(vehicle droning) (vehicle droning) (energetic music) ♪ Deep down in Louisiana, close to New Orleans ♪ ♪ Way back up in the woods among the evergreens ♪ ♪ There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood ♪ ♪ Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode ♪ ♪ Who never ever learned to read or write so well ♪ ♪ But he could play a guitar just like a-ringin' a bell ♪ (vehicle droning) (crickets chirping) (keys rattling) (radio scratching) (upbeat music) (door rattling) ♪ Maybellene, why can't you be true ♪ ♪ Oh, Maybellene, why can't you be true ♪ ♪ You done started doing the things you used to do ♪ ♪ As I was motorvatin' over the hill ♪ ♪ I saw Maybellene in a Coupe de Ville ♪ ♪ A Cadillac a-rollin on the open road ♪ ♪ Nothin' will outrun my V-8 Ford ♪ ♪ The Cadillac doin' 'bout 95 ♪ She bumper to bumper, rollin' side by side ♪ ♪ Maybellene, why can't you be true ♪ ♪ Oh, Maybellene, why can't you be true ♪ ♪ You done started back doin' the things you used to do ♪ (upbeat music continues) (vehicle droning) (upbeat music continues) (radio chattering) (handcuffs clinking) (upbeat music continues) - I had gone to church and my niece wanted to go to the parade that was over at Tandy Park, and there was this guy standing under a tree.

As I passed him, I said, "Hmm, he's kinda cute."

And the sun was shining in his eyes and I could tell he had brown eyes.

And he said, "Hello."

I wouldn't say anything.

And he said, "Cat got your tongue?"

And I said, "No cat has my tongue."

He said, "Oh, I did get you to speak.

My name is Charles Berry, what is yours?"

I wouldn't say anything, what my name was.

And he said, "I said, what is your name?"

He said, "The cat doesn't have your tongue."

I said, "My name is Themetta."

He said, "Themetta Themetta?"

I said, "No, Themetta Suggs."

And from there we became.

So we went back home, we took my niece home, and he said, "Can you go riding?"

I said, "Sure, I'm grown."

And so, I went riding with him, didn't know anything about him.

So it was love at first sight.

And that's how I met Charles, May the 23rd, 1948.

And from there, six months we married.

- She loved Pop, and I know Pop loved her.

- My mother was his queen.

- My family will always be first in my life.

The home would be the castle.

And he would always work to provide the best for us.

But I must say, you know, when I met Charles and before we married, he did let me know he had been in reformatory school.

- [Narrator 1] When Chuck was 18 years old, he and two of his friends went on a road trip to Hollywood.

They ran out of resources and cash, and being desperate, they robbed three establishments.

(upbeat music) (door slamming) ♪ I bought a brand new airmobile ♪ ♪ It's custom made, it 'twas a Flight DeVille ♪ ♪ With a pow'ful motor and some hideaway wings ♪ ♪ Push in on the button and you will hear her sing ♪ ♪ Now you can't catch me ♪ Baby, you can't catch me ♪ 'Cause if you get too close ♪ You know I'm gone like a cool breeze ♪ (vehicle roaring) ♪ New Jersey Turnpike in the wee wee hours ♪ ♪ I was rolling slowly 'cause of drizzlin' showers ♪ ♪ Here come a flat-top, he was movin' up with me ♪ - [Narrator 1] Driving back to St. Louis, they experienced some road trouble.

♪ Suped-up Jitney ♪ I put my foot in my tank and I begin to roll ♪ - [Narrator 1] A stranger pulls up to them to offer their help, but feeling intimidated runs off.

♪ And then I blew my horn ♪ Bye-bye New Jersey, I've become airborne ♪ ♪ Now you can't catch me ♪ Baby, you can't catch me - [Narrator 1] And Chuck and his friend get in the car and use it to push Chuck's car.

(door slamming) (vehicle droning) ♪ You know I'm gone like a cool breeze ♪ ♪ Flyin' with my baby last Saturday night ♪ ♪ Wasn't a gray cloud floatin' in sight ♪ ♪ Big full moon shinin' up above ♪ - [Narrator 1] Two police officers standing on the side of the road waved the cars down.

♪ Can't catch me ♪ No, baby, you can't catch me - [Narrator 1] Chuck served three years and was released on his 21st birthday.

- The first jail sentence, he was a criminal.

Right, you know?

I mean, he started that whole hip hop tradition back then, right (laughs)?

He was a gangster, first gangster (laughs).

You know, armed robbery.

- He robbed a couple gas stations.

He stole a couple cars.

I mean, you know, he was rolling.

He was juvenile delinquency before it had a title.

- And I couldn't make my mind up whether I wanted to stick with him or let him go.

And I chose to stick with him because I thought I could help him.

Charles didn't speak about being a musician or a writer or a singer or anything like that.

He had a guitar, however.

He found that I liked the blues.

I said, "Well, you know my sister plays the blues all the time, we love it."

And he went to my sister's house and started playing the blues.

And Charles had a good little guitar with three strings on it.

He would play and my sister would sing.

And from there it was blues from there on.

Music then, that's where he started really into music I would think.

- My first inspiration.

♪ Unforgettable - Was Nat Cole in high school.

- [Narrator 1] He admired the clarity of Nat King Cole's way of conveying either words or music to people.

- I could not come near Nat Cole, but it didn't keep me from mimicking or liking his music.

The guitar players I listened to were Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker.

- T-Bone Walker, he was one of the first rockstar guitar players in my mind.

He was the first to go over the top of the head, play an ES-5, and he... (placid guitar music) You know, but you hear the DNA of Chuck Berry and T-Bone Walker.

- So this is a double stop that my grandfather did all the time.

And he got it from T-Bone Walker.

And that probably goes way, way back.

But Pop Pop made it pretty popular though himself.

And it is pretty simple.

You just go like.

(placid guitar music) And that's probably one of the most recognizable licks like ever.

- Chuck would play in horn stabs.

(placid guitar music) - Chuck Berry changed the guitar into more of a percussive instrument, like the piano.

Typically, I used to hear guitar players that were smooth and silky, but Chuck Berry was going kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink, kink.

You know, like a Jerry Lee Lewis of the guitar.

He was like, you know, banging it.

- Well, it was Chuck Berry who was playing blues and took it and created rock 'n' roll from it.

So he was the gap, he was the connecting rod between the blues and what rock became later.

So he had blues bands backing him, but he was just playing faster.

He revved it up and brought it into the, as we like to say, into the Space Age.

- [Interviewer 1] This Musician's Union card here.

- [Chuck] Oh, I got that in '54 and started learning.

- [Interviewer 1] But who is this person's name on here?

- [Chuck] Well, that's my name.

Sort of camouflage, that N. - [Interviewer 1] Uh-huh, I see.

- [Chuck] Berryn.

- Charles had got in playing music in blues joints and what have you.

And for the respect of his dad, he put an N at the ending of Berry.

That was to protect his father so the church would not cast him out or thought, you know, his child is in the devil's music and whatnot.

- They came to realization he could be doing a hell of a lot worse.

They knew that he had gotten in trouble as a teenager, you know, and okay, him playing this so-called devil music or getting locked up for having a pistol and trying to rob a guy.

Mm, the devil isn't that bad, man (laughs).

- Church decided it's okay to have Berry as your son and playing rock 'n' roll music.

- [Johnnie] One night my saxophone player got sick and couldn't make the job.

And I had heard Chuck Berry, 'cause he was playing right up the street from where I was, a place called Huff's Garden, and I had his phone number and I gave him a ring.

And actually we just sat in for that one night.

And that one night lasted over 20 something years that we stayed together, you know, playing this kind music that he played was something new to the Black people because they're used to hearin' blues and whatever.

And Chuck come in with this, what we called at that time hillbilly stuff.

And it went off like a Chinese firecracker.

(energetic guitar music) - If you listen to a piano player, start out as a fast rock 'n' roll type blues, how does he start it?

♪ Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da ♪ And you realize Johnnie Johnson's right hand influenced greatly that guitar riff.

(energetic guitar music) - I would say it came from mimicking the figure on a piano of boogie-woogie.

And he can do the same thing on the guitar much more easy.

- Chuck Berry came to me and asked me about changing the name from the Johnnie Johnson Trio to Chuck Berry's Trio, which was perfectly okay with me because Chuck was more of a go-getter, and he seemed to know more about the business than I did.

And I figured with him as a leader, we would have more jobs and a better success.

- [Joe Bonamassa] Johnnie was a smart guy.

He wasn't going to just go, "Well, we gotta keep this the Johnnie Johnson group," you know, when Chuck clearly was the breakout star.

