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Episode 67: “Johnny B. Goode”, by Chuck Berry

A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs

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Johnny B. Good by Chuck Berry

The lyric to Johnny B. Good is more original than the music, but even there we can trace its origins. The poet Langston Hughes had written a very widely circulated series of newspaper columns which Berry would have encountered in his teenage years and early twenties. It's the combination of all these elements in a way they'd never been put together before, that is Berry's genius.

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