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Fact #7541

When:

Short story:

When Johnnie Johnson's sax player in the Sir John Trio catches a cold, Chuck Berry virtually invents rock'n'roll by improvising guitar lines while standing in for him during a gig at The Cosmopolitan Club, St Louis, Missouri, USA.

Full article:

The following feature is by Paul Trynka. I do not own copyright on this feature, and only Paul Trynka can give permission to quote from it.

Keith Richards. "There was a time in my life when the only thing that mattered was Chuck Berry. If I could play like Chuck I'd be the happiest man in the world. When I found out I could play Maybellene, that was an incredible moment. After that I had to find another aim in life."

Countless midwives claim to have been present at the birth of rock'n'roll. Pianist Johnnie Johnson is probably the most convincing candidate, outranking even colleagues such as Ike Turner, creator of Rocket 88. Johnson's piano, sax and drums trio made a decent living in St Louis playing Hoagy Carmichael, Nat King Cole and Louis Jordan standards. But on 30 December 1952 Johnson struck a problem with the most lucrative gig of the year; his sax player called to say he had a cold and couldn't make the band's New Year's Eve show. Filing through his mental Rolodex, Johnson
remembered a guitarist and singer he'd met earlier that year. The guitarist's name was Charles Berry. The next night, with no rehearsal, Chuck was on stage with them.

"Chuck was a good singer, played the Louis Jordan stuff real good, and went down well with the crowd," says Johnson. "For the last number he told the crowd we were gonna try something different. And he launches into this hillbilly song, Ida Red. We just followed. The audience went crazy. We had to play that song again, maybe
two or three times. "

The reaction Berry provoked by playing a Bob Wills song to a black crowd exactly paralleled what would happen when Elvis covered Arthur 'Big Boy" Crudup's That's All Right, eighteen months later. Many musicians had crossed that colour bar before, but Chuck and Johnnie had created something entirely new. Johnson knew there was a future in it. Conscious that he was relinquishing leadership of the band, he engaged the guitar-vocalist on a permanent basis, ditching the unfortunate saxman.

Seventeen months later, Chuck reworked Ida Red into Maybellene, its title borrowed from a popular cosmetic brand. It became a huge hit for Checker, and a cornerstone of rock'n'roll.

These days Johnson's happy to be a footnote in rock history. Keith Richards, however, suggests he might deserve more credit. "Playing with Chuck, I always thought he worked in these strange keys, B flat or E flat. Only after playing with Johnny did I realise that maybe it came from him." Clearly, some of Chuck's style is Johnny's piano boogie, translated to guitarese - exactly how much will never be known. But without doubt, that particular New Year's Eve changed the course of musical history forever.
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Johnny Johnson (pianist for Chuck Berry) : Chuck's music raised all kinds of eyebrows that night because they weren't used to seeing a black man playing hillbilly music. We became the hottest band on the local scene.