Chuck Berry

 

As one of the founding fathers of rock ’n’ roll, Chuck Berry is revered by music fans all over the world. There were many scandals surrounding him during his long career, and these are often reported as mischievous pranks, as befits a rock star. However, some of his antics revealed an extremely unpleasant streak in his nature, especially in his sexual relationships with women.

 

Teenage joy rider

 

Chuck Berry was born to a relatively well-to-do black family. His father worked as a contractor and was deacon of a Baptist church, while his mother was a successful head teacher. The third child in a family of six, he grew up in St Louis, Missouri, in a middle-class area called The Ville. He was a choir boy in the church and a bass singer in his high school glee club. Berry excelled at music as a boy and his music teacher, realising the special talent he had, urged him to take up the guitar. He taught himself how to play and gave his first public performance while he was still in high school. However, even at this early stage in his career, he got into trouble.

In 1944 Berry was arrested for armed robbery, having stolen a car and ridden to Kansas City, Missouri. He was convicted of the crime and sent to a reformatory institution near Jefferson, Missouri, and it was here that he sang with a gospel group. He was released in 1947 on his 21st birthday.

On his release, Berry married Themetta ‘Toddy’ Suggs and began work in an automobile factory. He also attended night school and learned how to be a hairdresser, playing in local groups in his spare time to supplement his wages. Berry found work in night clubs and having been spotted for his talent was asked to play with a band called the Johnnie Johnson Trio. Although already an experienced blues player, Berry began experimenting with country music, or ‘hillbilly’ as it was called at the time. He found that black people attending the clubs enjoyed the sounds, which were new to them, and that it also drew a crowd of whites. He became known as the ‘black hillbilly’ and also began to sing material by a range of black singers, from the smooth sounds of Nat King Cole to the down-home blues of Muddy Waters, mixing up the styles as he went.

 

Under-age prostitution

 

In 1955 Berry secured a recording contract with Chess Records in Chicago, who were impressed by the unusual style of his songs. That year he recorded an old country and western song, ‘Ida Red’, retitling it ‘Maybelline’. It was a number one hit for him on the black charts and also reached the pop charts. His next hit was ‘Roll over Beethoven’, after which he began to tour relentlessly, joining white stars such as Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers, thus breaking down racial barriers in the musical world for the first time. From 1957 to 1959 he wrote many of his major hits, in an extraordinary rush of creativity. These included such classics such as ‘Johnny B. Goode’ and ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’.

However, off stage Berry was running into trouble again. This time, his criminal activity was to do with a young girl he had become involved with, Janice Escalanti. After Berry fired her from her job as a hat check girl in his club, Escalanti went to the police and told them that Berry had met her when she was only 14 years old, during a trip to Juárez, Mexico. She recounted how he had introduced her to a life of prostitution. Berry was accused of transporting her across state lines for the purpose of prostitution, which was a crime under the Mann Act, a federal statute. He was brought to court and convicted of the crime, receiving a prison sentence of three years and a fine of $10,000. Berry did not served the full term of his sentence, and was realeased after less than two years.

 

Cynical money maker

 

After his release in 1963, Berry went back to touring and playing, having written more songs while in jail. These were difficult years for him, since he had quarrelled with his family and alienated many of his former friends. On the other hand, his career was flourishing, and he was making successful chart records again. During this period he had six hit singles in the charts, including, ‘You Never Can Tell’ and ‘Nadine’. In 1972 he had a major hit with the double-entendre song, ‘My Ding-A-Ling’. This song reached the number one spot, and from then on Berry became a stalwart of the rock ’n’ roll revival circuit.

As many recount, by this time his attitude towards playing rock ’n’ roll had become completely cynical, and he concentrated on making as much money as he could, without being very concerned about the quality of his performances. He often hired back-up bands and refused to rehearse with them before the shows, leading to a steep decline in the quality of his performances. This disappointed many of his fans, both young and old. In addition, Berry was known for his bad temper and arrogant behaviour towards other musicians. One of his former backing musicians, Bruce Springsteen, recounts how Berry never gave the band a set list before the show, or thanked them for playing afterwards. Even so, such was Berry’s musical reputation that when he appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, Springsteen agreed to back him once again.

 

Tax evasion

 

Although Berry’s career as a musical innovator was over by the 1970s, he was still making large amounts of money on the revival circuit. The Internal Revenue Service was convinced that he was evading tax and prosecuted him for the crime. He pleaded guilty to the charge and was convicted. His sentence was four months’ imprisonment, and 1000 hours of community service, which in his case consisted of doing benefit concerts. By now he had become one of the ‘bad boys’ of rock ’n’ roll, but in some quarters this only enhanced his reputation.

Much as Berry was disliked by those who came across him in the show-business world, his fans still adored him. However, his reputation took something of a battering when in 1990 he was sued by over 50 women. The women alleged that he had installed a video camera in the ladies’ room of his restaurant, The Southern Air, so that he could watch them as they used the toilets, believing that they were doing so in private. Berry denied that he had indulged in this distasteful voyeurism, but offered to settle the matter out of court, which is thought to have cost him over a million dollars. In the same year his house was raided and the police found a cache of home-made pornographic videos, including one in which, according to some reports, he was depicted urinating on a young woman in a bathtub.

 

Gunpoint hitchhiker

 

In his later years Berry’s erratic behaviour became legendary. There was one story circulating that, on one occasion, when his car broke down, he hitchhiked a lift so that he could get home. He persuaded the driver of the car to give him a lift by pointing a gun at him. Berry himself recounted this story in his autobiography, published in 1987. Unusually for a rock star, Berry actually wrote the autobiography himself, instead of employing a ghost writer, and showed some skill as a literary writer.

Despite his many faults as a human being, Berry is still regarded as a great musician, and today he continues to be admired as a pioneer of rock ’n’ roll. Only two years after the restaurant debacle, he performed at President Bill Clinton’s inaugural celebration. Along with Jerry Lee Lewis and other stellar performers in the rock world, he has survived many scandals and is set to remain one of the legendary performers of 20th-century popular music.