Chuck Berry Dies: Rock & Roll Guitar Genius Was 90; “He Made It”

“Chuck Berry died. This breaks my heart, but 90 years old ain’t bad for rock and roll”.

They said they responded to an emergency at a Buckner Road property on Saturday afternoon where Berry was found unresponsive. They performed CPR, but weren’t able to resuscitate him and he was pronounced dead at 1:26 PM.

Charles Edward Anderson Berry Sr. was born on October 18, 1926, in San Jose, Calif., but his family moved to St. Louis just after his birth.

“The family requests privacy during this time of bereavement”, said police. Among other big-screen Berry moments, Marty McFly (aka Michael J. Fox) gets into a little “Johnny B. Goode” action in 1985’s “Back to the Future“.

Though Berry had several health issues in recent years, he seemed thrilled last year when he announced that he had completed “Chuck”, an album of new material that he planned to release this year. “And Leonard Chess said, ‘Why don’t we name the damn thing “Maybellene”?'” The record was the first by a black artist to outsell covers of it by white musicians (and led to a three-decade battle over its credits). Generations, even. As long as the world keeps dancing to that rock and roll music, you’ll always hear Chuck Berry’s body and soul.

So what do we know about this new album, which will now be Berry’s last one ever?

“I was living on Michigan Avenue at 31st Street, in a parking lot playing ball, and I heard this electric guitar playing out of a auto radio”, Kramer recounted.

Berry is credited with originating many quirks exclusively associated with the rock “n” roll genre, including a rollicking, danceable beat, his famous “duck walk” and a heavy, rhythmic guitar style that he may well have been described in the song Johnny B. Goode: “just like he’s ringin’ a bell”.

“While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together”.

Chuck Berry, one of the creators of rock and roll, has died, according to police.

He leaves behind his wife, Toddy, who he married in 1948, and four children. At the time I didn’t think that some of the acts I was witnessing would eventually no longer be with us, including Berry, Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, and James Brown.

In a time when racial prejudice was the law of the land, Berry had to navigate through a minefield of bias in society and the music business, especially in the south, where his music was particularly popular.

He said past year: “My darlin” I’m growing old! Berry taught himself how to play the guitar in junior high school. “Now I can hang up my shoes!”