I really love what Chuck Berry did with Christmas music, and also the Rat Pack Christmas stuff, which I listened to all through my childhood.
I just sort of grew up with music always in the background like a soundtrack. And it really hit me hard when The Beatles came along, like so many people. That got me started digging back further to Chuck Berry.
Well all of Chuck's children are out there playing his licks, get into your kicks. Come back baby, rock and roll never forgets.
The first songs I learned were 'It Takes a Worried Man' and Woody Guthrie's 'Grand Coulee Dam,' 'Rock Island Line' - those kind of American folk songs that were probably on the edge of blues. After that was Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry songs. And then I heard Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed and Big Bill Broonzy on the radio.
That's the misconceptions that people have, that Chuck Berry went to jail. They're just totally wrong. It might have said something in the large papers in the bigger city headlines and things. But, you take a look at any of the local papers, and you will see that I was acquitted. I never went to jail.
I was playing with Chuck Berry, who sounded like an English teacher. Did you ever listen to his records? He pronounces every word.
Maybe it is true what they say, that playing these Chuck Berry songs is easy. But try singing them. The words come out hard, like bullets.
My mom would always play me a lot of late-'50s, late-'60s rock.
If you're going to do Chuck Berry, you got to, you know, go all out, and the duck walk is just kind of you know, cursory. That's like standing.
I never liked jazz or anything else. Early rock n' roll - that was music to me. Everything else was boring.
Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal.
We're gonna release a studio album probably a year from now and we've got these recordings that we did with Coco Taylor and Johnny Johnson, who was Chuck Berry's piano player.
I love '50s music, all that stuff from the '50s.
If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'.
My first guitar was a Gretsch 6120, and I just loved listening to artists like Elvis, Chuck Berry and Stray Cats.
This is no condemnation of Chuck Berry, who I greatly admire. But Chuck Berry's music will not translate as well to orchestration because of its very three-chord rock 'n' roll nature. It is the music of the artists that are more pretentious, pompous or closer to the kind of big dramatic stylings that orchestras are good with.
When Chuck Berry came along, what he did was more rock & roll than it was blues. It was more exciting. He was like the next step. I thought his first single, 'Maybellene,' was the greatest song in the world.
[Rock 'n' roll] music started out with some cat banging a log with a couple of pieces of stick. He sent a message across a river and although the cat on the other side receiving the message didn't know the exact words, he did understand basically something about what was being communicated.
I watched Elvis Presley become - I listened to Elvis Presley. I watched Chuck Berry become. I listened to Little Richard. I heard that music, and it was part of my upbringing.
There was a time in America not long ago when rock 'n' roll was called race music, and white kids who wanted to go see Chuck Berry were completely forbidden.
I love old school rock and roll.
Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it. If you were going to give Rock 'n' Roll another name you might as well call it Chuck Berry. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - Rock and Roll or Christianity.
The Beatles did their best cover work on Little Richard's 'Long Tall Sally' and music influenced by Richard, such as Larry Williams's 'Dizzy Miss Lizzie.'
You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain.
My momma always said, 'You and Elvis are pretty good, but y'all ain't no Chuck Berry.
