Rock and roll legend Chuck Berry dead at 90

Rock and roll legend Chuck Berry has died at age 90. 

The iconic performer died in Missouri, US on Saturday afternoon (US Central Time Zone), police announced in a Facebook post. 

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"The St Charles County Police Department sadly confirms the death of Charles Edward Anderson Berry Sr, better known as legendary musician Chuck Berry," the post read.

Police responded to a medical emergency at a home on Buckner Road at roughly 12.40pm local time.

"Inside the home, first responders observed an unresponsive man and immediately administered lifesaving techniques.

"Unfortunately, the 90-year-old man could not be revived and was pronounced deceased at 1.26pm," police said.

His family has requested their privacy be respected, the department said. 

"If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'," John Lennon once said of the lauded singer, guitarist and songwriter whose enduring legacy stems from his genre-bending hits of the 1950s, and his signature "duck walk".

One of the most influential founders of rock 'n' roll, Berry had become increasingly frail in recent years. In 2014, his poor health prevented him form travelling to Stockholm, Sweden to accept the prestigious Polar Music Prize, the so-called Nobel of the music world. 

Announcing Berry's award, the Polar Music Prize Foundation said "Chuck Berry was the rock 'n' roll pioneer who turned the electric guitar into the main instrument of rock music. Every riff and solo played by rock guitarists over the last 60 years contains DNA that can be traced right back to Chuck Berry."

'My darlin' I'm growing old ... Now I can hang up my shoes'

In October on his 90th birthday, Berry announced the upcoming release his first album in 38 years, Chuck. The album was billed for a 2017 release as a collection of mainly new material Berry wrote and produced in his hometown.

He dedicated the album to his wife of 68 years, Themetta "Toddy" Suggs Berry.  

"My darlin' I'm growing old! I've worked on this record for a long time. Now I can hang up my shoes!" Berry said in a statement in October. 

The album was also expected to feature his youngest child Charles Berry Jr on guitar and eldest daughter Ingrid Berry on the harmonica.

Berry and Suggs have two other children; Melody Exes Berry Eskridge and Aloha Isa Lei Berry. 

Born 18 October 1926 in a middle-class black neighbourhood of St Louis, Missouri, Berry first picked up a guitar in high school. In his teens he was arrested for attempted robbery and spent three years in reform school. Upon release he worked on a General Motors assembly line and studied hairdressing and cosmetology at night school 

In 1952 he formed a trio with drummer Ebby Harding and pianist Johnnie Johnson, who became his keyboardist on and off for the next three decades. By 1955 the trio had become a top St. Louis-area club band. Berry was supplementing his salary as a beautician with regular gigs, according to Rolling Stone.

While Elvis Presley was rock's first pop star and teenage heartthrob, Berry was its master theorist and conceptual genius, the songwriter who understood what the kids wanted before they did themselves.

With songs like Johnny B Goode and Roll Over Beethoven, he gave his listeners more than they knew they were getting from jukebox entertainment.

His guitar lines wired the lean twang of country and the bite of the blues into phrases with both a streamlined trajectory and a long memory. And tucked into the lighthearted, telegraphic narratives that he sang with such clear enunciation was a sly defiance, upending convention to claim the pleasures of the moment.

In Sweet Little Sixteen, You Can't Catch Me and other songs, Berry invented rock as a music of teenage wishes fulfilled and good times (even with cops in pursuit).

In Promised Land, Too Much Monkey Business and Brown Eyed Handsome Man, he celebrated and satirised America's opportunities and class tensions. His rock 'n' roll was a music of joyful lusts, laughed-off tensions and gleefully shattered icons.

Berry figured in the breakdown of popular music's racial divide that mirrored broader shifts in the U.S. after World War II. He attracted a fan base made up mostly of young white teenagers who followed him as he and they aged.

He once said he had often heard that blacks "are born with rhythm. Maybe it's true, but I came to find out, so were white boys."

Berry's personal and professional life was marred by prison time. In 1962 he was sentenced to three years imprisonment under the Mann Act - transporting an individual over state lines with the intention of engaging in sexual activity or prostitution - concerning a 14-year-old girl hired to work in his St Louis club. In 1979 he served 120 days in prison for tax evasion. 

Tributes from music giants

As news spread of Berry's death on Sunday [AEST], legendary musicians from myriad of music genres have shared messages of condolence and paid their respects. 

Ringo Starr was one of the first to post a tribute on social media, tweeting "R I P. And peace and love Chuck Berry Mr. rock 'n' roll music".

"Just let me hear some of that rock 'n' roll music any old way you use it I am playing I'm talking about you. God bless Chuck Berry Chuck" he wrote in a second tweet. 

"Chuck Berry was rock's greatest practitioner, guitarist, and the greatest pure rock 'n' roll writer who ever lived. This is a tremendous loss of a giant for the ages," Bruce Springsteen posted on his Facebook page and on Twitter. 

The Rolling Stones said they were "deeply saddened" to hear of Berry's death.

"He was a true pioneer of rock & roll and a massive influence on us. Chuck was not only a brilliant guitarist, singer and performer, but most importantly, he was a master craftsman as a songwriter. His songs will live forever," the band said in a statement. 

In his own statement, Mick Jagger said: "I want to thank him for all the inspirational music he gave to us. He lit up our teenage years, and blew life into our dreams of being musicians and performers. His lyrics shone above others and threw a strange light on the American dream. Chuck, you were amazing, and your music is engraved inside us forever."

Keith Richard's - a devoted protege and collaborator - said: "One of my big lights has gone out".

Country musician Keith Urban posted: "RIP Chuck Berry!!!! Thank you for the poetry, the passion and the potency! GO JOHNNY GO."

Berry's death was marked by other key figures, including author Stephen King, who tweeted "This breaks my heart, but 90 years old ain't bad for rock and roll. Johnny B. Goode forever".

Star Trek actor George Takei tweeted: "A legend is gone. Half the rock-n-roll artist today wouldn't be playing had Chuck not been there at the beginning."

Accolades for 'Go, Johnny, Go'

Berry was among the first legendary group of rockers inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, won the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984 and the Kennedy Centers Honors in 2000.

In 1989 Berry was the subject of the documentary Hail! Hail Rock 'n' Roll, and was constant fixture of several of the Rolling Stone's 'Greatest od All Time' lists.

In a video played at the Polar Music Prize ceremony in 2014, Keith Richards said: "Chuck Berry, he just leaped out of the radio at me. I ate him basically, I mean I breathed him.

"If I listened to Chuck Berry, I was full for the day."

With AAP and The New York Times, Bloomberg