The gateway to freedom...was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I'd been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin. I revived the era with a song about a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode. My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'coloured boy' and changed it to 'country boy'.
Chuck BerryActually I'm writing as best I can, in order to keep the momentum and the career there, but I want to live.
Chuck BerryRock 'n' roll accepted me and paid me, even though I loved the big bands I went that way because I wanted a home of my own. I had a family. I had to raise them. Let's don't leave out the economics. No way.
Chuck BerryAll were artists, playing foolish, having fights and making love as if the rest of the world had no racial problems whatsoever.
Chuck BerryCuriosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering "who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?"
Chuck Berry