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When Chuck Berry died in March of 2017, I wrote this post as a memorial both to him and to the ongoing struggle of cultural appropriation and erasure. It would be more fitting to turn it into a blog post in March of any year, on the anniversary of his death, but I know me - if I waited until next March, I would forget to post it.
So I'm sharing it now because I'd rather share this bit of history and pop culture deconstruction at a random time, than to forget it entirely:
Fun Fact: Chuck Berry got famous for his song Johnny B. Goode (among others). He originally wrote it as autobiographical and penned the lyrics to say "Oh my, but that little colored boy could play" as a reference to his own amazing skill as a youth but changed it to "Oh my, but that little country boy could play" so that the song would get air time on the radio.
Another Fun Fact: Berry also wrote it in the key of B-flat, because big band and jazz music that featured horns preferred music in B-flat and E-flat. But in the movie, Back To The Future, when Marty McFly plays the song at the Under The Sea dance, he says "this is a blues riff in B..." The song that we hear in the movie is not actually played in B even though the character says it is, it's played in B-flat. But that's a really unusual key for guitarists in the '80s and for pianists who were the big names and major competitors in the music biz at the time Berry exploded on the scene.
The character of Marty McFly was an '80s guitarist. At that point in time, Rock & Roll had moved away from its jazz and blues influences, and therefore away from songs played in B-flat. So the character wouldn't have been used to playing in that key and would have likely preferred the key of B.
The song Johnny B. Goode is a classic example of the microaggression erasure of the black contribution to the history of Rock & Roll. People like to point to black musicians and say "see? We let them entertain us! We like their music!" but then we have to erase little details.
We're happy to give artists like Chuck Berry credit now, but who among us knew about the original lyrics that had to be whitewashed before anyone would even distribute his music? Everyone knew he was a colored man singing the song, but he couldn't sing about his experience as a colored man, he had to sing about a "country boy" in order to get white audiences to listen, and he had to get white audiences to listen in order to get radio time and record contracts.
And we also conveniently forget that Rock & Roll literally started in the Negro communities with jazz and blues and African rhythms because we whitewashed that too with simple little things such as changing the generally accepted keys for music based on *white* musician's instruments. Even though Berry was a guitarist, he came from a jazz and blues background, so of course he wrote his music from that influence.
But white musicians who favored piano and guitar and who lacked the horns of the big band era wrote music that was more comfortable for their instruments. And so, gradually, songs in the key of B-flat and E-flat lost favor to the point that a white kid in the '80s playing classic Rock & Roll music would have played the songs in the key of B even though it wasn't originally written that way.
This was a deliberate choice that the writers of the screenplay made, and they made it *for these reasons*. The screenwriters weren't necessarily erasing any of this history - they were acknowledging that it had already been erased by making the line of dialog say "blues riff in B" even though it wasn't.
And they taught the actor, Michael J. Fox, how to play the song in the key of B. So, we are not hearing Michael J. Fox's music, we're hearing the studio musicians Mark Campbell singing and Tim May's guitar *in the key of B-flat* because that's what sounds better and more like the original, but when we watch the scene, Fox is really playing the guitar, and he's playing it in the '80s key of B. Because the screenwriters understood the history and evolution of music.
So I'm sharing it now because I'd rather share this bit of history and pop culture deconstruction at a random time, than to forget it entirely:
Fun Fact: Chuck Berry got famous for his song Johnny B. Goode (among others). He originally wrote it as autobiographical and penned the lyrics to say "Oh my, but that little colored boy could play" as a reference to his own amazing skill as a youth but changed it to "Oh my, but that little country boy could play" so that the song would get air time on the radio.Another Fun Fact: Berry also wrote it in the key of B-flat, because big band and jazz music that featured horns preferred music in B-flat and E-flat. But in the movie, Back To The Future, when Marty McFly plays the song at the Under The Sea dance, he says "this is a blues riff in B..." The song that we hear in the movie is not actually played in B even though the character says it is, it's played in B-flat. But that's a really unusual key for guitarists in the '80s and for pianists who were the big names and major competitors in the music biz at the time Berry exploded on the scene.
The character of Marty McFly was an '80s guitarist. At that point in time, Rock & Roll had moved away from its jazz and blues influences, and therefore away from songs played in B-flat. So the character wouldn't have been used to playing in that key and would have likely preferred the key of B.The song Johnny B. Goode is a classic example of the microaggression erasure of the black contribution to the history of Rock & Roll. People like to point to black musicians and say "see? We let them entertain us! We like their music!" but then we have to erase little details.
We're happy to give artists like Chuck Berry credit now, but who among us knew about the original lyrics that had to be whitewashed before anyone would even distribute his music? Everyone knew he was a colored man singing the song, but he couldn't sing about his experience as a colored man, he had to sing about a "country boy" in order to get white audiences to listen, and he had to get white audiences to listen in order to get radio time and record contracts.
And we also conveniently forget that Rock & Roll literally started in the Negro communities with jazz and blues and African rhythms because we whitewashed that too with simple little things such as changing the generally accepted keys for music based on *white* musician's instruments. Even though Berry was a guitarist, he came from a jazz and blues background, so of course he wrote his music from that influence.
But white musicians who favored piano and guitar and who lacked the horns of the big band era wrote music that was more comfortable for their instruments. And so, gradually, songs in the key of B-flat and E-flat lost favor to the point that a white kid in the '80s playing classic Rock & Roll music would have played the songs in the key of B even though it wasn't originally written that way.
This was a deliberate choice that the writers of the screenplay made, and they made it *for these reasons*. The screenwriters weren't necessarily erasing any of this history - they were acknowledging that it had already been erased by making the line of dialog say "blues riff in B" even though it wasn't.
And they taught the actor, Michael J. Fox, how to play the song in the key of B. So, we are not hearing Michael J. Fox's music, we're hearing the studio musicians Mark Campbell singing and Tim May's guitar *in the key of B-flat* because that's what sounds better and more like the original, but when we watch the scene, Fox is really playing the guitar, and he's playing it in the '80s key of B. Because the screenwriters understood the history and evolution of music.
