By name of CHARLES EDWARD ANDERSON BERRY (b. Oct. 18, 1926, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.), U.S. songwriter and singer, one of the first and best to shape big-beat blues into what came to be called rock and roll and to achieve widespread popularity with white audiences.
In his youth, Berry served a three-year term in reform school for attempted burglary. His early musical interest was in country music. While working at various daytime jobs in the early 1950s, he led a blues trio that played in black nightclubs in the St. Louis area. In 1955, armed with a number of songs he had written, he travelled to Chicago, where a remarkable congregation of outstanding black musicians had made the South Side the legendary blues capital of the world. Berry made his first record, "Maybellene," in that year. It was an immediate sensation among teenagers. As the novelty evolved into a popular genre, took the name rock and roll, and attracted a huge following among the young, Berry remained for some years at the forefront of popularity as a composer and performer with such songs as "Roll Over, Beethoven," "School Days," "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Rock and Roll Music," "Johnny B. Goode," and "Memphis," all of which combined the standard heavy beat and melodic patterns with the composer's own singular brand of ironic lyrics. He also appeared in four films.
In 1959 he was convicted under the Mann Act for transporting a woman across state lines for immoral purposes and served a two-year sentence. Released in 1964, he prospered both as a performer and a recording artist into the 1970s. In 1979 he pled guilty to a charge of income tax evasion and was sentenced to four months imprisonment and 1,000 hours of community service doing benefit concerts.
