Requirements: .ePUB reader, 380 KB
Overview: An affectingly homespun memoir from a founding father of rock ‘n’ roll. Berry’s story is just what you might expect from songs like “Johnny B. Goode,” “Maybellene,” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”–there are a lot of fast cars, jail cells, and pretty girls, at least in the beginning.
He was born in St. Louis (on Goode Avenue) in 1926, the son of a lower-middle-class black carpenter and a strict Baptist mother. When he wasn’t chasing girls (he includes several highly libidinous memories from an unusually early age), and practicing a nascent version of the duck-walk (developed in a game), he was singing–making his debut in a high-school talent show and finally becoming a lead singer in a gospel group (although he really idolized bluesmen like Muddy Waters).
A wild spree at the age of 17 in Kansas City–he was in a stolen car with some friends–put him in jail for three years, but after he got out and married, he began to play with a band in St. Louis, developed a following, and soon cut his first record (“Maybellene”) with Chess Records. The rest is rock ‘n’ roll history.
Berry describes the good times–the touring, the money, the women–along with the bad: being cheated out of royalties, twin convictions in 1962 and 1979 (for violating the morals of a minor–almost certainly a trumped-up charge, and income tax evasion). Certainly not the whole story–as even Berry admits in the last chapter–but rock ‘n’ roll fans will find it a fascinating portrait of a highly private musical innovator.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs
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