FOR THE LAST TIME, WHAT IS ITS INFLUENCE? WHAT DID IT DO THAT PREVIOUS BERRY RECORDS DID NOT?

Or come up with an alternate definition of influence because what you're doing is assigning all of the Berry influence to this one record, which at the time was not even more popular or acclaimed or stood out in ANY way to previous Berry records. His style of songwriting - the witty lyrics, the storytelling - began with "Maybellene" from 3 years earlier. The intro, the break, the whole arrangement of JBG is the same basic thing as "Roll Over Beethoven" from two years earlier. I'm not saying that Berry himself isn't influential, he's incredibly so, I'm saying you can't be giving influence credit to ONE song when a PREVIOUS song of his did the exact same thing and were heard by the same artists who were influenced by him. You're making a totally subjective and self-serving choice of which record to credit and because you can't defend it you've blatantly ducked the question. This is the same person who berates those who don't answer every single question he asks, no matter how rude and insulting you ask them.

Look, I'm not trying to start an argument, make you feel bad or even have you see it my way, I am simply asking for an objectively defensible explanation for your method of handing out influence credit and you haven't even attempted to answer it. If it's so obvious it shouldn't be difficult to explain it and give evidence of it, should it?

It outlasted all of them to become iconic all over the world. People here don't agree with your take where influence only counts if nobody had done it before. Influence doesn't have to take place right away. Robert Johnson had a lot of influence that didn't even start until 25 years after he died.



You weren't there. People who were speak differently about this record's impact at the time. Don't Forget, "Roll Over Beethoven" was not a huge hit. It only got to #29 pop in a short (5 week) run on the charts. "ROB" become well known later on, after "JBG" was a huge hit and after Chuck had his first greatest hits album in 1964.



Most of the artists who were influenced by him (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, etc...) were hearing the songs all at the same time on albums. The order that they were released in the USA was of no consequence to those UK artists. Many USA hits were not even released on singles in the UK. Check out this quote from John Lennon:

John Lennon - Elvis was bigger than religion in my life. Then this boy at school said that he'd got this record by somebody called Little Richard who was better than Elvis. The new record was Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally." When I heard it, it was so great I couldn't speak. I didn't want to leave Elvis, but this was so much better. Then someone said "It's a nigger singing." I didn't know Negroes sang. So Elvis was white and Little Richard was black. This was a great relief. "Thank You God" I said. "There is a difference between them." (1970)

"Long Tall Sally" was not released in the UK until early 1957, so in Lennon's world Elvis came before Little Richard, and notice how he apparently was not even aware of Chuck Berry yet in early 1957. I'd have to ask Roger Ford, but I think that "Roll Over Beethoven" was not issued on a single in the UK.

It's very likely that outside of the USA that people heard "JBG" BEFORE "Roll Over Beethoven."

Berry has written three more songs involving the character Johnny B. Goode, "Bye Bye Johnny", "Go Go Go", and "Johnny B. Blues"; and titled an album, and the nearly 19 min instrumental title track from it, as "Concerto in B. Goode".

Berry's recording of the song was included on the Voyager Golden Record, attached to the Voyager spacecraft as representing rock and roll, one of four American songs included among many cultural achievements of humanity.

When Chuck Berry was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, he performed "Johnny B. Goode" and "Rock and Roll Music," backed by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.[7] The Hall of Fame included these songs and "Maybellene" in their list of the 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll.[8] It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, for its influence as a rock & roll single.[9]

In the 1985 film Back to the Future, Marty McFly with Marvin Berry and the Starlighters played the song during the "Enchantment Under the Sea" high school dance (this scene was "replayed" in Back to the Future Part II.) During Marty's Berry-esque rendition of the song, Marvin telephones his cousin Chuck, to have him hear what might be the new sound he was looking for (creating a paradoxical "who influenced whom" situation).

Episode 14, Season 2 of the former CBS military action series The Unit is titled "Johnny B. Good" in reference to the song.