- Johnnie was a great piano player and they worked together, they traveled together.

I was just glad to see him performing, doing what he had practiced to do.

And here he is out there doing it.

(mysterious music) - Chuck Berry drove to Chicago and Chuck was a very big Muddy Waters fan.

And he went to see Muddy Waters play at a local club in Chicago.

And afterwards he walked up to Muddy and said, "How can I get a record deal?"

He said, "Go see Leonard Chess and tell the Muddy he sent you."

And the next morning, or that Monday morning, he did just that.

And my father heard his little demo tape.

I think Chuck really wanted to be a blues artist because what he played first was a straight 12 bar blues called "Wee Wee Hours."

♪ In the wee, wee hours - My father was an immigrant from Poland, my father and uncle.

They came to Chicago for a better life.

The Black people that came to Chicago came from Mississippi, from Tennessee, I guess over a million, for the same reasons, a better life than they had in the South.

Slavery was over, but the attitude was still there.

There was no way for a Black man really to make a good income in the South during that period.

- [Joe Bonamassa] Back in those days, the civil war that we had in the 1860s was still in a very passive aggressive way, was still being fought.

- And even after the Civil War was won by the North, there were 4,000 to 10,000 lynchings of men, women, and children.

Out of those people, and don't kid yourself, they invented, they created without being able to read or write music, rock 'n' roll, blues, yes, even hip hop, folks other than people who studied Mozart and Beethoven.

- There was a fire and "Piss & Vinegar" and the music.

- We had this club, the Macomba Lounge, and we lived six or eight blocks away in a, we lived on the edge of the ghetto.

So anyway, my dad took me and we walked through the door of this club, the Macomba Lounge, and as we walked in, (guns firing) there were gunshots from the back.

(gun firing) And my dad threw me like a football, my uncle caught me, he pushed me down and my face was pressed to the floor.

And that smell of stale alcohol was so strong, I can remember it to this day.

I hate the smell of that stale alcohol because of that (laughs).

My father went into the music business in 1947.

In 1950, he formed Chess Records.

- [Joe Bonamassa] I think Chess Records was important to a lot of people's career.

So once you have that stamp of approval, and once you have other artists finding fame and fortune on a label, being on a label like Chess would've been extremely, you know, very important.

- The first Chess Records was in a building next to a printing place that did all of the mafia numbers paper, because the numbers rack had needed these little pads.

And they would do that for the Detroit and Chicago.

My real memory started when we moved to 4750 Cottage Grove.

And I always just loved it, I just loved it.

I loved being around it, it was better than anything I did.

As I grew older, the artists began to know me better and better.

And I had real relationships with Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter when he wasn't too drunk.

- Well, I went up there with a $79 recorder and played that, you know, because I'ma play guitar in front of string, you know?

"Well," he said, "it sounds good."

He was listening to the lyrics.

- The song he had was called "Ida Red."

It was an old country song in America.

My father said, "You gotta write new words."

And he looked over and there was a cosmetic company, Maybelline Cosmetics.

And he said, "That's what we'll call it."

- "Maybellene."

(energetic guitar music) (audience applauding) ♪ Oh, Maybellene, why can't you be true ♪ ♪ Oh, Maybellene, why can't you be true ♪ ♪ You done started doing the things you used to do ♪ - And Muddy told him, "You want to get going really good," he said, "Write songs all about what the kids are into."

He went back to St. Louis and he wrote "Maybellene."

And that's how he got started.

♪ Maybellene, why can't you be true ♪ - He would say, "I'm writing a song.

How you like that, what'd you think about it?"

I said, "That's good, that's good.

Go ahead, finish it."

- He evidently, he liked it because he told me to go back and get the band and come up and he'd consider a contract, a recording contract.

I said, "When, yesterday?"

(energetic guitar music) So the next Friday, I think we went up there and Saturday we recorded "Maybellene," "Wee Wee Hours," "Too Much Monkey."

By the way, I had these songs written all during that week, "Too Much Monkey Business," and I think "Roll Over Beethoven."

And we did all four of 'em in what?

Less than six hours.

"Maybellene" had 36 takes, by the way.

(energetic guitar music) (audience applauding) - Rock 'n' roll is a river of music which has absorbed many streams, rhythm and blues, jazz.

- Alan Freed had a radio show on the East Coast.

He would play any music that he thought just sort of moved him.

So in a very real way, Alan Freed introduced Chuck Berry to generations of little white kids that would normally not have heard that music.

- My father drove to New York and he made a deal with Alan Freed, a payola deal where Alan Freed was actually listed as the writer on "Maybellene."

- And when the record came out, it was Russ Fratto and Alan Freed and Chuck Berry.

Who is Russ Fratto?

He owns a stationary store who supplied Leonard with his stationery.

Why they were on it, it didn't matter to me, but I didn't know that that was a split of the monies.

But when I got my royalties, I saw one third.

Well, anybody can easily figure out, I'm good at mathematics, I'm only getting a third of this, you know.

So that was in the days of payola.

- Well, Chuck wasn't involved in the payola thing.

It was mainly the DJs.

They played your record, could help sell and make it a hit.

Record companies would hire what they call these independent promotion guys and have 'em go around and pay 'em under the table to play the stuff.

It was called payola, you know, everybody was doing it back then.

That's how all those guys got wealthy.

But you know, of course, Alan Freed became the scapegoat and took the brunt of it.

- [Interviewer 2] Mr.

Freed, did you ever accept payola to play a record?

- No, I did not.

- [Interviewer 2] So at no time?

- At no time and no further comment.

- When I first came to America, I was about eight and a half.

There was Elvis and a few other things, and there was race music.

- Black records wasn't getting played on white extensions even at that period.

- Yeah, you know what?

The kids found it.

- [Bo Yeah, they found it.

- The kids found it.

- [Bo] They found it.

- You'd be surprised how a word the mouth goes around.

- [Bo] Yeah.

- And I think that's just about when transistors came into being.

- [Bo] Yes, yes.

- The one thing they couldn't segregate in those days was the radio because there were stations that played Black music.

Any kid who was listening to the radio or driving in a car could switch from one station to another and go by this Black station.

And a lot of people started listening to these records.

- I was able to get some of those stations and I heard Chuck Berry (scats).

And I started moving.

I didn't know how to dance or anything.

That was the only music that made me wanna move.

Like, boop, bab, boob, bab oh.

- I think she's gonna love this one and I know you will too.

That fabulous Chuck Berry!

- Everyone wants "Maybellene," "Maybellene."

Alan Freed had played it all night long over and over and over and broke the record.

It became our first crossover record that white kids bought.

- KATZ played "Maybellene" and Amos Dotson was the DJ.

I wrote him a letter and thanked him for playing my husband's song, "Maybellene."

- The car radios had buttons you would push.

And my father was pushing and pushing and all of a sudden he pushed and he heard "Maybellene," and he said, "We finally did it."

I said, "Did what, Dad?"

Howard Miller on WIND, the number one white station in drive time was playing "Maybellene."

And he was just so excited and thrilled.

(energetic rock music) ♪ Well, down in Louisiana, close to New Orleans ♪ ♪ Way back up in the woods among the evergreens ♪ - When rock first hit, you know, there was like four guys that we all idolized and listened to.

And there was Fats Domino, there was Little Richard, and then there was Chuck Berry.

Plus there was Elvis.

- What girl was not in love with Elvis Presley?

I mean, you look at the guy, the most handsome guy that ever lived and shook his hips.

And he had this kind of attitude, something wrong with my lip, man, you know?

- [Gene] I mean, Elvis pre was a great singer and a great entertainer.

Did he write "Johnny B. Goode"?

- He never wrote any songs.

- [Alice] Elvis had the whole package and that made his power of messaging very, very commercial.

- [Johnny] Elvis was able to ascend and play the Olympia Stadium in Detroit where Chuck Berry couldn't.

And Chuck Berry had more talent.

- Well, Elvis wanted to be Chuck Berry.

Elvis wanted to be a black blue guy, really.

Or you know, so would he have been bigger?

I don't know about bigger, but Chuck would've been so much bigger had he been white.

- [Alice] Chuck Berry was the real deal.

He was the black guy that was writing the music.

(energetic rock music) - Back in the '50s, it was the Wild West.

It was a new frontier.

They found a market of teenagers that were done with big band orchestras.

They wanted a stripped down, higher energy sound and times were changing.

Young people were coming out of World War II and embracing a boom time because it was peace.

- [Marshall] He understood the white generation.

This was the car, the automobile became something that teenagers drove for the first time in that era in the '50s, you know, that was the thing.

