Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play a guitar just like a ringing a bell
Go go
Go Johnny go!
Go
Go Johnny go!
Go
Go Johnny go!
Go
Go Johnny go!
Go
Johnny B. Goode!
He used to carry his guitar in a gunny sack
Go sit beneath the tree by the railroad track
Oh, the engineer would see him sitting in the shade
Strumming with the rhythm that the drivers made
The people passing by, they would stop and say
Oh my, but that little country boy could play
Go go
Go Johnny go!
Go
Go Johnny go!
Go
Go Johnny go!
Go
Go Johnny go!
Go
Johnny B. Goode!
His mother told him ""Someday you will be a man,
And you will be the leader of a big ol' band.
Many people coming from miles around
To hear you play your music when the sun go down
Maybe someday your name'll be in lights
Saying Johnny B. Goode tonight.""
Go go
Go Johnny go
Go go go Johnny go
Go go go Johnny go
Go go go Johnny go
Go
Johnny B. Goode
"Johnny B. Goode" was the first rock & roll hit about rock & roll stardom. It is still the greatest rock & roll song about the democracy of fame in pop music. And "Johnny B. Goode" is based in fact. The title character is Chuck Berry -- "more or less," as he told ROLLING STONE in 1972. "The original words [were], of course, 'That little colored boy could play. I changed it to 'country boy' -- or else it wouldn't get on the radio." Berry took other narrative liberties. Johnny came from "deep down in Louisiana, close to New Orleans," rather than Berry's St. Louis. And Johnny "never ever learned to read or write so well," while Berry graduated from beauty school with a degree in hairdressing and cosmetology.
But the essence of Berry's tale -- a guitar player with nothing to his name but chops goes to the big city and gets his name in lights -- is autobiographical. In 1955, Berry was working as a beautician and fronting combos in St. Louis when he met Chess Records' biggest star, Muddy Waters, who sent him to the label's co-founder Leonard Chess. By 1958, Berry was rock & roll's most consistent hitmaker after Elvis Presley. Unlike Presley, Berry wrote his own classics. "I just wish I could express my feelings the way Chuck Berry does," Presley once confessed.
"Johnny B. Goode" is the supreme example of Berry's poetry in motion. Pianist Lafayette Leake, bassist Willie Dixon and drummer Fred Below roll with the freight-train momentum of overnight stardom, while Berry's stabbing, single-note lick in the chorus sounds, as he put it, "like a-ringin' a bell" -- a perfect description of how rock & roll guitar can make you feel on top of the world.