Regarded as one of the architects of rock 'n' roll, Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born in San Jose, California on 18^th October 1926. He developed a love for poetry and the blues, winning a high school talent contest. He learned guitar as a teenager and from 1944 to 1947 he was in reform school for attempted robbery. Upon his release he worked on the assembly line at General Motors and studied hairdressing and cosmetology at night school.

In the earlier Fifties, Berry led a popular blues trio working the local East St. Louis clubs scene by night and supplementing his income working as a beautician by day. He befriended his idol, Muddy Waters, who introduced him to the president of Chicago-based Chess Records. After listening to Berry’s homemade audition tape he offered him a contract. During his first recording session, Berry reworked one of his hillbilly tunes called Ida Red into a song called Maybelline.

The song was released in August 1955 and went to number five on the pop chart, establishing Berry as a one of the first black artists to successfully cross over to the largely white pop charts. The next few years saw a succession of hits for him, each one would become a classic in their own right. They included Roll Over Beethoven, Johnny B Goode, School Days, Carol, Back In The U.S.A., Little Queenie, Sweet Little Sixteen, Memphis Tennessee and Rock and Roll Music. With his famous "duckwalk", he was the main stay of the mid-Fifties concert circuit. Chuck also appeared in the movies Rock, Rock Rock, Go Johnny Go and Mister Rock n Roll.

Late in 1959 Berry was charged with violating the Mann Act in that he brought a fourteen year old girl Spanish-speaking Apache prostitute from Texas to his St Louis nightclub, and after he fired her she complained to the police. After a blatantly racist first trial was disallowed, he was found guilty at a second. In 1962 Berry was sent to prison for two years on what now appears to be trumped-up charges. After his release in 1964, he discovered, to his surprise that his music had taken off in a big way in Britain, despite the British Invasion.

He also proved that he could still produce hit songs with such classics as Nadine, No Particular Place To Go and Promised Land. It wasn’t till 1972 that he finally achieved his one and only first number one hit with My Ding-a-Ling, a song he’d long been playing in his nightclub act. In 1987, he published the at-times sexually explicit Chuck Berry: the Autobiography and was the subject of a documentary/tribute film called Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll. He continues to play at concerts and when not on the road, lives in Wentzville, Missouri, where he owns an amusement complex, Berry Park.

Chuck Berry was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.