The Chuck Berry-Johnnie Johnson songwriting dispute and an old African American understanding of what it means to "write" or "compose" music

by Jim Hauser Contact: jphauser2000 (at) yahoo.com

A certain point made by Mary Wheeler in the preface to her book Steamboatin' Days: Folk Songs of the River Packet Era reminded me of something I remember piano player Johnnie Johnson saying related to his royalties lawsuit against Chuck Berry in which he claimed to have co-authored a good number of Berry's hit songs. While Berry was credited as the sole songwriter of these hits, Johnson claimed that he actually wrote much of the music rather than Berry. He also claimed that, at the time he participated in the creation of these songs, he didn't know he was entitled to be credited as their co-composer. According to him, at that time, he thought that writing music was the act of putting music down on paper with musical notation and since he did not know musical notation he believed that he never actually wrote music. Johnson's explanation appears in Travis Fitzpatrick's biography on him titled Father of Rock & Roll: The Story of Johnnie "B. Goode" Johnson. Therein, Johnson explained further by saying that he referred to the process of creating music as "makin' up music." (See Note 1)

I found Johnson's explanation that he limited his definition of what it means to write music to be the act of writing the musical notation for a song hard to believe when I first encountered it, but Wheeler's book has changed my thinking on this. I now believe that Johnson could very well have been telling the truth. My reason is that I found a passage in Wheeler's book in which she describes her informants telling her something which almost exactly matches what Johnson was claiming. In it, she writes about how her informants--singing black roustabouts (see note 2) and members of the community in which those roustabouts lived--defined the word "compose." That passage is below.

Usually they watch me without a great deal of amazement as I take down the words of a song, but when I write out the melody they are plainly mystified. The notating of music they speak of as "composin'." Until a song is actually written down or printed, they will tell you that it is 'not composed,' no matter how many times they have sung it.

From the above, we can see that Wheeler's informants used the word "compose"--just as Johnson used the word "write"-- to refer to the act of using musical notation to put a song down on paper. And Wheeler's informants did not use the word "compose"--just as Johnson did not use the word "write"--to refer to the process of coming up with the music and lyrics to create a new song. So Wheeler's informants limted their use of the word "compose" in the same way Johnson limited his use of the word "write." This similarity between the two lends credibility to Johnson's claim that he did not understand that he was actually writing music when he was collaborating with Berry.

Johnson's claim gains additional credibility when you consider that he was from the same part of the country as and was a contemporary of Wheeler's informants. The informants were African American (just as Johnson was) and they lived in the Ohio River Valley, a region which extends through several states including Johnson's home state of West Virginia. His hometown of Fairmont--a town which he lived in for all but one year of his life before moving to Detroit at the age of 17--was not far from a part of the Ohio River Valley (See Note 3). Wheeler's informants were probably much older than Johnson, who was born in 1924, but they were probably still alive during Johnson's early years; I believe this to be the case because Wheeler's book was published in 1944, 20 years after Johnson's birth.

But what about the $64,000 question: Did Johnnie Johnson actually write much of the music for Chuck Berry's songs? Was he only a sideman or was he a songwriter who substantially contributed to creating the music that we hear on Chuck Berry's records? Or, was he something in between? One writer, Bruce Pegg, the author of a biography on Berry, has argued that Johnson didn't write the music so much as serve in the role of musical arranger. The issue will likely never be settled, but one thing is clear: Johnson was an outstanding musician who played an integral part in creating what we think of when we think of the Chuck Berry sound. I doubt that Chuck Berry would disagree.

As for the lawsuit itself, it never made it to trial. In October 2002 (about two years after the suit had been filed) a judge dismissed the case, ruling that too many years had passed since the songs which were the subject of the dispute had been written. For a clear and interesting discussion of the legal aspects of the case, see the two short articles by Peter Gutmann listed among the sources below. Gutmann is a music journalist and an attorney, but his article is free of legal jargon.

Note 1. See pages 122-126 and 331 of Fitzpatrick's book for details on how Johnson collaborated with Berry in the creation of various songs and on Johnson's misunderstanding of what it means to write music. Also see the articles listed below by Christina Saraceno and Fran Mannino.

Note 2. Roustabouts were men who loaded and unloaded the cargo of steamboats

Note 3. For details on where Johnson lived during his early years, see chapter one, especially pages 9, 12, 21, 25 and 31, of the Fitzpatrick book.

Sources:

Books

Fitzpatrick, Travis. Father of Rock & Roll: The Story of Johnnie "B. Goode" Johnson. Houston: Thomas, Cooke & Co., 1999

Wheeler, Mary. Steamboatin' Days: Folk Songs of the River Packet Era. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969, 1944.

Pegg, Bruce. Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and hard Times of Chuck Berry: An Unauthorized Biography. New York: Routledge, 2002

Webpages

Johnnie Johnson Sues Chuck Berry

(written by Christina Saraceno)

Who Really Wrote that Song? (A Tale of Copyrights and Wrongs) / Johnnie Be Suing

(written by Peter Gutmann)

"Johnnie Be Good": Art Holliday Sets Out to Chronicle the Life of St. Louis Jazz Great Johnnie Johnson

(written by Fran Mannino)

For information about a forthcoming film documentary about Johnnie Johnson and his relationship with Chuck Berry, click on this link: Johnnie Be Good: The Movie

Copyright © 2015 by James P. Hauser except where otherwise noted. All rights reserved.