He understood this white culture so well that he could write poetry.

- [Joe Bonamassa] When I look at Chuck Berry, it's poet first 'cause poet, that was the real immaculate conception for him.

- I want a yellow convertible, four-door DeVille, with a Continental spare and wire chrome wheels.

I want air conditioning and automatic heat.

I want a full Murphy bed in my backseat.

I want short wave radio and a TV and a phone.

See, I like to talk to my baby when I'm riding along.

- He could tell you a full story in three minutes lyrically.

I didn't really appreciate that 'til I got into a band and started learning all the Chuck Berry songs.

And then I started realizing how clever these lyrics were.

- [Gene] Chuck, you know, had a very clear understanding about the songwriting side as far as lyrics and making the lyrics catchy and very accessible.

- He didn't pronounce his words like a lot of the black artists back then.

You know, he didn't slur his words.

He enunciated very clearly.

- So much so that a lot of promoters in 1955 when he first started touring after the great hit "Maybellene" hit, they didn't know that he was African American.

He would show up at a club and walk in and say, "I'm here to play."

"No, no, no, we're waiting for Chuck Berry."

"No, I'm Chuck Berry," and "Wow."

- And they turned him away from his own gig 'cause they thought he was white and because he was Black, they didn't let him in his own club, even though he'd already been contracted to play.

That's pretty bad.

That's a pretty un-groovy thing to happen.

- [Marshall] So many radio stations stopped playing Chuck Berry records.

(record smashing) Remember, they didn't know instantly that he was Black and it wasn't TV and it wasn't radio saying, "This is a Black guy, Chuck Berry."

- I never thought of color when I thought of Chuck Berry, he was just the great Chuck Berry.

Chuck Berry was Chuck Berry.

The definition of Chuck Berry is Chuck Berry.

- I remember Alan Freed telling me about somebody throwing bricks through his windows with a note- - Note strapped around it.

Yeah, he told me that too.

- Tied around it.

He was telling me that he's gonna get run out the neighborhood because he defied the system.

- And the South still has not come to grips with that, has never stood up and said, you know, "I'm sorry, we were jacka****."

Pathetic.

And yet all the Southern bands all played Chuck Berry.

There'd be no Lynyrd Skynyrd without Chuck Berry, come on.

- You know, during time he is writing his music, for some people, better or worse, will say, you know, were the good old days, which for, you know, fellas that looked like me back then might not have always been such the case.

But even going through all that, he was still able to write songs that showed the good in life.

- He was the storyteller, he brought the words.

And those words were not only great and would set an example for everybody, but also would institutionalize the concept of the teenager.

- [Johnny] The young audience, he was writing exactly what they were all experiencing and thinking.

And he said what they all wanted to say but didn't know how to do it.

He said it for 'em.

- And you could almost say Chuck Berry invented the teenager.

He documented that odd little bit of cultural phenomenon and literally made it historically significant.

- [Johnny] He wasn't a teenager at the time, but he remembered his teenage years and what he experienced and what he went through.

- Sometimes Leonard Chess would speed up the record and make me sound like a teenager.

- He was appealing to everybody by melding country, the hillbilly country music feel and sounds and humor and descriptions with the blues.

- It's got that R&B influence and it's got that country thing.

And that on top of, you know, three chords and the truth and some bad*** guitar playing, you can't beat that.

- I'm sure people drove along in their cars like I did growing up where you'd hear a song and just sometimes you would stop your car, jump out and dance in the street.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, you know?

'Cause it was that strong, the music was that strong.

- Yeah, he's the man, for sure.

- If he couldn't think of a word, he would just make one up.

(laughs) Don't gimme no botheration.

I think if you're playing "Scrabble," botheration is not in the dictionary (laughs) or the Koolerator.

The Koolerator was filled, Koolerator?

- "Motorvatin'" you're going over a hill and you could feel from the intensity of the way he was singing it, you're going fast.

You can almost feel the wind going through his hair, through the window and stuff.

When I was motorvatin' over the hill and you're driving, all in one word.

(energetic guitar music) - [Chuck] This was a going away party.

This was about September of 1955.

And I left the city to go to Gleason's Bar, which is here, Gleason's Bar, August 15th, 1955, Cleveland, Ohio, $800 a week behind $21 a night at the Cosmo over there.

And just the week before, I was making $32 at the Frolic Bar, $14 at the Three Brothers, $60 with the whole band at the Green Dragon, the Capitol Cocktail only paid 15, but Gleason's $800 a week.

(energetic guitar music continues) - When he returned to St. Louis, he decided that would be the thing to have for the teenagers here was a club where they could dance.

And he opened Club Bandstand on Grand Avenue.

- [Wayne] Well, as a gimmick, he dressed this woman as an Apache Indian the first night she worked.

♪ I got lumps in my throat ♪ When I saw her comin' down the aisle ♪ ♪ I got the wiggles in my knees ♪ ♪ When she looked at me and sweetly smiled ♪ ♪ There she is again standin' over by the record machine ♪ ♪ Lookin' like a model on the cover of a magazine ♪ - With everything going on with rock 'n' roll at the time, and teenagers coming together of all races, it just seemed like a natural to open that place up.

- He needed a secretary, and I needed different change.

I looking for a change.

- You came to hear the music at a rock 'n' roll show.

- [Francine] Yes.

- [Chuck] Yes.

- So we went and saw Chuck Berry and I left the next day.

- Fran was the Chuck Berry fan club secretary when she was a teenager.

And I used to always talk to Fran.

She actually worked for Chuck right to the end.

- She was very important.

They would go and play the gig and if it was commissioned at the door, she would collect Charles' part to make sure he got his money.

- [Francine] I was 21 and I was here a year and we had already established a nightclub.

- My dad had a lot of problems with the police.

You know, this is a Black guy in rural Missouri trying to get a business started.

The locals weren't real happy about it.

- Why it closed, I'm not too sure, but I understand they closed it because of envious and jealousy and what have you.

- Unbelievable, and those days, I mean for a Black person in America in 1958 to try to have a business and bring people together and then to be just shut down is just, it was a sad day.

(audience cheering) - Yo gang, you all remember "Maybellene" about the young man with a guitar who couldn't catch her with his car.

Well, here he is to tell us all about it with a brand new automobile, Chuck Berry, and here with "You Can't Catch Me."

♪ I bought a brand new airmobile ♪ ♪ It's custom made, it 'twas a Flight DeVille ♪ ♪ With a pow'ful motor and some hideaway wings ♪ ♪ Push in on the button and you will hear her sing ♪ ♪ Now you can't catch me ♪ Baby, you can't catch me ♪ 'Cause if you get too close ♪ You know I'm gone like a cool breeze ♪ - How great a performer Chuck Berry was, is unbelievable.

First of all, to be a great guitar player, the man who made the guitar a star.

He would play it behind his head, underneath his legs.

And of course, the inimitable duck walk that people still do naturally to this day.

- I tried to find the background on Chuck Berry's duck walk that he does, that famous duck walk.

Then I realized, I saw it where he got it from when I saw the movie, I think it was "Duck Soup" with the Marx Brothers.

Harpo and Groucho are going back and forth, faking each other out.

And right in the middle of it, Groucho goes like this.

And I said, "That's where Chuck got it from."

- [Chuck] When I was a kid, I used to scoot under the table and do it, you know, it was like an entertainment for the family or aunts or whatever.

And one time at the Paramount, it was, when I first did it, I did it in the act on an instrumental and played my guitar, and I got a big ovation.

So I coined it as one of the things I should do in the act.

(energetic rock music) (energetic rock music continues) - They did not like that he was Black, but they loved his music.

They would've liked it better if he was whit, a lot.

- That was the beginning of that younger generation looking at their parents and going, "Why do we have this divide?"

- And you'd have a line down, you know, white people on this side, Black kids on this side.

For him to bring the Black kids and the white kids together with their jump over the barriers and dance, all of a sudden, you know, the boundaries between the races started getting broken down.

- And definitely, you know, getting the rope down the middle of the auditorium torn down by the kids themselves, it helped, you know, because that generation was seeing that the differences that, you know, so many were taught were great and, you know, shouldn't be mixed weren't that great at all.

- And that's the power of music.

And to be in those guys' hands and for them to have to navigate that kind of racism in the United States where all men are created equal, what a mind, you know, what a mind, you know, f**k to just have this gift and then have this notoriety, but then have to deal with that kind of prejudice.

But instead of just blowing it up or walking away, you go, "Well, I do have this magical gift.

Maybe I can use it."

