, I struggled with just what this new form really meant. The article “Chuck Berry,” by Robert Christgau, sheds much light on this topic. I was always given the examples of “Carol” by The Rolling Stones and “Roll Over Beethoven,” performed by The Beatles as being paradigms of ‘pure Rock & Roll.’ Both of these songs were written by Chuck Berry. He was able to define this new form as early as the mid-1950s.

From what I could glean from Robert Christgau`s piece, the 1955 song on Chess Records, “Maybellene,” was the first real Rock and Roll song. Just to distill his technique in simple terms, Chuck Berry combined blues` structures with country lyrics that are chatty, yet edgy and defiant. He also sped up the tempo, making it peppy and danceable, and the topic of the lyrics was essentially ‘the good life.’ The guitar playing was something entirely new as well. It is rhythm and lead guitar simultaneously. Rolling Stone has ranked him the 6th all time greatest guitar player. You can see him do his famous ‘duck walk’ in the movie “The Girl Can`t Help It.”

Chuck Berry was introducing the world to a new form of music, Rock `n` Roll, that was quite unique from traditional forms, such as classical, blues, or country. “Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky news!” And Chuck was daring in his use of the English language, truly vernacular. Christgau`s says, “True, his language is ersatz and barbaric, full of mispronounced foreignisms and advertising coinages, but then, so was Whitman`s.” So there you have it, the ‘King of Rock & Roll’ *(for me, Father and King can be thought of as synonyms) is Chuck Berry, not Elvis Presley. Chuck wrote all of his own stuff and could outplay Elvis on the guitar `til the cows come home. I will also suggest that some of his songs were plagiarized ten times over by many of our greatest artists-just look at the record for yourself.

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