University of Virginia Library

Hail, Hail, Rock 'n' Roll:
Chuck Berry Rocks On

By Michael Lydon

The presence of Chuck Berry
made past and present one, packed
into one complete moment the
feelings of a young lifetime growing
up in America, and then opened up
the way to exaltation, to digging
who you had been, who you were,
and who you could become . . .

Hail, hail, Rock 'n' Roll!
Deliver me from the days of old.

In the spring of 1955, Charles
Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry
was a blues singer-guitarist in St.
Louise, Missouri. Twenty-eight
years old, dashingly handsome, and
a flamboyant showman, he had
gotten a trio together (with Johnny
Johnson on piano and Ebby
Harding on drums) and did steady
weekend work at the Cosmopolitan
Club (later a grocery, now a club
again, called the Cosmo Hall) in
East St. Louis.

In 1955, after over seven years
of waiting and working, hoping and
wondering, he thought maybe the
break had come. He had written a
few songs he liked and could get up
the fare to Chicago, so like
hundreds of hopefuls before and
since, he went up to the South
Side, blues capital of the world.

"Shake, Rattle, and Roll," then
"Rock Around the Clock" - fast,
hard, so much energy in a curve of
power that started low and swept
up and up to an explosion!
Daddy-o? Daddy-cool! "They"
didn't like this music and its dirty
dancing at all, but the door had
been opened and the children were
getting beyond their control.

Heady Days, that first lindying
era of rock. In retrospect it is
astonishing how fast it happened:
Early rock is replete with instant
success stories like Chuck Berry's:
complete unknowns making smash
hits their first time in a studio.
Which means that the music filled a
gargantuan need that neither artist
nor audience knew existed.

Rock's excitement in
1954-55-56 was that of love at first
sight. Some date rock back to Fats
Domino's first million seller ("The
Fat Man") in 1948, or even to
"Open the Door, Richard" in 1946;
the music does go back that far, but
it really became rock 'n' roll when
it met its response. Neither music
nor phenomenon alone, rock 'n'
roll is a mass sensibility.

That sensibility not only came
from nowhere and spread everywhere
but was so natural to those
who shared it that it was impossible
to explain. Non-believers made
comic hay of the tongue-tied rock
star and the girls who could only
shriek "Eeceile I love him!" when
asked why they loved Elvis. But
how else to say it? Fifteen years
ago you couldn't say why you
loved rock 'n' roll, not only because
you didn't know why (and you
didn't), but also because maybe
you didn't dare.

And maybe "they" couldn't
understand your love for the same
reason. For that sensibility was not
just sensuality, speed and rebellion,
but also black - how much still
isn't clear, but more black than
anyone was willing to admit in
1955. The rock 'n' roll sensibility
meant that on some level white kids
who were trying to find their own
identity were identifying passionately
with black music, doing it
barely consciously but therefore
without any self-conscious distance.
And not just identifying passively,
but creating a new identity between
white and black.

The medium of the process was
the music, which from the first was
a racial and musical hybrid. "Blues
plus country equals rock" is a
cliche inadequate to express rock's
heritage or its sharing. Rock was
willing to use almost every kind of
American music known. Little
Richard emerged as a star for white
teenagers straight from a black
gospel show biz that until then few
whites knew existed.

The Platters, on the other hand,
were a very funky version of the
Mills Brothers and the Inkspots,
who had long been popular with
whites. Elvis was tremendously
influenced by blues singers (he had
been one of those kids in the white
spectator section), but he added a
white punk sexuality all his own.
His "Hound Dog" had first been
done by Big Mama Willie Mac
Thornton, but it had in turn been
written for her by two white kid
song writers from New York, Jerry
Leiber and Mike Stoller.

Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede
Shoes" was the first record ever to
top the rhythm and blues (black)
and popular (white) charts at the
same time. All the stars, white and
black, toured together, and heard
and were influenced by each other's
music.

In short, a black-white music
and white kids who said, "Yeah,
that's how I feel." That was rock
'n' roll. You often didn't know if it
was white or black; it just had to
have a beat so you could dance to
it. Not that race had disappeared,
not at all, but white kids had
started to go to the same shows as
blacks, to listen to the same music,
and to love it for the same reasons.

"This rock bit," he said in a rare
interview with Ralph Gleason, "it's
called rock now, it used to be called
boogie-woogie, it used to be called
rhythm and blues, and it even went
through a stage of what is known as
funk . . . Names of it can vary, but
music that is inspiring to the head
and heart, to dance by and cause
you to pat your foot, it's there. Call
it rock, call it jazz, call it what you
may. If it makes you move, or
moves you, or grooves you, it'll be
here.

The blues rolls on, rock steady
knocks, and they all are here now
and I think they all will be here
from now on."

Rock on, Chuck Berry!