60 Fun Facts About Chuck Berry

Which nickname did Chuck Berry earn for shaping the guitar-driven sound of 1950s teenage music?

The Father of Rock and Roll drew the ultimate compliment from John Lennon, who said that if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'.

Which member of Kiss gave an unplanned eulogy at Chuck Berry's funeral?

Gene Simmons was not scheduled to speak, but when someone urged him to the podium he told the mourners how deeply Berry had influenced him as a musician.

Which Chuck Berry song plays during the twist contest in Pulp Fiction?

You Never Can Tell, Berry's 1964 tale of a teenage wedding, found a new audience thirty years later when Quentin Tarantino set the Jack Rabbit Slim's twist contest to it.

Which rock-and-roll Christmas standard did Chuck Berry record first, in 1958?

Run Rudolph Run is Berry's own tune, yet most cover versions credit Johnny Marks, who wrote the original red-nosed reindeer song and guarded the rights to the Rudolph name.

What was Berry's first hit single, released in 1955?

Maybellene is a car chase set to a big beat: the singer's V8 Ford pursues his girl's Cadillac Coupe de Ville, a tale of speed and romance aimed squarely at teenagers.

Which blues great suggested Berry contact Leonard Chess in 1955?

Muddy Waters pointed him to a blues label, yet Leonard Chess waved away Berry's blues numbers and pounced on his country-flavoured song instead.

Berry's first hit was adapted from which western swing tune?

Ida Red was a hillbilly tune, yet Berry made his reworking of it a highlight of his club act before he took it to a blues label.

Per Berry's pianist, what did Leonard Chess spot on the studio floor that inspired the title of Berry's first hit?

A mascara box did it, by the pianist's account, and the spelling of the brand name was then changed so that the cosmetics company could not sue.

Berry said the name in the title of his first hit was one he remembered from childhood, where it belonged to what?

A cow lent its name, by Berry's telling, after the label boss decided the song's original country title sounded too rural for a teenage hit.

Which disc jockey was mysteriously listed as a co-writer of Berry's first hit?

Alan Freed wrote none of it: the credit was a form of payola, giving the DJ a share of the royalties and every reason to keep playing the record.

Which single was Chuck Berry's only pop number one?

My Ding-a-Ling drew a protest to the BBC from the morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, who wanted the innuendo-laden novelty song off the air, but the corporation declined to ban it.

Johnny B. Goode travels on the Golden Record, a disc of Earth's music carried into space by which spacecraft?

Voyager 1 and 2 each carry a copy, and it will be some 40,000 years before either probe passes close to another planetary system.

What is the name of Berry's famous crouching, one-legged stage move?

He said he first did it as a child, scooting under a table to retrieve a ball.

Which British band chose Chuck Berry's Come On as its debut single in 1963?

The Rolling Stones took it to number 21 in Britain, doing better with the song than its writer had: Berry's own 1961 single missed the American chart altogether.

For what crime was the teenage Berry sent to a reformatory in 1944?

Armed robbery earned the maximum ten-year sentence after a hold-up spree on a road trip through Kansas City, but Berry walked free on his 21st birthday.

Which song did Chuck Berry plot with a prison atlas?

Promised Land sends its hero from Norfolk to Los Angeles by bus, train and plane, and ends with him phoning home to say he has made it: a dash to freedom dreamed up in a cell.

Besides singing, which sport did Berry take up while in the reformatory?

Boxing and a singing quartet filled his time inside, and good behaviour did the rest: he served only three years of a ten-year sentence.

What trade did the young married Berry train for in St. Louis before music paid the bills?

Beautician training followed spells as a janitor and on a car assembly line, all to support his young family until the guitar began to pay better.

Which blues guitarist's riffs and showmanship did the young Berry borrow for his own act?

T-Bone Walker was among the first to make an electric guitar the star of a blues band, and B.B. King was another great who traced his own playing back to him.

Which Chuck Berry song ends by revealing that Marie, whom the singer is trying to phone, is his six-year-old daughter?

Memphis, Tennessee began life as a B-side, yet covers made it a hit twice: Lonnie Mack's instrumental reached the American top five and Johnny Rivers then took it to number two.

Which western swing bandleader made the famous recording of the fiddle tune Berry reworked into his first hit?

Bob Wills was a fiddling bandleader from Texas, yet the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1999 as a musical influence on the rockers who followed.

Whose classical piano practice at home is said to have provoked Berry to write Roll Over Beethoven?

His sister Lucy had the classical training and first claim on the family piano, while her self-taught brother had to wait his turn to play the popular tunes he preferred.

Which Beatle sang lead on the band's 1963 recording of Roll Over Beethoven?

George Harrison inherited it: John Lennon had sung the song in the group's early stage act until 1961, when Harrison took over the lead and made it his own.

Which 1963 Beach Boys hit used the melody of Berry's Sweet Little Sixteen?

Surfin' U.S.A. borrowed so much of the tune that Berry ended up with a writing credit on the Beach Boys' hit, alongside Brian Wilson.

The surname in Johnny B. Goode nods to which detail of Chuck Berry's own life?

His childhood street was Goode Avenue in St. Louis, and the hero nearly read differently too: Berry changed 'colored boy' to 'country boy' to get the song on the radio.

The opening riff of Johnny B. Goode borrows from a 1946 record by which bandleader?

Louis Jordan's guitarist Carl Hogan played the lick on Ain't That Just Like a Woman, and Berry freely admitted that was where he first heard it.

Which astronomer, told that Johnny B. Goode was too adolescent to send into space, replied that Earth has plenty of adolescents?

Carl Sagan chaired the committee that chose the music for NASA's Golden Record, and he won the argument: Berry's song was launched in 1977.

In which 1985 film does a teenager perform Johnny B. Goode at a high-school dance?

Back to the Future turns it into a time-travel joke: bandleader Marvin Berry phones his cousin Chuck mid-song so he can hear the new sound he has been looking for.

Which British band opened its 1973 hit version of Roll Over Beethoven with a blast of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony?

Electric Light Orchestra played it again to open the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, a tribute to Berry weeks after his death, on the night of their own induction.

Which star of country's Bakersfield sound took a live Johnny B. Goode to number one on the country chart in 1969?

Buck Owens had learned his trade in Bakersfield dance halls, playing rhythm and blues and rockabilly alongside country, so a Berry rocker was home ground for him.

Berry's 1958 performance at Newport was captured in which concert film?

Jazz on a Summer's Day set a rock-and-roller among jazz royalty: the same film shows Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk and Dinah Washington playing that weekend.

In the 1959 film Go, Johnny, Go!, Berry had a speaking role playing whom?

Himself: while guest stars such as Eddie Cochran and Ritchie Valens only sing their numbers, Berry gets a real part, urging the film's disc-jockey star to back an unknown singer.

Which racially integrated St. Louis nightclub did Chuck Berry open in the late 1950s?

Club Bandstand also brought his downfall: a 14-year-old girl he brought in to work there became the centre of the federal case that jailed him in 1962.

Under which federal law was Berry imprisoned in 1962?

The Mann Act conviction that stuck came only at a second trial: an appeals court had thrown out the first verdict because of the judge's openly racist remarks.

Which 1964 Berry hit tells of a date ruined by a car seat belt that refuses to unfasten?

No Particular Place to Go was a wry title for a comeback single: Berry had spent most of the previous two years in prison, with quite literally nowhere to go.

Who backed Berry on his late-1960s live album recorded at the Fillmore Auditorium?

The Steve Miller Band found the rock-and-roll pioneer in a blues mood: he spent much of the set on Chicago-style blues rather than his own teenage anthems.

Which president invited Chuck Berry to play a White House concert celebrating Black music?

Jimmy Carter requested him for a White House concert staged for the Black Music Association, in the same year that Berry pleaded guilty in a federal court and went to prison.

Which company made the ES-350T and ES-355 guitars that became Chuck Berry's trademark instruments?

Gibson's guitar was all he carried on tour for years: Berry would arrive alone with its case and expect a hired local band to know his songs already.

Which musician organised and led the band for Chuck Berry's filmed 60th-birthday concerts in St. Louis?

Keith Richards led the band through stormy rehearsals with his hero, the man of whom he had once said: 'I lifted every lick he ever played.'

Which director filmed Chuck Berry's 60th-birthday concerts for a 1987 documentary?

Taylor Hackford shot the concerts at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, a cinema that had turned the young Berry away at the door because he was Black.

Which future star led a 1970s pickup band for Berry and recalled getting no set list, only guitar intros to follow?

Bruce Springsteen said Berry arrived alone just before showtime, handed over no set list and barely spoke to the band before or after the show.

At which St. Louis restaurant and bar did Berry play one Wednesday a month from 1996 to 2014?

Blueberry Hill was a friend's restaurant, and the residency became his farewell: the last show Berry ever played was there, in October 2014, at the age of 87.

Who played guitar and harmonica on Berry's final studio album, announced on his 90th birthday?

His children Charles Jr. and Ingrid had long played in his band, and with the record finished Berry announced: 'Now I can hang up my shoes!'

What was bolted to the inside lid of Berry's coffin at his funeral?

A cherry-red guitar, like the ones he had played for decades, was fixed inside the lid as hundreds of fans filed past at a public viewing in a St. Louis music club.

In 2020 the International Astronomical Union gave Chuck Berry's name to a crater on which world?

Mercury's craters are reserved for artists, musicians and writers, so Berry now shares a planet with a vast crater named Beethoven.

In 2014 Chuck Berry won the Polar Music Prize, founded as music's answer to the Nobel, in which country?

Sweden's prize jury hailed Berry as the pioneer who turned the electric guitar into the main instrument of rock music, and the honours were handed out in Stockholm's concert hall.

Berry's habit of demanding cash before every show helped bring a 1979 prison term for which offence?

Tax evasion: he admitted hiding income from the taxman and served about four months, a term he began within months of playing at the White House.

In Roll Over Beethoven, which other composer does Chuck Berry want told 'the news'?

Tchaikovsky is to be told that rhythm and blues has arrived, in a lyric that also name-checks Blue Suede Shoes, the Carl Perkins hit.

The Library of Congress chose Roll Over Beethoven for which list?

The National Recording Registry took no sides: the class that preserved Berry's anthem also preserved the Budapest Quartet's recordings of Beethoven's string quartets.

Which songwriter called Berry 'the Shakespeare of rock 'n' roll'?

Bob Dylan owed him a debt and said so: Subterranean Homesick Blues, he admitted, came partly from Berry's Too Much Monkey Business.

Which guitar-shaped feature made Berry Park, the estate where he died, famous?

Its swimming pool once welcomed the public: Berry opened the estate as a racially integrated resort, and it stayed open to all until the 1970s.

Which reggae star, a founding member of the Wailers, took Johnny B. Goode into the US Hot 100 in 1983?

Peter Tosh moved the story home: in his version the country boy lives not in Louisiana near New Orleans but in Jamaica, close to Mandeville.

Which honour did Berry's first hit receive in 1988 for its influence as a rock-and-roll record?

Grammy Hall of Fame induction is reserved for recordings at least 25 years old, which is how a 1955 single came to be honoured by the Grammys a third of a century late.

Which act joined Chuck Berry in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's first class?

Elvis Presley went in with Berry that first night, while the Beatles had to wait until 1988: acts become eligible only 25 years after their first record.

Which 1984 Grammy honour went to Berry?

Lifetime Achievement Award: it came five years after what looked like his last studio album, yet one more followed 33 years later, released shortly after his death.

Which singer, two years before her own huge comeback, was Berry's special guest at his 1982 Roxy television special?

Tina Turner joined him for one duet, Rock and Roll Music, yet the home video still put her name in its title: Chuck Berry Featuring Tina Turner.

Which longtime collaborator took Berry to court, claiming to have co-written dozens of his songs?

Johnnie Johnson lost in 2002: a federal judge ruled that too many years had passed since the songs were written, some of them nearly half a century earlier.

An eight-foot statue of Chuck Berry was dedicated in 2011 in which entertainment district?

The Delmar Loop is named for a turnaround where streetcars once looped back toward the city; the statue stands across the street from a club Berry played every month.

Which Beatles song drew a lawsuit for echoing the tune and 'flat-top' lyric of Berry's You Can't Catch Me?

Come Together cost John Lennon a settlement: he agreed to record three songs owned by Berry's publisher, which is how You Can't Catch Me ended up on his 1975 covers album.

Which songwriter, sharing a 2012 literary prize with Berry, said 'All of us are footnotes to the words of Chuck Berry'?

Leonard Cohen said it while accepting the award, and Berry, then 85, skipped his own speech, borrowed a guitar and played Johnny B. Goode instead.