- Before there was a Martin Luther King, before there were marches, before the Civil Rights Movement got started, Chuck Berry broke down doors because all these little white kids up North and in the South were hearing Black music and not really thinking about what it all meant.

And maybe for them, for the first time in their life, they didn't care if the skin color was white or black.

Chuck Berry was able to do it seamlessly without being judgmental or shaking his finger at society and saying, "How dare you treat us that way?

It's supposed to be the land, home of the brave and the home of the free.

Well, I'm not free."

- Well, the music is just too powerful to be denied.

- [Joe Edwards] Here you have this Black man going around writing these songs that white girls are dancing to and enjoying and screaming when he comes on.

- And everybody's having a good time and wanting to get, well, if he goes over here, you know, well, everybody wants to go over there, and if he goes over here, well, everybody wants to go.

Then pretty soon everybody's going, you know, back and forth, beautiful.

- The music ended up gluing people together and they realized that was the, you know, the rest of it didn't matter 'cause we're all digging the same thing.

- Here he is, Mr. Chuck Berry.

♪ Deep down in Louisiana, close to New Orleans ♪ ♪ Way back up in the woods among the evergreens ♪ ♪ There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood ♪ ♪ Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode ♪ ♪ Who never ever learned to read or write so well ♪ ♪ But he could play a guitar just like a-ringin' a bell ♪ ♪ Go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go - Every band has one song that they're always gonna be associated with.

With Chuck Berry, it's "Johnny B.

Goode."

- "Johnny B. Goode," the smith, that's a movie.

Here's a story about Johnny and a gunny sack.

I had never heard of gunny sack before.

For those of you Northerners, it's where people in the South keep their guns in their trucks.

- It's a one of his great 28, right, yeah.

I mean, it is, it is, it's great.

It's a song about a guitar player.

- It was the blueprint for what rock 'n' roll is supposed to be.

(vehicle droning) (snake tail rattling) - Another incident that reflects the times back in 1958 was when Chuck Berry was driving with a woman named Joan Mathis and got pulled over by an officer.

Well, the officer came up actually after a flat tire occurred, and Chuck was repairing the flat tire.

And as he inspected the car, found some cash from, I'm sure payment of a gig, a performance, and a pistol and all.

And the officer really leaned on her to try to say that, you know, she was not there of her own volition and all that, and which wasn't the case, 'cause she says, "No, you know, this is great, you know, and all, and everything's fine.

What's the matter, officer?"

♪ Riding along in my automobile ♪ ♪ My baby beside me at the wheel ♪ ♪ I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile ♪ ♪ My curiosity running wild ♪ Crusin' and playin' the radio ♪ ♪ With no particular place to go ♪ - He was arrested for possession of a firearm and it was thrown out.

They kept nitpicking away at every opportunity that they had.

- Not arguably, hands down, and everyone agreed, he is the most important guitarist in rock history.

- Do you know he had that cool feel with, like, he sort of had huge, long fingers.

- [Gene] Certainly the strength of his hands gave him a bit of a leg up to get whatever notes he wanted.

- The big handed guitar players are always the people who really make an impression upon us.

- His intros just grabs you right off the bat.

You know, we used to call it the hook.

I learned from Chuck that you have to have a good hook, a guitar riff to start your records.

Even in "Memphis," I put that cool little intro that Chuck didn't have that was a hook right off the bat, that... ♪ Pa, pa, peh, peh-deh-da (placid guitar music) ♪ Long distance information ♪ Give me Memphis Tennessee ♪ Help me find a party that tried to get in touch with me ♪ ♪ She could not leave a number ♪ But I know who placed the call ♪ ♪ 'Cause my uncle took a message and he wrote it on the wall ♪ (upbeat guitar music) - You're sold on the fact that he's trying to call his girlfriend or his wife.

And at the end, Marie was only six years old.

Oh, he's talking about his daughter.

But what a great twist.

♪ Marie is only six years old, information please ♪ ♪ You got to put me through to her in Memphis, Tennessee ♪ - My dad went on the road.

First thing he did is he bought my mother their first castle over on Whittier.

(placid guitar music) (dog barking) (placid music continues) I'm in my house that my dad, the second, as I like to say, the second castle my father bought for my mother and sisters.

They bought this house in 1958.

This is 13 Windemere Place in the city of St. Louis.

- He understood real estate.

He understood that it was a good, safe investment.

It was something that was there that was permanent.

He bought it for his homes, his family's homes.

And then once he bought it, he didn't wanna ever sell it.

So part of his real estate business, which just kept growing 'cause he kept buying.

- We would going in here, and this will be our toy land, our playroom.

So under the stairs.

And when we got in trouble, that was also a place to go hide when Mom and Dad were after us.

- [Themetta] His uncle Ed had bought a house up there in Winsfield.

And this land was for sale next to his uncle's place.

- Well, Pop had this kind of kit where there were miniature trees.

It was on a platform, it was on a platform, and there was a tree here and tree there.

I thought he was playing, but I didn't know he was designing Berry Park.

- That was a dream, seeing how he could develop it.

- It was the family retreat.

He had boats out there, mini bikes, golf carts, motorcycles, bulldozers, tractors.

It was so much fun, man.

We just did anything and everything.

One of his tour buses, the city bus that he converted to a tour bus, it was still out there when I was a teenager.

So we could go out there.

And go get in the bus, the bus steering wheel's still there, and you know, startin' to rust up and we'd just ride, just play around in it.

- Berry Park was our heart.

It was a dream, something Charles had wanted to do was have an amusement park for his fans, the family or whoever else wanted to come.

(upbeat music) - [Joe Edwards] When Chuck Berry opened Berry Park to the public, he built the first guitar shaped swimming pool in the world.

♪ Just me and my honey bun - [Joe Edwards] He loved the idea of opening up the park and letting people come out and camp out and spend the night in the cabins.

♪ Vacation's just begun (upbeat music continues) - This is going to be our summer home, our recreational place.

And we gonna come out and just enjoy and see the kids swimming, having fun.

- [Joe Edwards] He built a clubhouse, a 400 capacity clubhouse with a band stage.

- We had music, and Charles said, "Yeah," he said, "I think I'm gonna do this more often, bringing bands in."

♪ To see your new bathing suit - [Wayne] By the mid 1970s, all was not well at Berry Park.

- The 1974 show was the third in the series that had been conducted at Berry Park.

We did have some bike gangs, you know, that was back when promoters would go and get bike gangs as security.

Headliner was Leon Russell.

The last helicopter comes in, Leon Russell's in the helicopter.

Had no idea though that the promoter had not paid him his fee.

And then we saw the helicopter starting up, phew, takes off and it was announced over the PA, "Thank you for coming, folks.

Mr. Russell's not performing."

The place went crazy.

All those bikers that were out there, they went ballistic.

They'd start tearing the property up.

- The fans that were there and had been there all weekend were mad.

Their band was not there.

So the destruction was pretty intense.

- They had their way with the property.

My dad basically said, "We're not doing this anymore, so we are not gonna have any more of this kind of stuff."

- There were stories of drug abuse, there were stories of underage drinking.

The police came in and did a raid.

At one point, a security guard fired a shot into a crowd.

There were two kids who were involved in a fight.

The police just began to hassle Charles until it became almost impossible to have events out there.

And he had to think about giving it up.

- He shut down Berry Park to the public and never open it again, and really kind of made it his fortress of solitude.

- And I think his disappointment was number one, this was an area beyond his personal knowledge.

He did not understand and did not have the knowledge to run a park and so on.

(placid music) - Why did he let it dilapidate?

Well, what you see is things that he just didn't want to deal with anymore.

But for the longest he did, he maintained it, he kept roofs on it, the whole bit.

So he did try his best to keep it up.

But, you know, time takes it.

Everything returns to dust.

(placid music continues) - I think at some point he said, I'm done.

I'm just done with this.

I'm gonna live out here in this part of it.

Upon occasion I'll live, you know, in my other home," so on.

But as far as developing it and so on, he'd spend as much money and as much time and as much effort and as much of his personal prowess in it that he was done.

(placid music continues) - He designed that.

(placid music continues) Up on the third floor at Windemere, it's a dream that came true.

Yeah, it was his dream.

(placid music continues) (placid music continues) - Charles brought this woman back, believing she was, I believe, 21 years old, that's what she had told him.

They had met, I think in Arizona or New Mexico.

He brought her back to work in his club.

- He had taken a underage girl across a state line, which became a federal offense called the Mann Act.

(door slamming) - [Joe Edwards] It wasn't ever designed to address what they charged Chuck with, and that's taking a girl across state lines to work at Club Bandstand.

