Rock and roll legend Chuck Berry performs during a concert in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, on March 28, 2008. Although Elvis Presley was called the king of rock'n'roll, that crown would have fit just as well on the carefully sculpted pompadour of Charles Edward Anderson Berry. Bob Dylan called Berry "the Shakespeare of rock'n'roll," and he was one of the first popular acts to write as well as perform his own songs. "If you tried to give rock'n'roll another name," Lennon once said, "you might call it 'Chuck Berry'." When Richards inducted Berry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, he said: "It's very difficult for me to talk about Chuck Berry because I've lifted every lick he ever played.

Source: Bangkok Post March 18, 2017 22:52 UTC