In 1955 after getting advice from Muddy Waters he joined the Chess Record Label and from that point on you could say that cutting hair became a thing of the past. "Maybellene" was Berry's debut single and proved to be an instant hit, especially in the R&B charts. Further hits such as "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Roll Over Beethoven" soon followed.

Berry modelled his singing career on the late Nat King Cole and as time wore on Berry himself became looked upon as an idol from groups such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. This fact is more than proved when you consider the amount of Berry records which have been covered by other artists.

The period from 1955-1960 must undoubtedly be the best in his career as he churned out classic after classic. However controversy reared its ugly head in 1959 when he was charged with employing a 14 year old indian girl in one of his clubs who unbeknown to him had been working as a prostitute. In 1962 Berry was found guilty and charged under the Mann Act of bringing a minor across the state line for immoral purposes. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment.

After his release in 1964 he found renewed success with the help of The Beatles who had released "Roll Over Beethoven" and new material which he himself had written whilst he was locked up. With his new material and old hits as well, he went on a U.K tour (where he actually played in my hometown Southend-on-sea) and in 1966 also switched record labels to Mercury Records although this was to be a changed that would be short live as his indecisive nature showed itself again and he soon changed back to his original label. Touring plays a big part in any musicians life and Berry was no exception to the rule and in his time has shared the same stage with greats such as The Who, Bill Haley And His Comets, Bruce Springsteen, and The Doors and that is to name just a few.

1972 saw Berry's biggest hit to date with the song "My Ding-A-Ling" (a record that Mary Whitehouse tried to ban because of its public morality content). Berry's reputation has always been questionable to say the least and after he more or less started living of the revival circuit concerts, his stage and business attitude got even worse. Even with his support bands, he reportedly wouldn't tell them what song he was going to perform next, would only accept payments for concerts in cash and even haggled for more money whenever he gave an encore. You could say however that his greedy nature backfired on him in 1979 when he was imprisoned once again this time for tax evasion.

Once again after his release he went on another gruelling US and UK tour, but this time it didn't prove as productive as what it had done the first time round when he was released.

In 1986 he performed once again in St Louis and Keith Richards (from The Rolling Stones) organized a special 60^th birthday concert for the star in New York. The concert saw many famous names such as Linda Ronstadt and Eric Clapton take part. Although Berry and Richards actually played on stage together the relationship was for some unknown reason very strained between the two men. Problems have followed Berry his entire life and in 1990 his house was raided by the police where they found a large quantity of marijuana, hashish, a collection of firearms and a collection of videos reportedly containing pornography. He had already faced serious allegations the previous year when he was accused of installing cameras in the ladies toilets at one of his restaurants to collect material for his own fetish purposes. Despite all the above mentioned charges he escaped this time rather lightly and after surrendering to police and pleading guilty to the possession of marijuana he was given a six month jail sentence, fined 5000 dollars and put on two years unsupervised probation.

Since his last prison holiday Berry has continued touring and will probably continue doing so until the strings on his guitar give way.