- [Marshall] She was a prostitute who looked 21.

She didn't look like 14 or 15.

- [Joe Edwards] The first trial before the judge, the judge used the N word in court.

- [Wayne] And even the white establishment realized, oh gosh, this is not gonna look very good.

So let's drop this particular trial and then retry him.

- [Marshall] But he was Black and it was white people, you know, white against Black.

And so he was locked up.

- It never would've happened to a white person.

And they would never have even been charged, let alone put in jail for it.

- You cannot go through the experience of being incarcerated in America and not be altered.

- [Gene] He's made mistakes and let those who are without sin cast the first stone.

- But he did say it's like, "You know how much that set my career back?"

- That time away, you can't get it back.

You know, you'll never know what more he might have accomplished if he hadn't had those troubles.

- He was our star, but he'd already had, you know, all the hits he'd had, you know, "Maybellene," "School Days," "Rock and Roll Music," you know, "Sweet Little Sixteen."

And here he was, he was locked away, our star.

We were desperate.

So we actually put out an album called "Chuck Berry on Stage," and we took his regular cuts and added fake applause.

(audience applauding) So it sounded like it was a live recording.

And we released that album called ""Chuck Berry on Stage," to give the illusion that, you know, Chuck was around.

This was his new album.

- One of the things that Papa always, you know, did was whatever happened to him, he'd figure out his way out and go on and continue his life.

So he never let anything hold him back.

- I remember the day Chuck got out of prison and he wanted to get back into it.

You know, he was desperate just like we were.

He stayed in Chicago that week and cut "No particular Place to Go," "You Never Can Tell."

And they decided to release "Nadine" as the single, the comeback single.

♪ I thought I saw my future bride walkin' up the street ♪ ♪ I shouted to the driver ♪ Hey conductor, you must slow down, I think I see her ♪ ♪ Please let me off this bus ♪ Nadine - In 1959, 1960, the British invasion occurred because all these people who had been influenced by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry and Little Richard just came to the forefront and they really did invade America and the whole world with their music.

The Beatles, with "Roll Over Beethoven."

Their very first song, the very first record the Rolling Stones ever came out with was a cover of Chuck Berry's, come on.

- If you would've tried to try and give rock 'n' roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry.

- We all started to talk like that, you know, where the people came from Liverpool and other places.

But they were doing Chuck Berry covers.

- [John] But he was writing good lyrics and intelligent lyrics in the '50s when people were singing, "Oh Baby, I Love You So," and it was people like him that influenced our generation to try and make sense out of the songs, rather than just say, "Do-ah Daddy," you know?

♪ Go, go ♪ Go, Johnny, go, go, go ♪ Go, Johnny, go, go, go ♪ Go, Johnny, go, go, go - Chuck Berry is up next.

I chose "Little Queenie" 'cause... - I love it.

- [Ronnie] He's wonderful, he is a magician with the words, isn't he?

- He's a poet, you know?

Yeah, yeah, oh, you know, you try and write words like that.

- [Ronnie] Yeah.

- It's not easy.

- I've tried it.

- Yeah.

- Does not work.

- We've all tried.

- Some of them do, but not very often.

- No.

- Yeah.

- No, he's just a natural born poet.

- [Chuck] I went away making $1,200 a night.

When I came back, the Beatles had come to America and my salary then was 2,000, right from being away.

- They were all recording Chuck Berry because that was the DNA that the electric guitar was based on.

- The fact that Chuck was an outlaw, that probably inspired them even more to get into Chuck.

- [Joe Bonamassa] People in America embraced British music regardless of where it came from.

And a lot of times didn't have any clue that the Rolling Stones were playing straight up Chuck Berry songs.

You know, they didn't know who Chuck Berry was.

- We didn't realize that The Stones and the Beatles, everybody was actually selling us back our own rhythm and blues (laughs).

And it opened our eyes to who our real influences were, were our own guys.

- We went to record at the legendary Chess Studios, which is on South Michigan Avenue, 'cause for us it was the sort of mecca of blues recording.

When we were in the studio, we met everyone that was recording there, you know, met all our favorites like Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry.

- When the Beatles discovered him, the Stones and Dylan and everybody else, he really took off.

And he really did have to be this Superman, this Superman that John Lennon and Keith Richards worshiped.

- Without Chuck Berry, there might have been a Stones or a Beatles, but they would've been a different band because without that original chug of luck.

♪ Oh, Carol ♪ Don't let him steal your heart away ♪ - They might have been the Rolling Stones, but it might've been a lot more folky, bland.

You'll get your potatoes and your meat, but it'll be bland.

(wags tongue) Your taste buds won't get it.

Chuck Berry was spicy and stuff and didn't pretend to be.

He just was.

- [Marshall] But he did understand that he was the hero to these young British kids.

- [Joe Edwards] Amazing the influence this great man had on everybody that people revere to this day around the world.

Not just, they revere Chuck Berry's music, but they revere the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, everybody else, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen.

It's incredible all the people that you know, tipped their hat to Chuck Berry.

- [Dick] Chuck's made a whole new show business doing things on the road, doing it the Chuck Berry way.

He just does things different than most people do.

Chuck doesn't have a big entourage, doesn't have a band with him.

- No luggage, just a guitar underneath.

Comb, toothbrush, that's it.

- [Marshall] Chuck never toured with his own band.

He always used pickup bands.

He would expect people to know his songs and play 'em.

- He didn't care.

He'd just grab his guitar, and get on an airplane, and go do a gig and go back home.

I think he liked the freedom of just being able to do what he wanted to do and not being tied into a set arrangement with a fixed band.

- Chuck always wanted to show up on time.

He wanted to have that band in good shape for that performance.

And when bands didn't perform that way, then he kind of started going more and more solo.

And I think a lot of that reason was due to drinking.

- Blues guys were drinkers.

- [Chuck] Johnnie Johnson.

- Most of them got drunk.

It was a lot of drunk blues men around Chess Records or, you know, you could smell it on their breath.

I never known Chuck to be that.

(upbeat blues music) (bottle crashing) (upbeat blues music continues) (upbeat blues music continues) (upbeat blues music continues) (upbeat blues music continues) (upbeat blues music) (upbeat blues music continues) (upbeat blues music continues) (upbeat blues music continues) (upbeat blues music continues) As his fame grew, he knew that the people booking him knew they better get the best local musicians and have 'em play the albums to learn the songs, you know?

- He requested Union musicians only.

Three professional AFFM, the American Federation of Musicians, that's a union, musicians capable and familiar with Chuck Berry's music.

- He didn't ask for much, but he insisted on everything he asked for.

So if the amps weren't right, that wasn't fine because those amps provided his sound.

And if he didn't have his sound, he didn't sound like Chuck Berry.

- The thing about Dual Showman Reverb, okay, they were kind of a rare amp, they're not a great gradient, but he liked them 'cause they were loud.

- Back then, every promoter would say $9,000 cash in a paper bag.

And then he would look out there at the band and say, "That's not the amp that I was asking for."

You always carried an extra thousand dollars 'cause you knew he was gonna pull that.

So it was $10,000 cash, had to be cash.

- He was ripped off so many times that he made sure that the promoters who wanted him for a concert, "You gimme that brown paper bag full of cash or I'm not going up on that stage."

- And his thing was, the money goes in the case, then the guitar comes out (laughs).

- He did it his way and that's the way it had to be done.

- Instead of taking a shot and going, "Okay, I'll take your word for it," and walking off stage and not getting paid, imagine how many times that happened to him.

It sounds to me like a reaction to being treated like s**t. (aircraft roaring) (upbeat music) - [Marshall] He was a very attractive, sexy Black man and white women loved him.

- Chuck Berry's father was a great carpenter and he worked a lot in the white neighborhoods repairing homes.

And he would take young Chuck Berry along with him as a young kid.

And when they would go into the houses where the white women were in attendance, his father would advise him, "Do not look at them.

Do not look at the women."

Of course, maybe it made it more intriguing.

♪ Whoa, whoa ♪ You know I'm almost grown ♪ Whoa, whoa ♪ Yeah, and I'm doing all right in school ♪ ♪ They ain't said I broke no rule ♪ ♪ I ain't never been in Dutch ♪ I don't browse around too much ♪ ♪ Don't bother me, leave me alone ♪ ♪ Whoa, whoa, anyway I'm almost grown ♪ ♪ Ratatatata ♪ Got away, whoa, whoa ♪ Got away - Seemed like he always had a white paramour on the side, yes.

(camera snapping) - He would see that, oh, now I've got hit records, now everybody loves me.

Well, then I'm gonna take a white girl.

What do you think about that?