Cover versions

The list of performers includes:

AC/DC
Aerosmith
Adam Ant
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Bad Religion
The Beach Boys
The Beatles
Big Tom And The Mainliners
Bon Jovi
Bravo
Marc Broussard
Legion of Mary (band)
Roy Buchanan
Burning
Andrés Calamaro
Carpenters
Cidade Negra
The Coasters
John Denver
Dion
Celine Dion
Dr. Feelgood
Johnny Dowd
Earthlings?
John Farnham
Five Iron Frenzy
Freddie & the Dreamers
Rory Gallagher
The Grateful Dead
Green Day
Bill Haley & His Comets
Hanson
Jimi Hendrix
Will Hoge
Buddy Holly
Tomoyasu Hotei
Jay and the Americans
Jim & Jesse
Elton John
Judas Priest
B.B. King
King Lizard
Al Kooper
Jonny Lang
Julian Lennon
Jerry Lee Lewis
Living Colour
LL Cool J ("Go Cut Creator Go")
Los Suaves
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge, a concert duet with Suzi Quatro in Germany in 2006
Phillip Magee
Frank Marino
John Mayer Trio
Meat Loaf
Marty McFly
Eddie Meduza
MF Doom
Mina
Mister Twister
NOFX
NRBQ
Off Kilter
Operation Ivy
Buck Owens
Partibrejkers (Stoj, Džoni)
Wes Paul
Phish
Pink Fairies
Elvis Presley
Prince
Ratdog
Johnny Rivers
The Rolling Stones
Shogo Sakai (Mother 3 as "New Age Retro Hippie")
Carlos Santana
Bon Scott (with Cheap Trick)
Sex Pistols
The Shadows
Skrewdriver
Slade
Slaughter & The Dogs
Status Quo
The Stimulators
Stray Cats
Keiichi Suzuki (EarthBound titled as "New Age Retro Hippie")
Hirokazu Tanaka (EarthBound titled as "New Age Retro Hippie")
George Thorogood
The Toasters
TISM (Johnny to B. or Not to B. Goode)
The Tornadoes
Peter Tosh
Twisted Sister
Conway Twitty
Nobuo Uematsu
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
Ultraje a Rigor
Uncle Tupelo
Roch Voisine
The Who
Brian Wilson
Johnny Winter

"Johnny B. Goode" was the first rock & roll hit about rock & roll stardom. It is still the greatest rock & roll song about the democracy of fame in pop music. And "Johnny B. Goode" is based in fact. The title character is Chuck Berry -- "more or less," as he told ROLLING STONE in 1972. "The original words [were], of course, 'That little colored boy could play. I changed it to 'country boy' -- or else it wouldn't get on the radio." Berry took other narrative liberties. Johnny came from "deep down in Louisiana, close to New Orleans," rather than Berry's St. Louis. And Johnny "never ever learned to read or write so well," while Berry graduated from beauty school with a degree in hairdressing and cosmetology.

But the essence of Berry's tale -- a guitar player with nothing to his name but chops goes to the big city and gets his name in lights -- is autobiographical. In 1955, Berry was working as a beautician and fronting combos in St. Louis when he met Chess Records' biggest star, Muddy Waters, who sent him to the label's co-founder Leonard Chess. By 1958, Berry was rock & roll's most consistent hitmaker after Elvis Presley. Unlike Presley, Berry wrote his own classics. "I just wish I could express my feelings the way Chuck Berry does," Presley once confessed.

"Johnny B. Goode" is the supreme example of Berry's poetry in motion. Pianist Lafayette Leake, bassist Willie Dixon and drummer Fred Below roll with the freight-train momentum of overnight stardom, while Berry's stabbing, single-note lick in the chorus sounds, as he put it, "like a-ringin' a bell" -- a perfect description of how rock & roll guitar can make you feel on top of the world.

Most of that isn't being contested here. But your feeble attempt at explaining the influence comes down to - "It's outlasted all of them and become iconic all over the world" - yeah, but that's what you've ALREADY credited it for doing in the entirely separate lasting popularity criteria, so essentially that is the ONLY criteria you're using, which is what I suspected all along, but at least now you've admitted it (sort of). So you keep writing about topics unrelated to the primary question - WHAT IS ITS INFLUENCE?

Why is this so hard to answer? If you ask me to describe why specific records have influence (so much so that you give it the maximum amount) I'll be able to tell you pretty easily. But your entire post makes NO effort to answer the only question that I asked - what is its specific influence and why is it credited to JBG and not records that did the same thing first?

