Chuck Berry’s guitar is on the Voyager Golden Record, carrying rock and roll into interstellar space. This episode traces his middle-class upbringing in St. Louis, his reformatory sentence after a 1944 armed robbery, and the years he spent working auto plant jobs and training as a beautician before music took over.

We explore how he fused country rhythm with electric blues, broke through with Maybellene at Chess Records, fought payola, and wrote songs that defined the American teenager. We also examine his Mann Act conviction, his cash-only touring rules, his tax evasion sentence, and the troubling controversies that complicate his legacy.

• How Berry won over audiences by playing country songs in Black clubs
• Why Alan Freed’s co-writing credit exposed the payola system
• The childhood origin of the duck walk
• How the British Invasion kept his songs alive while he was in prison
• Why My Ding-a-Ling became his only number one pop hit