CHUCK BERRY, 90, on March 18 at his home in Wentzville, Missouri. A guitarist, singer and songwriter, he is considered “the Father of Rock and Roll” who refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made Rock and Roll distinctive, with lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and music featuring guitar solos and showmanship.
He was among the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in 1995.
Lew Shaw started writing about music as the publicist for the famous Berkshire Music Barn in the 1960s. He joined the West Coast Rag in 1989 and has been a guiding light to this paper through the two name changes since then as we grew to become The Syncopated Times. 47 of his profiles of today's top musicians are collected in Jazz Beat: Notes on Classic Jazz. Volume two, Jazz Beat Encore: More Notes on Classic Jazz contains 43 more! Lew taps his extensive network of connections and friends throughout the traditional jazz world to bring us his Jazz Jottings column every month.