As for who heard what when in Great Britain, you ARE aware that the Beatles cut Roll Over Beethoven, which has the exact same song structure down to the most identifiable traits that JBG has, aren't you? But they couldn't have heard that first because songs weren't released in order and they were getting them off greatest hits and I wasn't there, so how would I know, says the four or six year old kid from New Jersey at that time who apparently was hiding in John Lennon's basement in the early 60's and heard everything. It looks more and more like all you did was assign all of Chuck Berry's influence, which is huge, to this one record to get the result you were looking for. Congratulations, way to be objective, Bruce.

Just answer the question finally by detailing what JBG is specifically being credited for in influence and WHY that influence is attributable to it and NOT to other records that did the same thing (either before or after for that matter).. or maybe put Stairway back at #1

Although you'd be wrong a lot of the time. Just like you were wrong about Bowie taking "Fame" from that James Brown song that you posted and just like how you were wrong about the British invasion "dominating" the USA charts in 1964. And just like you were wrong when you claimed that "Let's Twist Again" was a number one song. It's "easy" to spout bullshit when there's nobody around to check up on your statements.

Part of its influence is lyrical:

"Johnny B. Goode" was the first rock & roll hit about rock & roll stardom.




They also cut "Johnny B. Goode," they just did not release it back then, probably because they felt like it was "Chuck's song" to sing about himself.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcMREnLFTwE[/youtube]




We know that John Lennon had never heard of Chuck Berry yet in early 1957 because when he first heard of Little Richard he was not yet aware that "Niggers sang," according to his own words.



If that were true how did Chuck get 5 other records on to the list?

BTW, "Johnny B. Goode" was written BEFORE "Roll Over Beethoven." He wrote the song in 1955, and since "ROB" mentions "Blue Suede Shoes" he did now write that song until 1956.

Why, what did that influence?

It was not his basement, it was his bedroom:

"Chuck Berry was another massive influence with Johnny B Goode. We'd go up to John's bedroom with his little record player and listen to Chuck Berry records, trying to learn them." - Paul McCartney

Once upon a time, rock'n'roll was an idiom that enabled young people from humble circumstances to escape poverty and make a name for themselves. This was before scions of the landed gentry, masquerading as outcasts, began forming bands like the Wallflowers and the Strokes, producing a brand of music best described as plutocrap: cute, but extraneous.

Whatever its transcendent artistic import, music in its myriad manifestations - Montiverdi, Haydn, Duke Ellington, Howlin' Wolf, the Beatles - has traditionally been an art form that enabled people who weren't born rich to make a living, and not merely to whine about their skanky girlfriends. This is what makes Johnny B Goode such a special cultural artifact. Probably the first song ever written about how much money a musician could make by playing the guitar, no song in the history of rock'n'roll more jubilantly celebrates the downmarket socioeconomic roots of the genre.

In the official version of events, supplied to Rolling Stone magazine by Berry himself, the song is autobiographical: A poor boy from a rustic corner of the Deep South with little education and few prospects masters the electric guitar and becomes the leader of a famous band. In fact, Berry was not from the Deep South; he grew up on Goode Street in Saint Louis, an unusually cosmopolitan Midwestern city with a rich musical tradition. Nor was he unschooled; he was the first and perhaps the last songwriter to use the word "omit" in a pop song (Little Queenie). And he was certainly not a hick from the sticks; he had a degree in hairdressing and cosmetology. What's more, the song was originally written for the famous pianist Johnnie Johnson, with whom Berry had worked for years. A half-century later, Johnson would sue Berry, contending that he had co-authored many of his colleague's hits, but the case was thrown out of court, as these cases usually are. Thus, other than not being from the South, or a yokel, or an illiterate, or white, or bearing the name "Johnny," Berry was exactly like the character in his most famous song.