You know, he was pushing the envelope all the time.

- He liked what he liked and that was it.

- [Marshall] But I'll tell you one thing, he loved his wife and family and I can tell you that for a fact, even though he had this attraction to white women.

- [Ingrid] It wasn't just Pop, it was every rock 'n' roll star.

It came with the territory.

- [Wayne] You know, Chuck Berry was a character that Charles Edward Anderson Berry played.

I think that's important that everybody recognized that, that Charles, my friend, was not Chuck Berry.

Chuck Berry was a totally different person.

- [Charles] Chuck Berry never came into our house.

Charles Edward Anderson Berry came in, our father came in the house.

So all the stuff that went on outside the door, that was Chuck Berry, but it was dad, husband inside our home, always.

- He kept the professional stuff out there.

When he came home, he was the man I married in 1948.

- The whole rock 'n' roll image (blows).

There's the family man.

(placid music) - You know, he liked to be paid in cash and sometimes they would write a check and cash it for him.

And then the government thought he got paid twice.

- He got some bad advice from somebody basically.

And he didn't declare certain money that he had owed.

- [Charles] When the man got him on those tax charges, years later, he just say, "Man, yeah, I goofed."

- He went to jail, and at the same time, Willie Nelson and Jerry Lee Lewis, they just confiscated some material things that they had.

And they didn't go to jail.

The white guys didn't go to jail, the black guy went to jail.

Go figure.

- [Themetta] We had the attorneys working on whatever problem it may have been.

And we would say, "We'll get through it," and we did.

- [Joe Edwards] And he said one night to me, "Why didn't the IRS just come and say, 'You owe us this money,'?"

- Charles lives in the Eastern District of Missouri.

Had Charles lived in Los Angeles or probably New York, they would've sent somebody down there and said, "Look, you owe this money and give us a check."

And that'd be the end of it.

- Oh, the IRS knows, they know it straight now.

- Some of Chuck's troubles are, I would say at this point, 50/50 self-inflicted wounds and 50/50 people out to get him.

- [Jimmy] Chuck had to pay it back and go to jail too.

So there you go.

- [Joe Edwards] When Chuck Berry performed for Jimmy Carter and his family at the White House, it was three days before Chuck was sentenced to prison again for tax evasion.

It was an important time in his life because to perform at the White House and three days later be incarcerated, it is just a big left turn in a person's life.

And that one was not fair.

♪ When I was a little bitty boy ♪ ♪ My grandmother bought me a cute little toy ♪ ♪ Silver bells hangin' on a string ♪ ♪ She told me it was my ding-a-ling-a-ling ♪ ♪ Oh my - The astonishing irony is, is perhaps Chuck Berry's biggest song was kind of a throwaway called "My Ding-a-Ling."

♪ My ding-a-ling ♪ My ding-a-ling And everybody went nuts to it.

- You know, he said to himself and he said to us, "Why didn't 'Johnny B. Goode' or 'Maybellene' go number one?

I mean, come on, this is a goofy song that I just did as a filler song.

But oh well, that's what the crowd like, play it."

- He was just pure entertainment, him and Jerry Lee Lewis.

I mean, they were all over that stage.

♪ Shake, shake, Johnny, shake ♪ Come on, shake, shake ♪ Shake, shake, shake - [Joe Edwards] Jerry Lee Lewis was on a national tour with Chuck Berry.

- (laughs) Well, I just had a coke bottle with about that much gasoline in it.

And I sat that on the piano, bumped it, the gasoline poured out into the piano.

And I just took a match to it and it blazed up (laughs).

It was burning like crazy.

And Chuck, he just insisted on closing the show.

I said, "No problem, you close."

- They always vied for the headliner spot, the competitive part of who's the biggest rocker and stuff like that.

And Chuck usually won out, but anyway, much to Jerry's chagrin.

And that's why he pulled some shenanigans at times to really boost the crowd and say, "Follow me."

- [Narrator 2] Three, two, one.

(rocket roaring) - He's the only person that was alive at the time in the United States that had a song on a spacecraft, that's no longer in our solar system.

(air whooshing) You know, the songs and sounds of the Earth are on that gold disc on the Voyager spacecraft.

And people came up to me and said, "Man, how's 'Johnny B. Goode' on this?'"

Like, you need to ask Carl Sagan, you need to ask the people at NASA, they made that pick.

I guess they like rock 'n' roll music.

- I would be surprised if any living organism of any kind in space or elsewhere could stop from dancing to Chuck Berry.

- If any aliens pick it up and hear that and they've never heard that, they'll go, "Maybe Earthlings are cool," (laughs).

- [Charles] He had a lot of firsts in his life and his musical career.

One being he was the first inductee in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

- [Keith Richards] Mr. Berry.

- Dynomite, dynomite, thank you.

(audience applauding) - [Charles] He was the first songwriter to receive the PEN award.

- All these literary awards we've always given to poets and novelists and all, why not songwriters?

And so, Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen were the first to honored there.

- Of course, you know, he also received a star on the Walk of Fame out in Hollywood.

And I don't know if many people know this, but in many cases someone has to raise the, I guess it's $25,000 for that particular award.

And my dad was like, "You're honoring me.

I'm not raising that money to do that."

(laughs) That was classic Chuck Berry, classic Chuck Berry.

- [Joe Edwards] And in 1989 in St. Louis, in the St. Louis Walk of Fame, the very first person honored there ever.

- In December of 2000, my father received the Kennedy Center award and that honor was bestowed him by the President of United States, Bill Clinton.

(gentle music) - The next time we got to town, his son invited us down to the club.

He said, "You know, do you want to get up and play?"

And I said, "Well, of course, you kidding?

I'm sitting with Chuck, great."

You know, he kind of welcomed me up there and started playing the song that I'd never heard of.

And he didn't say what key it was in.

And I turned around to his keyboard player.

I said, "What key is it in?"

He said, "I don't know."

So I didn't know what to play, you know, and I'm not sure if he did that on purpose just to f**k with me.

You know what I mean?

Maybe he just pulled one outta the hat and said, "Let's go with it."

But on the other hand, you could look at it like, well, this white kid's up here, I'm gonna f**k with him for the first song.

And then, if he lasts, we'll play, who knows?

- Chuck played in five keys.

Number one was G, I pointed to the ground for G, E was three fingers, which resembles an E, key of C. E flat was two fingers up, the victory sign.

Don't ask me why, I don't know what that represents.

And B flat, I just mouthed B flat.

And that was the keys.

- In the early '90s, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame had their grand opening.

Bruce put these three band together, me, Stevie, Bruce, Chrissie Hynde comes out, and at the end of the night, Chuck Berry was gonna come out and do a finale.

So we're out there trying to get our sea legs to play with Chuck.

Chuck walks out, all of a sudden he starts playing.

Just as we seem to all get our sea legs and start bobbing along with a very good band and like six or seven guitar players, Chuck changes the key effortlessly.

You're hearing, you know.

(placid guitar music) All of a sudden.

(placid guitar music continues) He's bobbing along like nothing happened, but all of a sudden we're playing in the wrong key, all of us.

But it kept happening and happening and we were all looking at each other.

We were looking at Chuck.

None of us had the nerve to go, "Chuck, what?"

And you know what, you know what he would've said?

"What key are we in?

We're in the Chuck Berry key."

Chuck starts looking at us smiling, he duck walks off the stage, grinning at us.

For the first time, he is making eye contact.

He gets to the end, turns his back on us, run downs to stage, jump in a car and drives off, leaving us out there playing in four different keys.

'Cause we never sucked that bad since we were like 13 playing at a teen club in our, I mean, we never, and to suck that bad in front of a stadium with Chuck Berry there in the center leading us supposedly.

- It's not a favorite memory.

I mean, you know what I mean?

It's not something you know, oh boy, I played with Chuck Berry, it was awful, you know?

- I finally got my baptism in the, you know, annals of Chuck Berry band leading.

- But I remember seeing Chuck at Hammersmith Odeon and it was awful because he wouldn't play the entire songs in their entirety.

He would do like medleys half-***, he didn't give a f**k. And it bummed me out 'cause I wanted to hear the songs like they was on the records, and he didn't do that.

(placid music) - There was an incident at the Southern Air Restaurant where he was accused of videotaping women without their consent.

He bought this restaurant because years ago he had gone in there to eat and they refused service to him.

And so, later on he just came along and bought the restaurant.

- The idea was to have a restaurant, maybe a bar, and have a place for people to come and play music, you know?

- The allegation was that there were cameras put in the bathroom by somebody, which is kind of an interesting, I mean, I have sworn statements from a person who claims that they put them in there, but the allegation was that Charles knew about it, and that secretly taped these women in the bathroom.

