Who was the first rock guitarist?
When thinking back to the start of rock and roll, it’s almost like being asked to recall the Big Bang as if it were yesterday.
For those born anytime past the 1950s, it seems to be the essential essence of sonic life that all roads lead back to. Yet between The Beatles, David Bowie, Blondie, and even The B-52s, what did they all have in common with one another? They each would be nothing without a guitar in their hand.
Of course, the use of the guitar spans far further than just rock music alone, but it is undeniably the key ingredient that really brought the genre screeching into life, and has never left since. In terms of the first person who picked up the six-string and managed to envision this whole new life for it, however, the answer isn’t as crystal clear.
You could argue that someone like Sister Rosetta Tharpe was the first pioneer of this bold move, with her distorted electric riffs paving a way through the overtures of gospel from as early as the 1940s. Her influence down the decades of rock and roll was palpable, with everyone from Tina Turner to Eric Clapton to Johnny Cash honouring her holy light.
But on the other hand, as much as Thorpe was very much a visionary of her own league, her contributions to music didn’t exactly constitute rock and roll as we know it now. Instead, the Godmother of Rock and Roll passed the mantle down to her sonic son, the Father of Rock and Roll, to take the reins. It could only be Chuck Berry.
How did Chuck Berry come to be hailed as the first rock guitarist?
It seems obvious to credit Berry when you really think about it, but he would have been nothing without the blues and gospel gods before him, who not only forged a musical path but showed him the ropes of how to play instruments in the first place, only for him to take them in a new direction later down the line.
It was the influence of everyone from T-Bone Walker to Johnnie Johnson, Nat King Cole and Muddy Waters which sent Berry very much on his path to stardom, reinventing the wheel of blues and R&B while opening the music up to a much wider audience in doing so.
But by the time he had become ranked and remembered as one of the greatest guitarists to ever live, you realise just how seismic his singular influence was, in its own right, to creating a whole new horizon for music where the axis of the world still spins. Between his blistering riffs and absolute showmanship, rock and roll was no longer an abstract concept to sit and listen to – you had to get up and be involved.
Much can be said with regard to the mark of Berry and the lasting trails of inspiration he left threaded down the lines of history. But it’s abundantly clear that if a mentor never showed him how to pick up a guitar, how to position his fingers on the fret board and strum, we might never have known this musical world we love so much. It really was a close call.