Johnny B Goode was recorded in 1958 with a band that included the legendary bassist Willie Dixon, author of such classics as Spoonful and Back Door Man. It is ironic that Berry should have recorded so many of his hits with a band containing luminaries like Dixon, because throughout his career, Berry was notorious for showing up for his gigs backed by a local band he had hired cheap, sight unseen and with whom he had not rehearsed. These back-up bands included an outfit headed by the young Bruce Springsteen, who later recalled Berry's annoying habit of switching to difficult keys halfway through a song. Berry also once performed in Philadelphia with a band that boasted a harpsichord in its line-up. When Keith Richards organized his homage to the man whose guitar style he had been channeling since his teens - Chuck Berry: Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll - in 1987, part of the motivation was to see how the maestro would perform if accompanied by a band that actually knew his songs. The maestro performed quite well.

Johnny B Goode was released halfway through Dwight Eisenhower's dreary second administration, when black people were still routinely being lynched in the Deep South, so for obvious marketing reasons the original lyric "little coloured boy" was changed to "little country boy". One of the great ironies about Berry's very odd career is that the man who has had the single greatest influence on the music that middle-aged white men adore has had almost no influence on the development of black music in America. In this sense, he resembles Aaron Copland, a Brooklyn homosexual famous for writing music about cowboys.

Johnny B Goode was produced by Leonard and Phil Chess, founders of Chicago's celebrated Chess Records. Berry was introduced to the Chess brothers by blues legend Muddy Waters, who, according to one apocryphal tale, was busy painting the walls of the recording studio when a very young Mick Jagger popped by for a visit. The song spent 15 weeks on the American charts, though never rising higher than No 8. Many years later, Berry's original recording was inserted into a capsule and blasted into outer space, ostensibly to give extraterrestrials an idea what sorts of things this civilization was capable of.

The American Dream. Is it the dream of living in the suburbs with a big-screen TV, two cars, and 2.5 kids? Is it the dream of rising from rags to riches on the power of your own determination, getting famous and driving a fast car?

In the 1950s, the suburban ideal dominated: after the sufferings of the Great Depression and the losses and gains of World War II, it seemed like plenty of Americans were content to move to the suburbs, drive new cars, and watch the rest of the world happen on the telly. But underneath all that contentedness, there was something else rumbling. The Civil Rights movement emerged to point out how African Americans were excluded from that suburban dream. Black kids were unwilling to tolerate the oppression they and their parents had lived with for so long under Jim Crow laws. At the same time, plenty of white kids were antsy, bored, and frustrated with the buttoned-up version of life they were presented with. Underneath all that calm, smiley "Leave It To Beaver" stuff, a rebellion was in the works. The soundtrack of the rebellion? A new-fangled music called rock n' roll.

Chuck Berry was one of the African-American stars whose string of rock hits in the late 1950s was all about youth culture: sex, love, cool cars, and skipping school featured large in his lyrics, which he wrote to try to reach an interracial audience. Like other rock n' rollers of his time, Berry's image flew in the face of the white suburban values that dominated American culture. He was a sexy young black man who'd grown up poor and spent time in prison before making it big as a musician—not the most "respectable" line of work from the white suburban perspective. But "Johnny B. Goode," perhaps his most enduring hit, is hardly a song of rebellion. It's all about another version of the contradictory American Dream: a little country boy dreams about escaping the rural life for the big city, rocking out until he gets discovered, and seeing his name in lights. It's a story we've all heard before, and it's also, in a sense, Chuck Berry's story:

"I guess my mother has the right to be the source of 'Johnny B. Goode' as any other contender in that she was the one who repeatedly commented that I would be a millionaire someday... 'Johnny' in the song is more or less myself although I wrote it intending it to be a song for Johnnie Johnson," he writes in his 1986 autobiography. "I altered the predictions that my mother made of me and created a story that paralleled."

"Johnny B. Goode" is a heartfelt story of a kid who comes up through a hard life and succeeds based on talent and drive—the feeling summed up by the refrain "go, Johnny go!" Berry challenged one version of the American dream, but he helped create another: Johnny B. Goode's flashy hopes are a rock n' roll version of the hopes and fears of a kid who wants to "make it" somehow. Instead of growing up to be a middle-class businessman or a civil servant with a pension, now kids could day-dream about being celebrities, singing to crowds in Vegas, and having their faces on TV. It was the 1950s and the rock star was on the rise.

