Wentzville’s own: Chuck Berry exhibit to open at R&R Hall of Fame

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and its Library and Archives will present two special spotlight exhibitions devoted to rock and roll pioneer, and Wentzville resident Chuck Berry.  The exhibits will open to the public on Thursday, Oct. 18, to coincide with Berry’s 86^th birthday and kick-off the 17th annual American Music Masters series, Roll Over Beethoven: The Life and Music of Chuck Berry, beginning Monday, Oct. 22 through Saturday, Oct. 27.

On exhibit will be:

Chuck Berry’s stage clothes, a guitar and more at the museum at 1100 Rock and Roll Blvd. Highlights including:

• Vest worn at the Toronto Rock and Roll Festival in 1969
• An original photograph of 3-year-old Chuck Berry in hisSt. Louisneighborhood called “The Ville” (c. 1929)
• Chuck Berry/Chess Records recording contract (1958)
• Handbill from a performance inJamaicain 1961

Additional photographs, handbills and handwritten lyrics of Berry’s at the Library and Archives located at 2809 Woodland Ave. (five minutes from the museum). Highlights include:

• 1964 United Kingdom Tour program
• Handbill for Chuck Berry with the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore West 1968
• Letter from Chuck Berry to Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone (1972)

The spotlight exhibits at the museum and the Library and Archives tell the story of the first artist to ever be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 by Rolling Stone icon Keith Richards. Berry has had a lifetime of brilliant musicianship and has inspired nearly every rock artist to date.

The spotlight exhibits reveal nearly 40 exclusive artifacts from Berry’s life such as sheet music to his 1955 hit song “Maybellene” that helped ignite the rock and roll revolution and his 1998 Samick San 450 guitar that features his trademark double-string, semi-hollow electric acoustic style.

The spotlight exhibit at the museum will be open indefinitely and the exhibit at the Library and Archives will be open through the end of 2012.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s Library and Archives is located just five minutes from the museum on the campus of Cuyahoga Community College in the Li Puma Center for Creative Arts,2809 Woodland Avenue. Hours of operation are: Tuesday – Friday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Sunday and Monday: closed.  Admission is free.

For more information visit rockhall.com.

Chuck Berry is the poet laureate of rock and roll. In the mid-1950s, he took a fledgling idiom, born out of rhythm and blues and country and western, and gave it form and identity. A true original, Berry crafted many of rock and roll’s greatest riffs and married them to lyrics that shaped the rock and roll vernacular for generations. He has written numerous rock and roll classics that have been covered by multitudes of artists and stood the test of time. In all essential ways, he understood the power of rock and roll – how it worked, what it was about and who it was for.

While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Berry arguably did more than anyone else to put the pieces together. For the complete Chuck Berry biography written by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, visit: http://rockhall.com/inductees/chuck-berry/bio/.