Johnny B. Goode
by Chuck Berry
- 83
- BPM
- Bb major
- Key
- 6B
- Camelot
- 54
- Danceability
- 74
- Acousticness
Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" is one of the 27 songs on the Voyager Golden Record, a collection of music, images, and sounds meant to introduce global humanity to alien inhabitants. On January 23, 1986, at the first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Berry played it, backed by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Others recorded it too. Dion DiMucci made a blues rock version in 1964, and in 1969 Buck Owens's version topped Billboard's Hot Country Sides chart.
Berry wrote it in 1955 and released it as a single in 1958, when it peaked at number two on the Hot R&B Sides chart and number eight on its pre-Billboard Hot 100 chart. It is about a "country boy" from the New Orleans area who plays guitar "just like ringing a bell". Berry said the original lyrics called Johnny a "colored boy". He changed it to "country boy" so the record could get radio play. He was born at 2520 Goode Avenue in St. Louis. He acknowledged the song is partly autobiographical.
For the Chess session, Lafayette Leake played piano, Willie Dixon bass, and Fred Below drums, with Leonard and Phil Chess producing. The opening riff borrows from a single-note solo on Louis Jordan's "Ain't That Just Like a Woman", played by Carl Hogan.
Johnny B. Goode runs at 83 BPM, the tempo of boom-bap hip-hop, reggae and slow R&B. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.89 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 723 ms. It is in Bb major, Camelot 6B, which shares its notes with G minor and mixes cleanly with Eb major and F major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.