Start with what is often cited as the zazziest opening in rock history: a guitar’s siren call to get up and dance. The irresistible impact of that intro tells you that Chuck Berry’s bio-tune about a country boy (originally “colored boy”) who “played a guitar like a ringin’ a bell” is the singer’s own story — sanitized for playing on American Bandstand, since it leaves out Berry’s serial brushes with the law. Blending blues and country influences in his vocal and instrumental intonations, he was rock’s most persuasive black ambassador to the white kids who were just getting into that miscegenated musical form. For them, he wrote upbeat numbers about teen angst (“School Days”) and cute vixens (“Sweet Little Sixteen”), and duckwalked across the stage with a born showman’s satanic majesty. Keith Richards, on the night he introduced Berry for his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame laurel, said, “It’s hard for me to induct Chuck Berry, because I lifted every lick he ever played.”
The pure-’50s rave-up “Johnny B. Goode” has antecedents from the previous decade. The structure of the lyrics channels the Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”; and the famous intro is lifted from the opening (played by trumpets) of Louis Jordan’s 1946 hit “Ain’t That Just like a Woman.” But the wit of both the song and its playing are uniquely Berry. Unlike the savage thrumming of later rock guitarists, Berry’s virtuosity wore a smile. That good-natured energy is what gave the song its imperishable life. It’s why, when Back to the Future‘s Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) needs to wake up the sleepy small-town citizens of 1955, he chooses “Johnny B. Goode.” Berry was everything ferocious and joyous about proto-rock. “If you tried to give rock ‘n’ roll another name,” John Lennon said, “you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.’ “
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8JULmUlGDA]