Berry's own origins were also not quite as Lincoln Log as the "Johnny" character of his imagination. He was born in St. Louis in 1926, deep in the Jim Crow era, and grew up in a working and middle-class black neighborhood known as "The Ville." The Ville was a source of pride for the black community because it was one of few areas in the city where African-Americans could own property (as described here). His mother was a schoolteacher and his father worked as a carpenter, often fixing homes in nearby white neighborhoods. St. Louis was highly segregated, but the Berrys were proud of their African American and Native American ancestry and taught Chuck and his five brothers and sisters to share that pride.

Berry sang in his Baptist church choir and listened to blues and country music on the radio. He learned to play the guitar in the early 1940s at Sumner High School, the first all-black school west of the Mississippi. After a stint in prison over an armed car robbery kept Berry locked up until age 21, he launched a music career in 1948. Young black people with musical aspirations had limited outlets, and success was hard to come by. In the early 1950s, Berry played shows six nights a week but kept a day job as a carpenter. He also did stints as a hairdresser, a janitor, and a painter.

The name "Johnny" in "Johnny B. Goode" actually comes from Berry's earliest muse and mentor, pianist Johnnie Johnson. Berry found Johnson playing a wild new mix of boogie-woogie and blues as the "Sir John Trio" at an all-black club called the Cosmopolitan (integrated music venues did not yet exist in St. Louis). The young Chuck, full of showmanship and energy, joined the trio, quickly picked up many of Johnson's tricks and adapted them for the guitar, and then changed the band's name to the "Chuck Berry Trio"—fine by Johnson, because Chuck had a charm that made him a great front man even if many of the musical ideas came from Johnnie.

Berry was on the verge of success, and he paired a heavy dose of talent with a conservative business sense. As he tells it, during his days at the Cosmo he still made more money painting houses than playing music. A penny-pincher by nature, he still admits that it was money that drove him to a career in music: "When the money got larger I put the paintbrush down."

It's a good thing he did put the paintbrush down. Chuck Berry had something to give the world that a lot of folks had never heard before. He had been influenced by country music as much as blues, and when a lot of people first heard him, the big shocker was that he was a black guy singing "hillbilly music" (ironically, hillbilly, country and the blues share some of the same roots…but that's another story). He was the electric blues mixed with the excitement of kids driving fast cars, chasing trouble, and dancing in ways their parents never dreamed of. And on top of that, he was dashing, personable, and a little bit gimmicky. His energetic live shows and his famous "duck walk," along with great guitar licks and an original style, gradually drove him towards fame.

Berry's career really took off in 1955 when he got in contact with some well-networked entrepreneurs, harbingers of their own American dream: Phil and Leonard Chess of Chess Records. The Chicago-based label had made a name for itself by selling audiences on the electric blues. The label's signature style of rocking to the blues through newfangled amplification spread fast among black audiences, and later on the Chicago blues got popular with white audiences too. The Chess brothers were Jewish Polish immigrants with a sharp business sense, becoming some of the first producers in the nation to push blues to an interracial audience. They were deeply involved in their label's music and image, creating a sound and legacy that became known around the world. They signed Muddy Waters in 1947, and other big blues names like Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf and Little Walter did most of their important work on Chess. When Leonard Chess heard Chuck Berry, he knew he had a sound that no one else could replicate. He signed Chuck immediately, and Berry's first release on Chess ("Maybelline") was a quick hit. During that era, Chess also signed Bo Diddley and later Etta James. The Rolling Stones—big fans of Muddy Waters and Chicago blues—made an early recording of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in the Chess studio. When Berry met Muddy Waters on a random vacation to Chicago, Berry had stumbled into one of the centers of early rock n' roll.

The year that Chuck Berry met Leonard Chess could easily be described as the year of rock n' roll. James Dean's Rebel Without A Cause became a film sensation. Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard all scored their first top ten hits. These new stars were getting freaky on stage, causing parents to do a double take—especially white parents, many of whom were keeping their kids from even interacting with black people, much less doing pelvic thrusts in unison with them. That year, for the first time, a mob of female fans tried to chase Elvis backstage. The fan mob is an obvious part of stardom in our minds these days, but back then, a scene like that was a shocker. Finally, the phrase "rock n' roll" (which had been used in blues songs as a synonym for copulation) was spreading like wildfire, along with the music to go with it.Bruce Springsteen before Bruce got his break. Springsteen says the rumor was that Chuck collected $11,000 in cash at the start of the night, and at the end of the night he'd give a grand back if the band was good and the equipment worked.) It seems in Berry's mind that part of the "Go, Johnny, go!" mentality was to be sparing and cautious—not really our image of the reckless rocker in the style of Kurt Cobain.

