•acent Chuck Berry describing his first car: “A ’33 Ford. cret life of the typical fan (“Sweet little Sixteen”) and It cost me thirty-four dollars. Man, it took me three the lay of the land (“Back in the U.S.A.” ). And he months to pay for it, and I had to have some older gave rock and roll its central character and all-pur­ friend sign for it, ’cause I was only seventeen.” Chuck pose metaphor: the autobiographical “Johnny B. Berry’s first car song, “Maybellene,” released on the Goode.” (Berry substituted “country boy” for “col­ Chess label in 1955, was also his first smash, reaching ored boy” to suit pop radio.) His disarming live per­ Number Five on the pop chart and Number One on formances were featured in the teen movies of the the R&B chart. time — Rock Rock Rock', Mister Rock and Rod ; G o, If it had been up to Berry himself, though, “May­ Johnny, Go — and his famous duckwalk was recorded bellene” would have been the B-side of “Wee Wee for posterity in ja z z o n a Sum m er's D a y, a documenta­ Hours,” a Hues number that Berry had hoped Leon­ ry look at the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival ard Chess would use as his debut. After all, Chuck had “Everything I wrote about wasn’t about me,” he been playing; the blues, working nights with a locally has said, “but about the people listening.” While that successful trio in his native St. Louis (and working made him popular with one generation, it threatened days as a beautician). Berry got to know Muddy Wa­ another. Run-ins with the law did damage to his posi­ ters, who was impressed with Berry’s guitar playing, tion as a hifmaker. Despite a few mid-Sixties successes and through Waters he was introduced to Leonard (“Nadine,” “No Particular Place to Go,” “You Can Chess. Chess was impressed not so much by “Wee Never Tell”), Berry found himself eclipsed on the Wee Hours” as by “Ida Red,” a chugging tune that charts by upstarts like the Beatles and the Rolling combined country and western guitar over a rhythm Stones, who had respectfully appropriated his songs and blues beat and wry, clearly enunciated lyrics. and style and made them their own. Berry wouldn’t Suggesting a name change to “Maybellene,” Chess re­ reach Number One on the pop charts again until leased the song— and Berry shifted gears into the sim­ 1972, when, back on the Chess label, he released the ple and stunning sound that gave shape and style to naughty novelty “My Ding-a-Ling.” rtK'k and roll. Berry’s work has taken on a life of its own. His rep­ Between 1955 and 1959, Berry, like an astute ertoire is required learning for all serious rockers and oral historian, charted the course of the burgeoning essential listening for anyone who wants to know what sound and its eager, ever-growing audience. He de­ rock and roll is all about — where it came from, the scribed the basic attitude (“Roll Over Beethoven”), dreams it embodies and, of course, how much fun it the roots of the style (“Rock & Roll Music”), the se­ can he. THE S U R P H ^ OF AN AMERICAN MUSIC BY LENNY KAYE Mickey and Sylvia Scream in’ Jay Hawkins But I can’t remember wfteihl^or when . merely secondhand musicians — though sacrificial life-is-art swan song at the Alamo did rock and roll begin? that’s how they were generally regarded by offered some grander purpose than mere Was a new era dawning oil July Stb, 1954, their professional peers. Primitive or not, prosperity? James Dean’s meteoric rise to when Sam Phillips spokelthe immortal these were aware and dehhpilStWereators — fame in the six months between his March words - “That’s fine, man. Hell, that’s A f­ often driven visionaries — whbse goal was 1955 screen appearance in East o f Eden and ferent. T h at’s a pop song n<iw” — to Elvi?* simplicity inste^^of intrhyfcy. Reacting his own flaming demise (the self-fulfilling Presley over a studio interconiat 760 Union ^gainst the passivity of audience-performer prophecy of Rebel without a Cause) p ro ­ Avenue in Memphis? ihteruction, rock celebrated and indulged moted similar existential questions. It was Was it March 31st, 1955lwhen T h e its subliminal urges. Itjcracked one beat in only when the newly ubiquitous medium of Blackboard Jungle formally eljuated Bill place of six and projected lyrics naked in television met rock’s first icon, Elvis Pres­ Haley’s “Rock around the Clock” with ju­ their unadorned desire, along with melodic ley, that rock became something more than venile delinquency, providing a theme song phrases so pointe^T they became mnemonic music. It went pop. for adolescent rebellion? hooks, as America s (and later the world’s) Projected into millions of unsuspecting Or was it the early Fifties^?rossover suc­ Top Forty chart?would soon devastatingly living rooms, as important for what hea cess of the Chords’ “Stf-Boom,” the Pen­ learn. couldn’t show (the famous waist bisection) guins’ “Earth An^ei,” the Crows’ “Gee,” The subculture offered was part Atomic as for what he did (gold records galore), El­ Big Joe Tqptflr’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” Age and part Media M odern^tepping back vis not only combined the tangled musical and a Cleveland .disc jockey’s prescience in from the siege mentality of postwar para­ strains of rock’s prehistory into a sultry taking the “race records** known as rhythm noia. Times were good in the micNFifties. whole, he took a mutated step forward. His and blues and changing their name lb at­ Smokestack Amerm&Was booming: the pay was an inspirational leadership that came to tract (or acknowledge) a multiracial audi­ of a lactory worker with three dependents embody the new music itself. Long live the ence? averaged seventy dollars a week. Time mag­ King! The truth is that despite an all-too-human azine said that along with the highest Gross His — and, by extension, rock’s — was an urge to define music in neat bloodlines! the Rational Product in history, “bomb shelters electric sound, tilting the balance from am­ roots of rock and roll remain frustratiligly were on sale in Los Angeles, and hardly any­ plification to AC current. You could hear it elusive. As much a self-conscious lifestyjte as one was buying them.” President Eisenhow­ in the slapback echo with which Phillips a collection of rhythms and melodiel, iy er heralded a return to confidence, while surrounded Presley’s voice in “That’s All seemed to pick at will from the discard! #F Davy Crockett was the national hero. Right” and in the bite of Scotty Moore’s other music forms, recycling scorned chords But did the public like Davy because he electric guitar. It seemed tailor-made for and pariah riffs. said things like “Be sure you’re right, then “Hi-Fi,” a car radio, a live stage show. This is not to say rock and rollers were go ahead,” or because his coonskin cap and And yet, as much as rock and roll was “specialty” music, but certainly influential styles in their own right. Vocal techniques and improvisations from the hlues; a hard, hig-band swing; the call-and-response of gospel; the dance blues of New Orleans; the frantic bop of West Coast jazz; the twang of hillbilly boogie and western swing; the close-harmony serenade of groups like the Ink Spots and the Four Freshmen - all of these found their way into rock and roll. “Rock and roll was probably the first music with regional origins to be commer^ally Moonglows Chantéis expanded its rock and roll record chart from 3(^to 100 songs on November 12th, 1955 — nht so coincidentally, the same month that^Colonel Tom Parker signed El­ vis to recor^ihg giant RCA-Victor. Pop musics older guard had initially tried to subvert rock’s emotional intensity with sanitized cover versions; they hoped that all this loud bravado would soon go away. But they never stood a chance. The swapfest between rhythm, hlues, country, western and plain old Tin Pan Alley contin­ successful on a nationwide scale,” writes ued wildly apace. In the hands of maverick Charlie Gillett in The Sound of the City, independent labels and their equally unruly and small wonder, since it managed to touch artists, a marketplace free-for-all was initi­ so many reference points along the way. ated that harked hack to the days of the Add to rock and roll the manic exhibi­ frontier West. tionism of youthful exuberance, the sense of “This is what makes rock and roll so in­ contrariety that kept the music moving fur­ triguing,” Nick Tosches notes in his chroni­ ther out on its own limb of the family tree, cle of the “dark and wild” years before El­ and the outrage (and subsequent attraction) v is, Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll. it could provoke, and the result was music “Whether one regards it as art or as busi­ that had an explosive impact on America in ness, its history — one of greed and inno­ the Fifties. It would be a nigh-exclusive na­ cence, tastelessness and brilliance, the ri­ presented as a strikingly original concept tional phenomenon until the decade turned. diculous and the sublime (not to mention when it came along, it was a product of the At that point, it would be reflected back sex, violence and pink silk suits) — is a fun- same frantic bartering of style that has across the Atlantic with a vengeance by the house-mirror reflection of the American characterized American music since there British Invasion, and it would take over the dream gone gaga.” was an American music to speak of.