His image is that of one of rock & roll's original bad boys, but serious music aficionados know that blues, rock, R&B and even rockabilly wouldn't be where they are today if there had been no Chuck Berry.

The late rocker and archivist Cub Koda once wrote for the All Music Guide that "Quite simply, without him, there would be no Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, nor a myriad others. There would be no standard 'Chuck Berry guitar intro,' the instrument's clarion call to get the joint rockin' in any setting. The clippety-clop rhythms of rockabilly would not have been mainstreamed into the now standard 4/4 rock & roll beat. There would be no obsessive wordplay by modern-day tunesmiths; in fact, the whole history (and artistic level) of rock & roll songwriting would have been much poorer without him. ... Those who do not claim him as a seminal influence or profess a liking for his music and showmanship show their ignorance of rock's development, as well as his place as the music's first great creator. Elvis may have fueled rock & roll's imagery, but Chuck Berry was its heartbeat and original mindset."

Berry was about a whole lot more than simple ditties about girls, schools, cars and his famous "duck walk."

During the 1950s, his showmanship packed in the crowds at black clubs and created a sound that crossed over to white rock & roll and country audiences, according to a number of biographies about Berry.

Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born in 1926 in St. Louis to a schoolteacher, Martha, and contractor and church deacon Henry Berry. The third of six children, Berry grew up in 'The Ville,' an area near downtown St. Louis, which was one of the few areas of town where black people could own property.

Berry started singing in the choir at Antioch Baptist Church at the age of six and learned to play guitar in Sumner High School. He first learned to play on a four-string tenor guitar, but by 1950, he had switched to a six-string electric. He also discovered a love of photography, which he pursued briefly as a young adult.

His first public performance was in the All Men's Review in 1941, in which he sang "Confessin' the Blues," a song he would record 19 years later.

The '40s was also a time when Berry had his first brush with the law. Just before graduating from high school, he was joy riding with a couple of friends in Kansas City when the police stopped and arrested the trio. His friends were wanted for armed robbery. All three were sentenced to 10 years in Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa. There, Berry took up boxing and joined a gospel group. He was released on Oct. 18, 1947. His 21st birthday.

The next year, Berry married and took on a number of jobs, including working as a freelance photographer, and continued to play the guitar and developing a reputation around St. Louis. He began playing professionally in 1952, picking up gigs at various clubs. By year's end, he joined the Sir John Trio, which played at the Cosmopolitan Club in East St. Louis, and was heavily influenced by leader Johnnie Johnson's boogie-woogie piano riffs. The Sir John Trio played mostly blues and ballads, but Berry began working some joking hillbilly songs into the act.

"Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience, and some of our black audience began whispering, 'Who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?'" Berry wrote in his book, "Chuck Berry: The Autobiography." "After they laughed at me a few times, they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."

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