Chuck Berry, who defined rock ‘n roll with hits like “Maybellene,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Memphis,” and “Sweet Little Sixteen” is dead at the age of 90.
As reported by The National ENQUIRER, the duck-walking guitar hero was struggling to keep up his performances — and was too ill to leave his St. Louis home to accept the Polar Music Prize in Sweden in August 2014.
Chuck admitted that he was “unable to travel,” adding that “my singing days are past. My voice is gone. My throat is worn. And my lungs are going fast!”
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Chuck still insisted on performing monthly at the Blueberry Hill club in St. Louis long into his old age.
“I’ll keep going for as long as the big man upstairs allows,” he said — although adoring local fans had gotten used to Chuck frequently getting lost in the middle of songs onstage.
Chuck was also a pioneer in rock ‘n roll scandals. As a teenager, Chuck Berry spent three years in reform school for attempted robbery.
In the ’60s, he spent two years in federal prison for taking a 14-year-old hooker across state lines for sex.
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In the early ’90s, cops raided his 200-acre estate in Wentzville, Mo., where they allegedly found 80 pornographic tapes and marijuana — but child abuse and felony drug charges were dropped.
And in 1994, 60 women claimed they were secretly videotaped while using the bathrooms at his Berry Park recreation complex and the Southern Aire restaurant. Berry denied taping the women.
That never kept the legendary rocker from being an American treasure — and Chuck even went intergalactic when “Johnny B. Goode” was included in the Earth artifacts sent out in the Voyager space probe in 1977.