Well, there was clearly a camera in the bathrooms.

There's no question about that.

The question is, who put it there?

The cameras were overhead over the toilet stalls because people were going in and locking themselves in the toilet and smoking drugs.

And so, there were cameras overhead to spot that kind of activity.

There was a burglary at one of his houses, somebody went specifically to a trunk where he kept pictures and there were videotapes in there too, or the burglar took those tapes and those photos and just serendipitously put them in the dumpster at the Southern Air where Vincent Huck's wife worked, and Vincent Huck's wife was on those videos.

And lo and behold, Vincent Huck went into the dumpster and found those.

Does this all sound a little suspicious to you?

There was a lot of backdoor, slimy stuff going on towards Charles by local officials.

Ron Boggs, who was the attorney who filed the lawsuit, who was the former prosecuting attorney, always had a thing against Chuck, just didn't like him.

Again, he was a Black man in the community who was too big.

The lawsuit and the allegations were causing a loss of revenue.

People went to Charles, people wouldn't book Chuck Berry because all of this was going on.

So the decision was made to settle the lawsuit, cut the losses up front and get back to business.

They were after him at that point.

They could smell the blood in the water, but they weren't bringing him down as quickly as they wanted to.

So Vincent Huck came up with this crazy story about him smuggling cocaine.

He would apparently, under the story, that he would go somewhere and leave his guitar and then fill his guitar case with cocaine and smuggle it back, ridiculous stuff.

But the court system here bought that.

So when they came along with this affidavit saying that he had all these drugs at his house, and that he was a drug dealer and everything, the judges believed it, signed a search warrant, they went out and searched Charles's house.

(dramatic music) (footsteps thumping) (dramatic music continues) (footsteps thumping) I understand that there were agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and from the local St. Charles County Sheriff's Office there, and of course, they all had on their balaclavas and ski masks and had weapons.

(energetic music) (footsteps thumping) (energetic music continues) (footsteps thumping) (energetic music continues) (footsteps thumping) (door thumping) (guns clicking) (energetic music continues) (dogs barking) They found old marijuana roaches from parties that were back in the '60s.

And Charles didn't do drugs, but they kept 'em all in a big plastic baggie.

And when they took 'em, they were wrapped in old American flag papers and clearly outdated roaches.

And they found $200,000 in cash, and they found two or three long guns rifles.

So I called the US attorney, who I happened to know at the time.

I think it was Jim Martin and Jim Martin said, "Look, we're sending the money back.

This is ridiculous."

And the Sheriff's Office gave him the long guns back, which I thought was kind of interesting because as a convicted felon, he's not supposed to be able to possess any firearms anyway, but they gave him the guns back.

So that raid was as bogus as a raid can be.

Did race play a part in it?

Absolutely.

(energetic music) - The first time I heard Chuck Berry's music, yeah, it was in "Back To the Future."

♪ Go Johnny, go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go, go ♪ Johnny B. Goode (upbeat rock music) - Chuck, Chuck, it's Marvin!

Your cousin, Marvin Berry.

You know that new sound you're looking for?

Well, listen to this!

(energetic rock music) - You know, I wanted a guitar and a hoverboard after that.

- The only problem with the "Back To the Future" is that the guitar and the amp that Michael J.

Fox is playing didn't exist in 1955.

Little artistic liberty there.

The 355 didn't come out 'til '58.

So somehow they were able to bring the DeLorean back to the future, and somehow while they were in flight, drag a 355 back.

- (laughs) I'm still looking for Marvin Berry, man (laughs).

(audience cheering) (upbeat rock music) ♪ Maybellene, why can't you be true ♪ ♪ Oh, Maybellene, why can't you be true ♪ - "Hail!

Hail!

Rock 'n' Roll" introduced my generation to Chuck Berry's music legacy by watching Keith Richards put together a film at the Fox Theater in St. Louis.

- Boy, does this box office bring back a memory, a real particular memory.

You know, when I was 11 years old, I came up to this very box office to get a ticket to see the "Tale of Two Cities."

My father wanted us to see it because it had a lot of artistic qualities about it.

The lady said, "Come on, we're not selling you a ticket.

You know you people can't come in here."

(traffic droning) Things have changed, really changed.

(traffic droning) It's a far cry from years back when my forefathers, a few blocks away, were sold on the civil courthouse steps.

(audience cheering) (audience applauding) - [Taylor] We all came to Berry Park expecting to celebrate this incredible genius.

What we found was a very conflicted genius who gave us a lot of trouble.

- That's the way Chuck Berry plays it, you understand?

- I understand, man.

- [Chuck] Okay.

- I understand.

- Well, I was talking to anybody.

- But you gotta live with it afterwards.

- I've been living for 60 years with it.

- I know that.

- [Chuck] Okay, well, then realize it!

- He's giving me more headaches than Mick Jagger, you know?

But I still can't dislike him.

(upbeat guitar music) - That slurs started right here.

(upbeat guitar music) It starts on the upper one.

(upbeat guitar music) Listen.

(upbeat guitar music) - All right.

(upbeat guitar music) - See, start with it all the way down there.

(upbeat guitar music) Perfect, perfect.

(upbeat guitar music) ♪ Oh, Carol - The backstory, you know, the arguing, the one with the bend, you know, he's going after Keith.

(upbeat guitar music) You know, and Keith has been.

(upbeat guitar music) To 99.9% of the public, it's like, "Oh, what's the difference?

It's semantics."

But when you got down to it and you got deep into the music, Chuck was right, and Keith would probably admit that.

It's... (placid guitar music) ♪ Go, go, I hear you ♪ Go, Johnny, go, go, I hear you ♪ ♪ Go, Johnny, go, go, sing the song ♪ ♪ Go, Johnny, go, go, oh yeah ♪ Go, Johnny, go, go, oh yeah ♪ Johnny B. Goode - He knew even at that point how important his legacy was, but he also had a chip on his shoulder about it.

You know, he felt that, you know, who are these English rockstar millionaire, you know, Rolling Stone types telling me how to play the music that I invented?

- I think he had some dolls inside that never were exorcized.

And I think that he was trying to, I don't know, he was a pretty pissed off guy, I would say, most of the time.

- What's happening behind the camera is as interesting as what's happening on camera.

- After legal advice from the Universal lawyers, they said for Chuck to write up an agreement, and he sat at a little portable typewriter himself and typed and kept rewriting the contract every day.

♪ That's why I go for that rock 'n' roll music, don't play ♪ ♪ Any old way you use it, you can feel it ♪ ♪ It's got a back beat, you can't lose it ♪ ♪ I know what you mean ♪ Any old way you choose it, any time ♪ ♪ It's gotta be rock 'n' roll music, all day long ♪ ♪ If you want to dance with me, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ - Chuck Berry considers if he's doing anything towards the show, he's working.

And rehearsal is not a rehearsal for the show.

Rehearsal is another work situation.

(audience applauding) (energetic music) (upbeat music) (audience applauding) (upbeat music continues) (audience applauding) - It all came out well.

I thought Taylor Hackford did a a great job.

- Hail, hail, Rock 'n' Roll!

(upbeat music) ♪ It was a teenage wedding ♪ And the old folks wished them well ♪ - You got "Pulp Fiction."

- Yeah.

- That was another one of those where it kind of just went over the head.

I was like, "Oh, that's Pop Pop."

And went back to watching the movie.

You think about how popular that movie is, and that was no accident that they chose that song.

- First time I ever heard it, watching "Pulp Fiction," that famous twist scene, and yeah, immediately fell love with the song then.

And then when we started talking about doing a record of songs from the Chess catalog, I mean, you really can't go there without doing some Chuck Berry.

♪ It was a teenage wedding ♪ And the old folks wished them well ♪ ♪ You could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle ♪ - He really talks about real life details in a lot of his songs.

Like, in "You Never Can Tell," you can imagine this refrigerator filled with, you know, ginger ale.

It's like a couple of 16-year-olds or whatever living together now would likely have a refrigerator filled with TV dinners and soda.

You know, so I think his storytelling as a way of being sort of universal and timeless.

♪ They furnished off an apartment ♪ ♪ With a two room Roebuck sale (placid music) ♪ The Koolerator was crammed ♪ With TV dinners and ginger ale, oh ♪ ♪ But when Pierre found work ♪ The little money comin' worked out well ♪ ♪ "C'est la vie", say the old folks ♪ ♪ It goes to show you never can tell ♪ (energetic music) ♪ They had a hi-fi phono, boy, did they let it blast ♪ - You should listen to the piano too, 'cause he's doing almost something completely different to what everybody else is doing.

