The Friday song (on a Sunday):  ‘Johnny B. Goode’ by Chuck Berry

Yesterday, July 4 2026, marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in the USA. I have a number of good American friends on my music group, and so I thought I’d listen to and write about an American musical hero and an equally iconic American song today.

Last week I posted a Jimi Hendrix piece and mentioned Johnny B. Goode, one of the songs he covered. Today, it’s time to talk about that song and a possibly an even greater influence on rock ’n’ roll, Chuck Berry.

Whether it was Lennon, Richards, Springsteen, Dylan or The Grateful Dead on the interview mic, they all carried in some form or other the message that Chuck Berry was the founding father of rock ’n’ roll – and the autobiographical Johnny B. Goode was the riff centre point. While there were rock ’n’ roll songs that preceded it, and other rhythm and blues guitarists, Berry was the first of the guitar and vocal star-fronted leaders who shaped the form, and it would most certainly have developed very differently without him.

Johnny B. Goode’s origin story

Johnny B. Goode was released in 1958. It featured Berry’s signature guitar lines and a story about a “country boy”, (changed from “coloured boy” to ensure radio play) who “Never ever learned to read or write so well / But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell”. It was the first narrative about a musician pulling himself up to rise to fame; the musician’s American dream.

The introductory guitar lick became Berry’s forever, but he didn’t actually write it himself. He pilfered it, fairly commonplace in music at the time, from the rather more sedate start to Louis Jordan’s jump blues classic, Ain’t That Just Like A Woman. Berry appropriated it, supercharged it and – along with Maybellene, Carol, Sweet Little Sixteen, Around and Around, Roll Over Beethoven and others, as well as songs that went slightly in another direction, like You Never Can Tell – thus cemented his guitar-playing, songwriting and recorded legacy. 

Will the real Johnny B. Goode please stand up?

The “Johnny” of the song’s title is a reference to Berry’s pianist, Johnnie Johnson, whose barrel-pumping piano can be heard on the track, while the “Goode” is Goode Avenue in St Louis, where Berry grew up – and not the Louisiana or New Orleans of line one of the song.

It’s a classic American guitar-driven track, which travelled on earth from jukebox to radio to every household and is now travelling in space too, as a “golden record” artifact to “represent” earth on board the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts. It still sounds urgent today as it awaits universal discovery.

Listen to Johnny B. Goode on Spotify here and on Apple Music here.

I started a music WhatsApp group in 2023. I send one song a week on a Friday, with links to both Apple and Spotify, and an accompanying narrative/capsule piece. If you want to engage about a song, get a playlist or just get in touch, email me on markgrosin@gmail.com.

For more of Mark’s excellent picks, go here.

_{Top image collage: Currency.}