*Includes pictures *Includes Berry's quotes about his life and career *Includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents “I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn't paint.” – Chuck Berry "If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry.'" – John Lennon The origins of rock music claim several founding fathers, with each perspective holding merit and directly contributing to the golden age to follow in rock music. While Elvis Presley remains perhaps the most high profile figure of early rock, he was not truly a member of the first generation, and if anything, he was a product of a slightly older wave of ground-breaking artists. Appearing immediately before Presley’s rise was Texan Buddy Holly, whose borrowings from driving black rhythms blended with white lyrics to make him one of the first successful cross-over artists. However, perhaps the first and ultimately the most successful of this category - those artistic explorers who most effectively blurred racial and political lines through their music - was Chuck Berry, an African-American blues, country singer/guitarist songwriter who perfectly blended the prevailing forms of his generation to attract both black and white audiences with a virtuosity and originality that set the bar for the next half century.