The Saint Charles County Police Department in Wentzville Missouri received a call to check out a medical emergency on Buckner Road at approximately 12:40 p.m on March 18. When they arrived at the scene, they found an unresponsive man and attempted to use lifesaving techniques on him. Medics were unsuccessful and the man named was Charles Edward Anderson Berry Senior, better known as Chuck Berry, was pronounced dead at 1:26 p.m at the age of 90 from cardiac arrest.
Berry’s impact and influence on popular music is almost incalculable. The list of songs Berry wrote and performed in just the mid-to-late 1950’s alone, serve as the blueprint of early American rock music: “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Rock and Roll Music,” “No Particular Place to Go,” “Maybellene,” “Let It Rock,” and “Too Much Monkey Business,” to name a few.
Chuck Berry was not only famous for his numerous hits, but also the way he performed.
“My favorite Chuck Berry song is the one from back to the future, “Johnny B. Goode” not just because it is a good song but also because of the performance he made. He was one of the first to do a signature dance [the duck walk] while singing his songs in front of the crowd,” Newtown High School band director Kurt Eckhardt said.
Berry, in his late 20’s before his first major hit, crafted lyrics that spoke to the teenagers of the day and stayed relevant decades later. “Sweet Little Sixteen” captured rock ‘n’ roll fandom, an ode to the young girls later known as “groupies.” “School Day” told of classroom stories.
“My favorite song by Chuck Berry is probably the one about Rudolph [“Run Rudolph Run”] because whenever I hear it, it makes me think back to happy memories on Christmas with my family,” NHS sophomore Luke Sansonetti said.
Chuck Berry believed that it is important that an artist's songs are not only about their own lives, but can relate to the life of the people listening.
“Yeah his songs did in a way relate to me I guess because of how the Rudolph song caused me to relive good memories with my family” Sansonetti says.
Despite his musical success, Berry wasn’t liked by the public eye behind the scenes. He, on numerous occasions got into trouble with the law. In December 1959, Berry invited a fourteen-year-old Apache waitress named Janice Escalanti, to work as a hatcheck girl at his nightclub. While crossing the border, he was soon arrested on a prostitution charge and received three years at the Indiana Federal Prison.
“Well nobody is perfect, and you have to remember that because he is very famous, his bad actions were all over the news. When if it were a normal guy like you or me, it would probably only be on a ten minute news segment and then everyone would forget about it… I think we should try to forget about the bad and only remember all the good he did for the world,” Sansonetti said.
Image Courtesy of Rolling Stone