Chuck Berry biography

Synopsis

Early Life in St. Louis

Singer/songwriter; guitarist. Considered "the father of rock 'n' roll," Chuck Berry was born Charles Anderson Edward Berry on October 18, 1926, in St. Louis, Missouri. His parents, Martha and Henry Berry, were the grandchildren of slaves and among the many African-Americans who migrated from the rural South to St. Louis in search of employment around the time of World War I. Martha Berry was one of the few black women of her generation to gain a college education, and Henry Berry was an industrious carpenter as well as a deacon at the Antioch Baptist Church.

At the time of Chuck Berry's birth, St. Louis was a sharply segregated city. He grew up in a north St. Louis neighborhood called the Ville — a self-contained middle-class black community that was a haven for black-owned businesses and institutions. The neighborhood was so segregated that Berry had never even encountered a white person until the age of three, when he saw several white firemen putting out a fire. ''I thought they were so frightened that their faces were whitened from fear of going near the big fire,'' he recalled. ''Daddy told me they were white people, and their skin was always white that way, day or night."

The fourth of six children, Berry pursued a variety of interests and hobbies as a child. He enjoyed doing carpentry work for his father and learned photography from his uncle, Harry Davis, a professional photographer. Berry also showed an early talent for music and began singing in the church choir from the age of six. He attended Sumner High School, a prestigious private institution that was the first all-black high school west of the Mississippi. For the school's annual talent show, Berry sang Jay McShann's "Confessin' the Blues" while accompanied by a friend on the guitar. Although the school administration bristled at what they viewed as the song's crude content, the performance was an enormous hit with the study body and sparked Berry's interest in learning the guitar himself. He started guitar lessons soon after, studying with local jazz legend Ira Harris.

Berry also grew into something of a troublemaker in high school. He was uninterested in his studies and felt constrained by the strict decorum and discipline. In 1944, at the age of 17, Berry and two friends dropped out of high school and set off on an impromptu road trip to California. They had gone no farther than Kansas City when they came across a pistol abandoned in a parking lot and, seized by a terrible fit of youthful misjudgment, decided to go on a robbing spree. Brandishing the