Chuck Berry

Elvis may have brought rock and roll to a mass (i.e. caucasian) audiences, but if the genre has a father--someone who could truly be crowned its king--it is undoubtedly Chuck Berry, the man who wrote the genre's entire vocabularly in riffs. Not just a guitar dynamo and consummate showman, Berry was a masterfully wry songwriter whose songs displayed a narrative wit as infectious as their hooks. His run of singles from 1955 to 1965--including his debut "Maybelline," "Rock and Roll Music," "Roll Over Beethoven," and "Johnny B. Goode" among many others--turned on generations of rockers from the Beatles and Rolling Stones to AC/DC and the Sex Pistols. While his chart presence waned after 1972's lewd novelty hit "My Ding-a-Ling," Berry continued to duck walk across stages the world over in the ensuing decades.

• rock
• pop