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Berry, Chuck
"Maybelline" is to rock and roll what Adam and Eve are to the Bible. Sure, rock-and-roll style songs predate it, but they were all hybrids. For example, the only song in this book that predates "Maybelline", "Ain't That A Shame" by Fats Domino, is really a rhythm-and-blues song disguised as a rock-and-roll song. What "Maybelline" says, essentially, is "accept no imitations, it all starts here."
It is hard to overestimate just how influential Chuck Berry was. He was the first guitarist/singer to reach the charts. He was also a songwriter/performer, something relatively uncommon in 1955. He was the first rock and roll artist to write words that were relevant and entertaining to his young white audience without alienating his core black audience. Finally, he achieved all of this with a driving rock-and-roll rhythm that was, if not brand new, certainly unique enough to be instantly recognizable. For these reasons he, more than any other artist, is responsible for the direction of the popular music that followed. "Maybelline" was his first single and from then on, the pop charts were permanently altered.
The inception of "Maybelline" wasn't an accident at all but a very deliberate attempt at musical alchemy. While Sam Phillips of Sun Records was busy trying to find a white singer that sounded like a black man, Chuck Berry, a black man, was endeavoring to write music that would appeal to the white kids who preferred Pat Boone to Fats Domino. While playing at nightclubs around his hometown of St. Louis, Berry intended to make an impression on his predominantly black audience. The most popular music in the area among whites was hillbilly music (now country-western), and he thought it would be clever to incorporate some hillbilly material into the usual set of blues standards. The crowd reaction was generally favorable, and it wasn't long before the white crowd got word of the “black hillbilly” and started coming to shows. When performing this material, Berry made sure to enunciate carefully, singing outside the standard blues realm, and he improvised lyrics that caused the audience to pay closer attention to the budding star.
One night the great Muddy Waters was playing in Chicago and Berry went to the show. Afterward, he tentatively stated his admiration and mentioned that he hoped to make a record of his own. Waters responded that he should see Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Contrary to popular legend, Berry did not play guitar with Muddy Waters that night. The next business day, he was at Chess Records making arrangements for a recording session. The first song he recorded was "Ida May", which was changed to "Maybelline" at the suggestion of Leonard Chess. The session was full of stops and starts - they must have known they were on to something, but they didn't know what it was. The music was so new that "Maybelline" took thirty-six takes before it was considered finished.
To help the song get airplay, two thirds of the writing credits were given to promoter/disc jockey Alan Freed and his associate Russ Fratto, something Berry was unaware of until the song was published and released. The ethics were perhaps suspect, but this surely gave Freed incentive to push "Maybelline." It became a national hit, reaching #5. It was then, in the summer of 1955, that the rock-and-roll revolution had begun.
 
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