Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T19:36:32.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

His name was in lights: Chuck Berry's ‘Johnny B. Goode’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Timothy D. Taylor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Chuck Berry recorded ‘Johnny B. Goode’ in December 1957 and it has since become one of his best-known songs. The reasons for its lasting popularity are varied, and one of the goals of this article is to elucidate and discuss them. But the main purpose is to raise ‘Johnny B. Goode’ as an example of the choices and problems Berry faced in his career as an African-American musician in the 1950s and 60s and the ways he dealt with them in this tune.

Type
Research Article
Information
Popular Music , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1992 , pp. 27 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Attali, J. 1985. Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis)Google Scholar
Berry, C. [1987] 1988. Chuck Berry: The Autobiography (New York)Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. [1979] 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, Mass.)Google Scholar
Connor, S. 1989. Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary (Oxford)Google Scholar
Cruse, H. 1967. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York)Google Scholar
Dauer, A. 1979. ‘Towards a typology of the vocal blues idiom’, Jazzforschung, 11: 9–92Google Scholar
DeWitt, H. 1985. Chuck Berry: Rock 'n' Roll Music, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor)Google Scholar
Evans, D. 1982. Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Folk Blues (Berkeley)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiske, John. 1987. ‘British cultural studies and television’, in Channels of Discourse, ed. Allen, Robert C. (Chapel Hill, N.C.)Google Scholar
Fiske, John. 1989. Understanding Popular Culture (Boston)Google Scholar
Hasse, J. 1985. ‘Ragtime: from the top’, in Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music, ed. Hasse, John Edward (New York)Google Scholar
Jameson, F. 1979. ‘Reification and utopia in mass culture’, Social Text, 11 (Winter), pp. 130–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langer, S. [1942] 1979. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.)Google Scholar
Lipsitz, G. 1990. Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis)Google Scholar
Lyotard, J-F. [1979] 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis)Google Scholar
Panassie, H. 1971. Louis Armstrong (New York)Google Scholar
Salvo, P. W. 1972. ‘A conversation with Chuck Berry’, Rolling Stone, 42 (11 23)Google Scholar
Shepherd, J. 1987. ‘Music and male hegemony’, in Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, ed. Leppert, Richard and McClary, Susan (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Titon, J. T. 1977. Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis (Urbana, Illinois)Google Scholar
Tucker, B. 1989. “Tell Tchaikovsky the news”: postmodernism, popular culture, and the emergence of rock 'n' roll', Black Music Research Journal, 9 (Fall), pp. 271–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vito, R. 1984. ‘The Chuck Berry style: A modern rocker pays tribute to the master’, Guitar Player, (06), pp. 72–5Google Scholar