Rock and Roll Music

While not at all minimizing the contributions of the legends that I have discussed thus far, my own nominee for the man who most directly congealed a variety of musical ingredients into what we know today as rock and roll is Chuck Berry.  Berry’s classics like “Maybellene” (1955), “Rock and Roll Music” (1957) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958) sound as fresh to my ears today as they did the first time I heard them more than 50 years ago.  His 1956 hit “Roll Over Beethoven” – “Roll Over Beethoven” also might be my very favorite Beatles cover song – contains a truly delicious song lyric:  “Roll over [in your grave], Beethoven / And tell Tchaikovsky the news”. 

(June 2013/1)