ABSTRACT
Chuck Berry, more than any individual, deserves to be considered the father of rock and roll. From his first hit, “Maybellene” (1955), rock’s first guitar-playing singer-songwriter was a sly, subversive satirist who identified the rituals and restrictions of the developing suburban teenage consumer. Fast cars, fickle girls, high school boredom, oppressive parents, dead-end jobs, the anxiety of being stuck between childhood and adulthood, and the freedom provided by rock and roll itself were all fair game for Berry’s witty lyrical repartee in a massively influential catalog of tunes. In that catalog, less prominent yet no less important, are pointed and humorous songs that depicted the racism of the era.
