CLEVELAND (October 12, 2012) – The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and its Library and Archives are proud to present two special spotlight exhibitions devoted to rock and roll pioneer, Chuck Berry. The exhibits will open to the public on Thursday, October 18 to coincide with Berry’s 86th birthday and kick-off the 17th annual American Music Masters® series, Roll Over Beethoven: The Life and Music of Chuck Berry, beginning Monday, October 22 through Saturday, October 27.
See Chuck Berry’s stage clothes, a guitar and more at the museum at 1100 Rock and Roll Blvd. Highlights include:
Vest worn at the Toronto Rock and Roll Festival in 1969
An original photograph of three-year-old Chuck Berry in his St. Louis neighborhood called “The Ville†(c. 1929)
Chuck Berry/Chess Records recording contract (1958)
Handbill from a performance in Jamaica in 1961
See additional photographs, handbills and handwritten lyrics of Berry’s at the Library and Archives located at 2809 Woodland Avenue (five minutes from the museum). Highlights include:
1964 United Kingdom Tour program
Handbill for Chuck Berry with the Grateful Dead at the Carousel Ballroom 1968
Letter to Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone about an interview of Chuck Berry (1972)
The spotlight exhibits at the museum and the Library and Archives tell the story of the first artist to ever be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 by Rolling Stone icon Keith Richards. Berry has had a lifetime of brilliant musicianship and has inspired nearly every rock artist to date. The spotlight exhibits reveal nearly 40 exclusive artifacts from Berry’s life such as sheet music to his 1955 hit song “Maybellene†that helped ignite the rock and roll revolution and his 1998 Samick San 450 guitar that features his trademark double-string, semi-hollow electric acoustic style.
The spotlight exhibit at the museum will be open indefinitely and the exhibit at the Library and Archives will be open through the end of 2012.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s Library and Archives is located just five minutes from the museum on the campus of Cuyahoga Community College in the LiPuma Center for Creative Arts, 2809 Woodland Avenue. Hours of operation are: Tuesday – Friday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Sunday and Monday: closed. Admission is FREE.
For more information visit rockhall.com.
About Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry is the poet laureate of rock and roll. In the mid-Fifties, he took a fledgling idiom, born out of rhythm & blues and country & western, and gave it form and identity. A true original, Berry crafted many of rock and roll’s greatest riffs and married them to lyrics that shaped the rock and roll vernacular for generations. He has written numerous rock and roll classics that have been covered by multitudes of artists and stood the test of time. In all essential ways, he understood the power of rock and roll – how it worked, what it was about and who it was for.