If rock n' roll is sometimes in conflict with the mainstream vision of the American dream, Chuck Berry's early rock bridged the gap. He influenced generations of musicians (including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles) with unforgettable musical phrases and distinctive styles. But he also kept his head above water and avoided descending into addiction or depression, despite facing discrimination and a dramatic imprisonment at the peak of his career (see "Sweet Little Sixteen" for that story). He watched his finances closely and stayed in control of his career. As a black man trying to make a name in a white world, Berry could not afford to slip into sloppiness.

The Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame sums up Berry's contribution this way: "While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together." Nowadays, Berry is more than an influence—he's an icon. He's one of the many co-conspirators and architects whose music, sexuality and sass changed the world. He is also a part of that youthful daydream of fame and fortune, the rock n' roll version of an ever-changing "American dream." According to the Hall of Fame, "Berry gave rock and roll an archetypal character in 'Johnny B. Goode.'" He lived out a new kind of American dream, one that said that young black men with poor parents could become superstars, drive Cadillacs, and see their names lit up on the marquees of places where they'd once been turned away based on skin color. Along with the other black musicians who struggled to get ahead, he had to write the script for a new kind of success story. The script's refrain? "Go, Johnny, go!"

So? So we're just going to redefine the term because it's hard to prove? Why don't we just declare that whatever spent more weeks on the chart was more influential--that's REAL easy to quantify.

And as near as I can tell, the results when we do it your way are just as open to question, just as subjective.



The first generation were NOT the most influenced by Chuck Berry. The second generation was--The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Stones, to start with, were enthralled with him in a way that his peers never were. A way that no one, really, is ever so taken with his peers.



I'm saying they're gradual and cumulative. One song doesn't change the world. Even in the rare cases where one song clearly starts a trend, it means nothing if there aren't other songs that build on it. "Rapper's Delight" wouldn't be a hugely important record if Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow, and so on didn't expand on it.

But JBG is a tipping point. Let me ask this: why, do you think, did the guitar become so central to the sound of rock? Was it not because of Chuck Berry? Was JBG not central to that process, not only because of its guitar sound, but because of its lyrics as well?



"Put your glad rags on and join me hon,
We'll have some fun when the clock strikes one."

Ooooh, yeah, feel the rebellion. If I didn't know better, I'd think it was a Public Enemy lyric.

I'm sorry, I don't hear the sound of RATC influencing much at all. Compared to even the rock hits of a couple years later, it sounds antiquated, more big band than rock and roll band. And here you don't seem to be arguing that it innovated at all--if you're talking about epitomizing "everything rock has been largely known for ever since," JBG does that to a much greater extent. And it most certainly does not have a lyrical focus on rebellion.



Sure. I mean, it's in the top ten.

Another small factor in lasting popularity and acclaim is RYM where "Johnny B Goode" is the #1 single of the 50s and "RATC" is #36.

Check out #12.

Okay, I have the list of Chuck Berry's single releases in the UK in the 50s. "Maybellene" was never released there, and he only had one release before 1957.

1956
London HLU 8275 Downbound Train/No Money Down May

1957
London HLN 8375 You Can't Catch Me/Havana Moon Feb
HLU 8428 Roll Over Beethoven/Drifting Heart May
Columbia DB 3951 School Day/Deep Feeling Jun
London HLM 8531 Rock And Roll Music/Blue Feeling Dec

1958
London HLM 8585 Sweet Little Sixteen/Reelin' And Rockin' Mar
HLM 8629 Johnny B.Goode/Around And Around May
HL 8677 Beautiful Delilah/Vacation Time Aug
HL 8712 Carol/Hey Pedro Oct
HLM 8767 Sweet Little Rock And Roll/Joe Joe Gun Dec

1959

HLM 8853 Almost Grown/Little Queenie Apr
HLM 8921 Memphis Tennessee/Back In The USA Jul

He's not redefining it, he's using a different reference point for it's evaluation process. Influence means gradual development, does it not? I see no problem with his definition of the term.
To truly understand a book, you have to start at page 1.



