Chuck Berry, a game-changing pioneer of the Music industry, one of the very first and very best musicians of rock ‘n’ roll, and an immensely talented guitarist and songwriter, has died at age 90. St. Charles County Police responded to a medical emergency at the home of Charles Edward Anderson Berry, Sr. at 12:40pm on 18 March. He was found unresponsive and was unfortunately unable to be revived. He was pronounced dead at 1:26pm.
Berry has made his mark in history and then some
During the 1950s, Berry took the music world by storm by playing his guitar like ringing a bell and helping the likes of Elvis Presley and Little Richard to create the rock ‘n’ roll genre as we know it today with classics like “Johnny B.
Goode,” “Maybellene,” and “Roll Over Beethoven.” John Lennon once famously said that rock ‘n’ roll by any other name would be “Chuck Berry.”
In the 1970s, NASA sent two hours’ worth of audio recordings to deep space on Voyager I that would sum up Earth for any aliens who happened upon it. It contained a bunch of stuff, including a message from then-President Jimmy Carter, a short passage from the Qur’an, some recordings of animals, and a clip of Chuck Berry’s music. In a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that week in which Steve Martin played an alien receiving the recordings, he said, “Send more Chuck Berry.”
We have Berry to thank for some of cinema’s most iconic moments: Michael J. Fox playing “Johnny B.
Goode” on the stage in “Back to the Future” (a defining mark on the ‘80s) and Uma Thurman and John Travolta dancing at Jack Rabbit Slim’s in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” (a defining mark on the ‘90s).
Berry influenced everyone from the Beatles to the Stones to Hendrix
Pretty much any rock guitarist who ever picked up an electric owes a debt of gratitude to Chuck Berry.
He influenced everyone who one might list as the best rock musicians of all time. He influenced the work of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page...it’s ridiculous how many incredible musicians owe it all to Berry (but not ridiculous, because his music is fantastic).
Berry is listed in Rolling Stone magazine as the sixth greatest guitarist who ever lived and the fifth “Immortal” greatest artist of all time. These achievements are all well and good, but just listen to one of his records. That says it all.
