Musical legend Chuck Berry still reeling and rocking on stage at 86_美文

Musical legend Chuck Berry still reeling and rocking on stage at 86

BASHER TARR (DON CHEADLE): "Mr. Bank, do you know what Chuck Berry said every night before counting one-two-three-four?"

WILLIE BANK (AL PACINO): "What did he say?"

BASHER TARR: "Pay me my money!"

Filmmaker Taylor Hackford made a documentary called "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll," named for a Chuck Berry song. It centered on the making of a concert to honor the musician on his sixtieth birthday in nineteen eighty-six.

Guitarist Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones organized the concert. Listening to Chuck Berry songs got him interested in music. In Keith Richards' words, "I didn’t dream I could make a living at it but that’s what I wanted to do."

Some of the best moments in "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll" are between Keith Richards and Chuck Berry.

More than seventy-five artists and bands have done their own versions of Chuck Berry songs. Many have done several, including the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty and Bruce Springsteen.

Here are George Thorogood and the Destroyers with “It Wasn’t Me.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, included Chuck Berry in its first year of honors in nineteen eighty-six. The Hall of Fame had this to say: "While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together."