You accuse Sampson of tying influence to innovation, but you yourself are tying influence to popularity.



Again, that's not what he meant. He said "the first generation who'd be the most influenced by Berry's recordings".



But JBG itself was merely an "expansion" of Chuck's already-firmly-established-repertoire.



How is the guitar sound and lyrics that different from Roll Over Beethoven or Maybellene?







Largely subjective, but you're looking at this from a 2013 perspective, when you should be looking at it from a mid-1950's perspective.

Reda the essays I posted. The lyrics make it the first song ever about rock and roll stardom. About the ability of a poor southern boy who grew up in a shack to become a world famous millionaire. "Maybellene" is about a girl and a car, and "ROB" is about the genre of rock and roll taking over the music scene. Neither of them has lyrics that are anywhere near as profound and insightful as "Johnny B. Goode."




It's 2013 now. If this list was done in 1973 or 1983 there's no question that "Rock Around The Clock" would have been the # 1 song, but Brett is right, the record sounds very dated, even compared to the rock and roll of just a few years later. It just happened to get lucky that it was picked to be used in "The Blackboard Jungle," otherwise it would have been a minor hit from 1954 like it was the first time around. It was in the right place at the right time, on the right major label. There's nothing very special about it musically, it's derivative of earlier Bill Haley records, and the song itself was done first by another band.

Influence means having an effect on someone else's decisions--in this context, on their musical decisions.




That's the point. The goal is to find an accurate assessment of influence, not to find something that's easy to quantify and evaluate.



I'm not sure what your point is. I'm saying that the Beatles, Beach Boys, and Stones were more influenced by Berry's recordings than the first generation was. What distinction are you making that I'm missing?



If so, so what? Rock and roll grew gradually. A record didn't have to be the first to do something to be the most influential in shaping the way others made their music.



Again, I'm saying that it doesn't have to be that different to be more influential. But the lyrics certainly are notably different from "Beethoven" and completely different from "Maybellene". See the article Bruce posted about their autobiographical nature and their recasting of the American dream. A change that is still reflected in rap lyrics to this day.



OK, from a mid-50s perspective, what's rebellious about the lyrics?

Just for the record, "Roll Over Beethoven" is BY FAR my favorite Chuck Berry record. "Johnny B. Goode" is not even in my top 5.

Here's where they rank on my infamous Top 1,000 list:

23 ¦ Roll Over Beethoven ¦ Chuck Berry - 56
56 ¦ School Day ¦ Chuck Berry - 57
140 ¦ Sweet Little Sixteen ¦ Chuck Berry - 58
191 ¦ Around And Around ¦ Chuck Berry - 58
192 ¦ Rock And Roll Music ¦ Chuck Berry - 57
382 ¦ Johnny B. Goode ¦ Chuck Berry - 58
438 ¦ Maybellene ¦ Chuck Berry - 55
476 ¦ Too Much Monkey Business ¦ Chuck Berry - 56
678 ¦ Thirty Days ¦ Chuck Berry - 55
746 ¦ Back In The USA ¦ Chuck Berry - 59
774 ¦ No Particular Place To Go ¦ Chuck Berry - 64
784 ¦ Reelin' And Rockin' ¦ Chuck Berry - 58
789 ¦ You Never Can Tell ¦ Chuck Berry - 64
879 ¦ Little Queenie ¦ - Chuck Berry - 59

Yes, but "having an effect" is a pretty vague definition that's open to interpretation, dont you think? I dont see what makes your method any more credible than Sampson's.



By that logic, though, there would be no difference between influence and popularity, if they're synonymous with each other.



I think you just misunderstood what Sampson meant, I think was referring to the first generation of artists who copied Berry and showed a developmental influence from him, which would refer more to the 60's artists.



Fair enough on Maybellene, but I dont see much difference from RoB really. They are both about the energetic spirit of rocking, the youthful exuberance of just giving yourself to the music.
To say JBG had a lyrical influence on rap is kinda stretching it, imo.



....Got me. I guess "rebellious" was kinda of an overstatement on his part.