Chuck Berry's Story in Song

Johnny B. Goode

By JIM FUSILLI Wall Street Journal April 8, 2006; Page P14 EXCERPTIOUS (Shortened for the UK Mudcat Audience)

Chuck Berry didn't invent rock 'n' roll, but he gave it its signature tune, "Johnny B. Goode." The song's driving rhythm, stinging guitar solos and rags-to-riches narrative about a gifted backwoods musician established a template for rock that's still quoted today, nearly half a century after the song was first released. [MPberry]

Clocking in at a mere two minutes and 42 seconds, "Johnny B. Goode" contains the future of rock 'n' roll and much of its then-recent past. Mr. Berry's guitar evokes Carl Hogan's work on Louis Jordan's "Ain't That Just Like a Woman," recorded in 1946. The rhythm he generates on the instrument's bass strings suggests boogie-woogie and country swing, and the piano-playing by Lafayette Leake approximates the upper-register tinkling of Jerry Lee Lewis in his '57 hit "Great Balls of Fire" and what Mr. Berry's usual pianist, Johnnie Johnson, contributed to the Berry hits "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Reelin' and Rockin'," both recorded before "Johnny B. Goode."

Like many, if not most, musicians throughout the history of popular music, Mr. Berry began his career performing songs by other artists before dabbling in composition.

In rapid succession, Mr. Berry scored with "Roll Over Beethoven," "You Can't Catch Me" and "School Day," all of which conformed to the formula he proposed and developed with Leonard and Phil Chess and Willie Dixon, who ran the house band at the Chess brothers' label: up-tempo, guitar-driven music with a 12-bar-blues structure about the passions of teenage life.

With a gift for wordplay and imagery, Mr. Berry didn't merely write about cars, music, romance and school. He wrote about the joys and frustrations inherent in those key components of teen life, creating characters and situations recognizable to young record-buyers.

"Johnny B. Goode" is a synthesis of Mr. Berry's earlier efforts, with a guitar solo intro and another a minute-and-a-half in, much like in "Roll Over Beethoven." Crisp staccato fills punctuate the vocals as in "School Day." The solos are models of rock-guitar efficiency, and Mr. Berry tosses in what he learned from Mr. Hogan, T-Bone Walker and Charlie Christian, among others, in creating his own style. Twanging like country, pushing hard like jump blues, stutter-stepping in a way that was his nod to showmanship, Mr. Berry toys with the rhythm section throughout the song, as Mr. Leake wanders.

In "Johnny B. Goode," Mr. Berry writes for the first time about his family's history and his childhood. His great-grandfather lived "way down in Louisiana close to New Orleans, way back up in the woods among the evergreens," as did, according to Mr. Berry, many Africans who were sold into slavery in the U.S.

Mr. Berry's original lyric proposed a song about a "colored boy named Johnny B. Goode who never, ever learned to read or write so well/But he could play a guitar just like ringing a bell." But well aware that his music had crossover appeal, the savvy Mr. Berry changed it to "country boy."

"Johnny in the song is more or less myself," Mr. Berry wrote. "I altered the predictions my mother made of me and created a story that paralleled....It took two weeks of periodic application to put the lyrics together."

By synthesizing rock's predecessors in his music and digging into autobiography for his lyrics, Chuck Berry in "Johnny B. Goode" created a rock 'n' roll song that's known wherever rock thrives. And beyond: Mr. Berry's recording of his song was the only rock performance sent into deep space in 1977 by NASA on its Voyager I probe.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle