- Image via Wikipedia
“Berry’s incredible success is due to his ability to articulate the concerns and attitudes of his audience in his music. At the height of his success, Berry was a 30-year-old black man singing to a mostly white, teenage audience. Dubbed the “Eternal Teenager,” Chuck Berry’s knowledge of the pop market made it possible for him to break color barriers and play to an integrated audience.”
In the 50’s, white kids like me didn’t know any black kids but we listened and danced to Chuck Berry‘s music. Segregation, whether formal in the Soiuth or informal in the North kept the races from mixing socially and this seperation was maybe the one failing of the 50’s. Both races benefitted from the ecomonic boom of the 50’s but even so blacks and whites still lived in very seperate and not very equal worlds.
Music was the exception. While whites struggled with the idea that blacks belonged next door and in the same schools, teenagers accepted good music without question and Chuck Berry’s genius was on every radio in the 50’s and in every high school gym. From his first big hit, Maybellene, Chuck Berry was part of every white teenager’s life. I don’t think we even thought how strange it was that white teenagers danced to the music of blacks but never had blacks as classmates. It wasn’t our fault. We didn’t create the society. Music at least started to process of changing the thinking about race and helped whites and blacks to begin appreciating one another. Overcoming the evil of slavery and fulfilling the destiny of the American political system is something we are still working at but music and artists like Chuck Berry helped move it along.
Maybellene was Chuck’s first hit and after 1955 no sock hop was complete without one or more of his hits.
Then what some consider his best song – Johnny Be Good
