How Did Chuck Berry Influence Pop Culture
Chuck Berry: From Pioneer to Pop Culture Icon
1950s America was a time of growing affluence and post-war optimism. A time of great idealism was matched by great tension and unwanted but necessary change. Racial tensions were at an all time high, with the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement and decisions such as Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) signaling a move toward integration. Communism created political and social unrest and a new demographic was to challenge the nuclear family: the teenager. The 1950s was an intrinsically important time for the development of culture and most evidently, music. The 1950s gave birth to what we know today as rock and roll. As a pioneer of the genre, Chuck Berry had great influence on its development.
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Despite Berry being considerably older than the youth, he had an innate capacity to relate to what would become his biggest audience. His music had ‘struck a chord with teenagers’ as he wrote lyrics about the concerns of many teens, such as fast cars, all consuming romance and high school. Berry understood teenagers as a ‘cultural and economic force’ (Gallant-Gardener 2001). Radio programmers caught onto the booming popularity of rock and roll amongst teenagers. It was ‘a cherished essential of teenage life’ just as Berry was ‘essential to the foundation’ of rock and roll (Zak 2010:177). Programming was constructed as to attract peak audiences in times where teenagers would be able to listen, such as before/after school and on Friday and Saturday nights. Gallant-Gardener goes as far as to say that without Berry, teenage culture would not have developed in the way that it did (2001).
As a black man, Berry’s appeal to white teenagers was more than just a matter of popularity or industry widening. It was a step forward for racial progress for ‘as whites listened to African American music and cheered performers on the stage’ they challenged the racial divide (Altschuler 2003:17). Berry received the Billboard award for most promising artist in 1955 at a primarily white dominated award ceremony which is an example of how well he had crossed racial barriers to appeal to white
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