How Chuck Berry changed the music business forever

Mark Sutherland

1. HE INVENTED ROCK’N’ROLL

That’s not ‘influenced’, not ‘shaped’, not ‘gave a bit of a boost to’. Invented. Ike Turner, Bo Diddley and others may have been there or thereabouts, but it was Berry who electrified blues, swing, jazz and bluegrass, shook them up and shaped what became the musical grammar and vocabulary of a new genre. Everyone else, from Elvis Presley to Little Richard, The Beatles to The Rolling Stones, took their cue from Berry.

2. HE WAS THE ...

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