It is like, it has like that rhythm, but it just- - A good stride piano.

- Yeah.

- Speaking of Johnnie Johnson, you hear that piano, Johnnie was clever too, man.

He played the Vietnamese waltz on that.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (audience cheering) (upbeat music) ♪ They're really rockin' in Boston ♪ - The first and great love of mine was Blueberry Hill.

Late at night, one night, he was reminiscing about his early career, the early days of touring, and he looked at me and said, "Joe, I'd love to play a club the size of the ones I played when I first started out."

And we looked at each other for about a half a second.

"So, let's do it, let's do it at Blueberry Hill."

- Well, we played 209 shows there.

I think Chuck enjoyed immensely playing there.

He liked the closeness of it.

The audience was right on top of you.

- The Blueberry Hill band was the best band that Pop had because they knew his music.

- [Joe Edwards] Ingrid would sing duets with him.

She would sing a couple of blue songs on her own.

(energetic blues music) Butch Berry, Charles Berry Jr., started playing during that time.

- [Jimmy] He wanted his kids to play with him so bad.

You know, it was really a big thing with him.

- [Charles] Blueberry Hill, every month it was the same crew, the same people, and they locked in.

- I could say of all the gigs Pop has done all over the world, it's nothing like coming home.

And Blueberry Hill was home, just as Berry Park was home.

And every time coming back from overseas, going down that Highway 70 West, coming down Buckner Road, it's like heaven.

We made it back home.

(energetic blues music continues) (energetic music) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) ♪ When I was just a little boy like you ♪ ♪ I wanted to do the things the big boys do ♪ - His last album was just something he had wanted to do for years and kind of a labor of love.

- It was a long one, man.

You know, he just did it in bits and pieces as he felt like it.

- "Big Boys" is that Chuck Berry song that you hear and that you instantly recognize it.

It's got those guitar riffs, it's got that beat, it's got that pounding pace to it.

And it sounds like, this is a Chuck Berry song, but I've never heard this one before.

And it's exciting to have that familiar discovery.

- It's, my father started that writing of those songs back in the '90s.

- And they had the fire at the clubhouse where the studio was, the fire burnt that down and burned all those tapes up, it's all gone.

So we started all over again after that fire.

(upbeat music) - [Chuck] A bunch of guys was in this ballroom.

(upbeat music continues) Most of them had been there half the day.

- "Dutchman" is one of my favorite songs.

Like I said, you can call it a song, but on that album is the imagery, oh my gosh.

It's just amazing, it's just gorgeous.

♪ Darling, your father's growing older each year ♪ (placid music) - And in 2015, Pop's health took a turn downward.

- I noticed that his songs got shorter, some songs dropped out, he never played again, and his repertoire got smaller and smaller as he went along.

And by the end of the show, we'd have to stretch the last song out 12 minutes maybe, you know?

- His hearing kept deteriorating, which he didn't want to admit, you know?

And so that's why, you know, a lot of times he would play a song in the wrong key and couldn't even hear it that he was doing it, you know?

He started forgetting lyrics to his own songs.

And that's why that worked out good, the two of us together, because I'd jump in and fill in for him.

(Chuck singing) (placid music) - If he didn't remember the words or something, he would just mumble something or just make stuff up on the fly and the people half the time loved it.

- It got pretty bad towards the end there, I was.

And then one day when he come over to me, he says, "What key do we do 'Memphis' in?"

Then I said, "Oh, we do that D flat."

"Where's that?"

(laughs) He forgot where it was on the neck.

- Nobody knows when it's gonna happen, it was inevitable.

All of us are gonna pass it sometime, but I think he could sense that it was, you know, getting closer.

I mean, it could have been a year, it could have been two years, it could have been 10 years prior too.

But it happened when it happened.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - On March 18th of this year, the world lost a great musician and songwriter.

On that same day, I lost a close personal friend.

Rest in peace, Chuck.

- We are going to celebrate him in a rock 'n' roll style, and we are going to first give praises to God in a rock 'n' roll style while we're doing this.

So we're going to have a good time this evening.

(audience applauding) (gentle music) - White kids and Black kids could not contain themselves.

They bounced up out of their seats and began dancing and boogieing in the aisles together for the first time in the history of this country.

- He changed more little white boys' and white girls' lives than all the politicians with their big talk and stuff just by making them move like this, just by grabbing a hold of them on the outside and the inside and you know, just changing their lives.

- He didn't only change our lives.

He's the father of rock 'n' roll, it changed the world.

(audience applauding) Goodbye.

(audience cheering) (audience applauding) (placid music) ♪ Goodbye, old friend ♪ It's hard to this is the end ♪ You touched us all with your life ♪ ♪ You gave so much and never did ask why ♪ (placid music continues) ♪ You were true blue rock 'n' roll ♪ ♪ The way it all began ♪ You're the heart and the soul ♪ ♪ Of every guitar playin' in a honky-tonk band ♪ ♪ Now I got those blue Suede blues ♪ ♪ An empty feeling in your heart ♪ ♪ The train is rolling down the track ♪ ♪ Stopped off Eternity and it's never coming back ♪ ♪ But your memory goes on - Dad was such a poet, such a storyteller.

Like this, listen to this.

Runnin' to and fro, hard workin' at the mill.

Never failed in the mail.

Here come a rotten bill.

♪ Blonde hair, good lookin', tryin' to get him hooked ♪ ♪ Want him to marry, get a home ♪ ♪ And settle down, and write a book, ha ♪ ♪ Too much monkey business ♪ Too much monkey business ♪ Too much monkey business for me to be involved in ♪ ♪ Go, Keith, go, go, go (energetic music) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) - Ah, "Monkey Business."

"Too much monkey business, too much monkey business for me to be involved in."

(gentle music) I am missing him, just reading this.

"Too much monkey business, too much monkey business for me to be involved in."

(gentle music continues) (sniffs) It's sheer genius to me.

Such insight into the human nature.

(gentle music continues) He was a poet and a storyteller like no other I've known.

(gentle music continues) - He was the king of rock 'n' roll.

He was the beginning.

So he could have been the father, the king, you know?

He was the beginning of it.

- He was the king of rock 'n' roll.

Little Richard, father and mother.

Little Richard opened his mouth and liberation came out.

And I think there was something about that, like that sound that the Hindu believed created the world, you know, the om sound.

And again, Elvis Presley would absolutely be the one who would popularize rock 'n' roll, but Chuck Berry would be the king in that he had it all.

He had the words and the guitar.

- [Joe Edwards] I think St. Louis loves Chuck Berry enough that we built a statue, a wonderful statue by a great sculptor.

And the sculpture that Harry Weber did of Chuck Berry.

♪ Centered in the village square ♪ ♪ 30 meters in the air ♪ Rose his statue carved in stone ♪ ♪ As the king stood there alone ♪ ♪ Gazing at his sculptured name ♪ ♪ Said to himself, so what is fame ♪ ♪ Fame is but a slow decay ♪ Even that shall pass away - I said, "You know, I never told you this, Chuck, but you in 1955, changed my whole life, man.

I got a new bicycle immediately.

It was a, you know, it was the first time money was being made, really real money."

And he took my hand and said, "What are you talking about?

It was the same for me."

We had the same experience.

Both of our lives changed in 1955 due to that record."

- The only person I ever saw Charles be sentimental or romantic about was Themetta.

He really had an indescribable feeling and relationship with Themetta.

- [Charles] There was nothing that he would not do for my mother.

He always protected her, he always was by her side.

- The way we were brought up, that once you marry, you stay married, the vows we took, if we ever grow tired, we'll let the other one know.

And we never did grow tired.

So it was til death do us part.

(gentle music) ♪ The fairest woman ever seen ♪ Was the bride he chose his queen ♪ ♪ Pillowed on their marriage bed ♪ ♪ Whispering to her soul, he said ♪ ♪ Though no man has ever pressed ♪ ♪ A lovelier bosom to his chest ♪ ♪ Mortal flesh must come to clay ♪ ♪ Even this shall pass away (gentle music continues) (energetic rock music) (rocket roaring) (energetic rock music continues) ♪ Go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go ♪ Go Johnny, go, go ♪ Johnny B. Goode - The four words that came to us from outer space are, "Send more Chuck Berry."

(audience laughing) (audience applauding) (energetic music) (audience cheering) - [Announcer] The one and only Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley!

(audience cheering) (audience applauding) This is a first, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley together!

(energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (audience cheering) (audience applauding) (audience cheering) (audience applauding)