[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for that
centennial I’ll share blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,
leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]
On a pair
of foundational icons whose stories represent some of the worst and best of
rock and race.
Lists are
a famously contested way to commemorate musical history, but also one of the most
common ways to do so—and for both reasons I have no qualms about
starting a post on Chuck Berry and Little Richard by noting that the pair of
musical pioneers account for no less than nine of the top 27 rock and roll
songs of the 1950s per this (I’m sure quite authoritative and impossible to
dispute) list. And in
truth, while that list and all lists might be made for good-natured disputes,
there’s simply no arguing with the fact that we can’t narrate nor commemorate
the origins of rock and roll without a central place for Charles Edward
Anderson Berry (nicknamed the “Father of Rock & Roll”) and
Richard Wayne Penniman (nicknamed “the
architect of rock and roll”; a nickname perhaps bestowed by himself, but
what’s more rock and roll than that?!). They’re far from the only ones, as I
hope this week’s series will make clear—but at the same time, if I were to
going to narrow it down to just two groundbreaking icons (there’s that list
idea again), I think I’d have to go with Chuck and Richard.
While they
have much in common, then, it’s fair to say that Chuck Berry and Little
Richard’s respective stories and arcs diverged quite a bit, and not just in the
ways that the careers and lives of any two distinct artists and individuals
always would. After dominating the charts, airwaves, and rock tours throughout
the mid- to late-50s and into the early 60s, Berry’s career took a precipitous
decline in 1962 when he was charged
and convicted under the Mann Act and sentenced to three years
in prison, an arrest and sentence that I can’t help but believe were tied
to the power structure’s racist fears of both Black sexuality and rock and
roll’s cross-cultural influences on young (white) people. To be clear, it seems
to be genuinely the case that Berry transported a minor with whom he was in a
sexual relationship across state lines, making him legally culpable under the
Mann Act; but I would note that just a few years earlier, in 1957, the white
rocker Jerry Lee Lewis had famously married
a 13 year old (and his cousin
to boot) and was to my knowledge never charged nor arrested, and
certainly never convicted nor jailed, for doing so. Moreover, after gradually
rebuilding his career, in 1979 Berry was once again
sentenced to jail for doing something that numerous artists
have done and likely continue to do—getting paid in cash to avoid paying taxes.
While
Little Richard was not without his share of criticisms and controversies—many
also related to issues of sex and sexuality, since
Richard was a truly groundbreaking artist who consistently crossed
boundaries around those issues, dress and appearance, and many related
layers of identity (although he also went through frustratingly
regressive periods)—he avoided any such legal challenges and
maintained his striking 1950s success throughout the subsequent 60+ years of
his career and life. Moreover, Richard similarly and even more influentially
crossed boundaries when it came to race and music, as exemplified not just by
the constant covers of his works by white peers (including Elvis Presley, who told
Richard in 1969 that he was “the greatest”), but also by his influences on The
Beatles—the group opened for Richard on some early 1960s tour dates, and
Richard apparently taught Paul McCartney some of his vocalizations in the
process. The history of rock and roll can’t be told without remembering the
racism and double standards faced by artists like Chuck Berry—but at its heart
I believe it’s a profoundly cross-cultural and boundary-crossing genre, and no
one embodied those trends more than Little Richard.
Next
groundbreaker tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
recent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?
