"Sweet Little Ninety"

While the coming of spring is being delayed again by the rain, sleet, and sloppy weather of the east, it is a perfect time to reflect on the adventurous life and career of Chuck Berry who passed away yesterday. Bob Dylan called Berry "the Shakespeare of rock & roll" and Leonard Cohen termed him "the Kafka of the blues." Cohen, once compared Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" to Walt Whitman's joyful noise – his "barbaric yawp." "If Beethoven hadn't rolled over," he said, "there'd be no room for any of us." Chuck Berry's duck walking way through his life and his music combining country, blues and all that was rising below the sameness of the pop music of his time made room for the likes of the Beach Boys, the Stones, the Beatles, and much that followed and continues to roll on in rock n roll.