America 250 Rocktober Song #9: "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry

We're sticking in the Midwest for today's America 250 Rocktober selection.  I also realized that all the songs so far have been from the '80s or later, with the exception of ZZ Top's "Just Got Paid."  So I'm going even further back, to the nascent years of rock and roll.

Chuck Berry -- from St. Louis -- is, of course, one of the early stars of rock and roll and one of the most famous and influential musicians in rock history.  His guitar playing and showmanship have influenced countless musicians, from George Harrison to Keith Richards to Angus Young to Marty McFly.

While Berry's catalog is vast and plentiful, I had to go with one of his classics, 1958's "Johnny B. Goode."  We take it for granted by now, but what a hell of a song for the tail-end of the stodgy '50s.  It was the first rock and roll song about being a rock and roll star.  More importantly, it told a rags-to-riches tale of an illiterate country boy with an innate talent for playing the guitar -- telling us that anyone can be a rock star, regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds.  Musically, the song kicks off with that famous opening riff, and it's all energy for the rest of the song.

"Johnny B. Goode" went to #8 on the pre-cursor to the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on the Billboard R&B singles chart.  In 1977, it was included as one of the 27 songs (and the only rock and roll song) on the Voyager Golden Record -- a record that was inserted into both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts, just in case aliens one day find either craft, figure out how to work the record player included in the craft, and then think, "man, that Earth place was super weird back at some point in time before it exploded several hundred thousand years ago."

My favorite sentence from the Wikipedia page about the Voyager Golden Record:  "Although neither Voyager spacecraft is heading toward any particular star, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years' distance of the star Gliese 445, currently in the constellation Camelopardalis, in about 40,000 years."  So the closest we're gonna come to any potential alien lifeform discovering this record will be in 40,000 years when Voyager 1 comes within approximately 9.4 trillion miles of some star with a stupid name.  To put that in perspective, you could go to and from Pluto over 1,200 times, and it still wouldn't be 1.6 light years.

But I digress.  I'm embedding a fan video of the song that features the studio recording, but with some Berry TV performances.