Chuck Berry at Ninety

Ed I love it, trying to remember somebody who'd like a link

Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947. After his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T-Bone Walker, Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio.[2] His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine's rhythm and blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, he was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.[2][3][4]

After his release in 1963, Berry had more hits in the mid-1960s, including "No Particular Place to Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine". By the mid-1970s, he was more in demand as a live performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality.[2] In 1979 he served 120 days in prison for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986; he was cited for having "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance."[5] Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine's "greatest of all time" lists; he was ranked fifth on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[6] The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berry's: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music".[7] Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record.[8]

Wikipedia

He will release a new album of original songs in 2017.

“I’m growing old! I’ve worked on this record for a long time. Now I can hang up my shoes!” he said in a statement released early on Tuesday.

Chuck will be his first album of new songs in 38 years. The album is a strictly local affair: it features his children Charles Berry Jr on guitar and Ingrid Berry on harmonica as well as musicians who have backed him up for more than two decades of shows at Blueberry Hill, his St Louis club in the city’s Delmar Loop neighborhood.

Across the street from Blueberry Hill is an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Berry. Indeed, Berry is a towering figure in rock music for his deep catalogue of songs, including Roll Over Beethoven, Maybellene, Rock and Roll Music, Sweet Little Sixteen, Little Queenie, School Days and Johnny B Goode. They served as the shortest bridge between rhythm and blues and rock, the revolutionary new sound embraced by white teenagers in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

HOLY ****! Chuck Berry was still alive??? He's not anymore but how many people actually knew he was still alive? It appears the curse of 2016 has continued into 2017!

This remains a readily recognizable opening guitar riff. It's a great song anyway, striking straight at anyone in denial about the seismic shift in music which is rock 'n roll.