Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
(Ch u ck B er r y f r om page F4)<br />
place. His original band, Sir John’s<br />
Trio, was run by piano player Johnnie<br />
Johnson until Chuck took it over. The<br />
trio consisted of Johnson on piano,<br />
Ebby Hardy on drums, and Chuck on<br />
vocals and guitar. The instruments<br />
clearly suggest a band following a jazz<br />
groove. Contrast that to the countrywestern<br />
make-up of Elvis’ or Johnny<br />
Cash’s trios or the horn-heavy, big<br />
band sound of Little Richard. Keith<br />
Richards will tell you that Chuck Berry<br />
adapted Johnnie Johnson’s piano riffs<br />
for guitar “because of the key it’s in…<br />
you’re playing in piano keys, horn keys,<br />
jazz keys, Johnnie Johnson’s keys.” So<br />
important was ohnson’s inuence that<br />
Richards thought he should have gotten<br />
co-writing credit and royalties on the<br />
songs: “But Chuck being Chuck, you’d<br />
be lucky to get a quarter. Or you’d end<br />
up paying him. t’s not terribly difficult<br />
however, to listen to Johnson’s piano<br />
and hear the grounding for Chuck<br />
Berry’s riffs.<br />
So there you have it: sophisticated<br />
jazz riffs with tight literate lyrics about<br />
inoffensive, universal subjects. All by<br />
design. And Chuck went further. His<br />
strong diction on the records (the better<br />
to hear the meter) and subtle infusion<br />
of the country-western music popular<br />
in his hometown of St. Louis allowed<br />
a magical transformation to happen.<br />
If Elvis was, as Sun Records owner<br />
Sam Phillips surmised, the “white boy<br />
who could sound like a black man,”<br />
Chuck Berry was the black man who<br />
could sound white. As he put it in his<br />
autobiography:<br />
All in all it was my intention<br />
to hold both the black and<br />
F6<br />
visit footlights.click
Change language