Chuck Berry wrote Johnny B. Goode -- a song about a country boy who could play guitar like ringing a bell -- and then played it like he was that boy. The duckwalk. The double-stops. The lyrics that rhymed 'coolerator' with 'refrigerator.' He took the blues, added country twang, and invented the grammar of rock and roll guitar.

Maybellene. Roll Over Beethoven. Sweet Little Sixteen. You Never Can Tell. He wrote about cars and girls and the American teenage experience from the outside looking in -- a Black man in Jim Crow America singing to white teenagers who'd never thought about who was on the other side of the radio. The double-stop intro to Johnny B. Goode is the most imitated guitar riff in history.

He did time. He had a temper. He made a final album at 90 -- Chuck, released posthumously -- that showed the poet was still writing. He was difficult, complicated, and absolutely essential. The rock and roll guitar starts with Chuck Berry. Everything else is footnotes.

Chuck Berry -- Johnny B. Goode. The duckwalk. The double-stops. Invented the grammar of rock and roll guitar. Made a final album at 90.