“If you had to give rock and roll anoth­er name,” John Lennon once said, “you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.’ ” The man known as the father of rock and roll turns 85 today and he’s still going strong. To cel­e­brate, we bring you this pow­er­ful 1958 per­for­mance of “John­ny B. Goode.”

Berry was born Octo­ber 18, 1926 in St. Louis, Mis­souri. He devel­oped a love of music ear­ly, and made his debut play­ing a blues song in a high school tal­ent show. While still in high school, Berry was sen­tenced to juve­nile prison for armed rob­bery. After get­ting out, he joined pianist John­nie John­son’s trio. It did­n’t take long before John­son was the side­man and Berry was the band­leader. His big break came in 1955, when he made a road trip to Chica­go and sought out his hero, Mud­dy Waters. Waters sug­gest­ed he go see Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Berry returned to Chica­go with a demo tape that includ­ed an up-tem­po adap­ta­tion of a tra­di­tion­al coun­try song called “Ida Red.” Chess liked it, but said it need­ed a new name. Berry record­ed it as “May­bel­lene.” The song went to num­ber one on the Bill­board rhythm and blues chart. Over the next few years Berry vir­tu­al­ly invent­ed the Rock and Roll form, with songs like “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Rock and Roll Music,” “John­ny B.Goode,” and “No Par­tic­u­lar Place to Go.”

“He was the king of rock and roll,” Jer­ry Lee Lewis said in the biopic Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll. “My mama said, ‘You and Elvis are pret­ty good, but you’re no Chuck Berry.’ ” When Kei­th Richards induct­ed Berry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, he joked that he had stolen every lick Berry ever played. “The beau­ti­ful thing about Chuck Berry’s play­ing,” Richards wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Life, “was it had such an effort­less swing. None of this sweat­ing and grind­ing away and gri­mac­ing, just pure, effort­less swing, like a lion.”

For one more look at the lion in action–this time play­ing “Roll Over Beethoven”–here’s anoth­er clip from the 1958 tele­vi­sion broad­cast:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bud­dy Hol­ly at Age 12: His First Record­ing

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

Mud­dy Waters on the Blues and Gospel Train

Take a deep breath and watch this 1964 tele­vi­sion per­for­mance of “The Girl from Ipane­ma” by Brazil­ian bossa nova singer Astrud Gilber­to and Amer­i­can jazz sax­o­phon­ist Stan Getz.

The arrange­ment is from the clas­sic album, Getz/Gilberto, which launched the bossa nova craze of the ear­ly 60’s. The album was pri­mar­i­ly a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Getz and Astrud’s hus­band, the gui­tarist and vocal­ist João Gilber­to, but when some­one got the idea of includ­ing an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Anto­nio Car­los Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipane­ma,” Astrud was recruit­ed. She had nev­er sung pro­fes­sion­al­ly before. The record­ings launched her as an inter­na­tion­al sen­sa­tion.

Since then, “The Girl from Ipane­ma” has weath­ered a half-cen­tu­ry of heavy rota­tion on the Hol­i­day Inn lounge cir­cuit and Muzak. (Remem­ber the ele­va­tor scene in The Blues Broth­ers?) So it can be hard to imag­ine just how cool the song must have seemed in 1964 with the release of Getz/Gilberto. That sax­o­phone. That voice. As the per­son who post­ed this video on YouTube put it: “Chill, baby, chill…”

When it’s all said and done, you can also meet Heloisa Pin­heiro, the woman who inspired the song all of those years ago.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­sic Jazz Album Cov­ers Ani­mat­ed, or the Re-Birth of Cool

Bil­lie Hol­i­day Sings “Strange Fruit”

Learn Brazil­ian Por­tuguese and 40 Oth­er Lan­guages for Free

“Time Hur­ries on,” sings Paul Simon in this ear­ly Simon and Gar­funkel per­for­mance, “and the leaves that are green turn to brown.” The clip is from a 1966 Dutch tele­vi­sion pro­gram, “Twien.”  The duo were per­form­ing songs from their sec­ond album, Sounds of Silence. “The Leaves That Are Green” is one you don’t hear much these days, per­haps because the song’s author has, like the leaves of Octo­ber, most cer­tain­ly changed.

Today is Simon’s 70th birth­day. He was born into a fam­i­ly of Jew­ish immi­grants on Octo­ber 13, 1941 in Newark, New Jer­sey. His father was a bassist and band­leader, and his moth­er, a school teacher, was also trained in music. The fam­i­ly soon moved to Queens, New York, where Simon would meet anoth­er kid in the neigh­bor­hood, Art Gar­funkel. The two shared a pas­sion for music, and before long Simon was writ­ing songs for them to sing around the neigh­bor­hood. They released their first record, “Hey, School­girl,” while still in high school.The song made it to num­ber 49 on the pop charts.

Over the next half cen­tu­ry, both with Gar­funkel and on his own, Simon would con­tin­u­al­ly rein­vent him­self, absorb­ing a wide range of influ­ences while hold­ing tight to a song­writer’s com­mit­ment to craft. The New York Times, in its pro­file of Simon, sums it up this way:

His music stays restrained, ever taste­ful. He sings gen­tly in his own metic­u­lous pro­duc­tions, and his songs can share radio for­mats with the most sooth­ing soft-rock. But the thread run­ning through Mr. Simon’s songs is estrange­ment. From “I Am a Rock” to “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” to “You Can Call Me Al” to the cranky reflec­tions on his 2006 album “Sur­prise,” he has sung about being alien­at­ed, mis­placed, rest­less, dis­il­lu­sioned. Moments of solace or sat­is­fac­tion are far out­num­bered by mis­giv­ings and regrets. The mate­r­i­al com­forts that he rec­og­nizes are his–as a wealthy man, as a pop suc­cess, as an Amer­i­can in a wider world–don’t bring him peace of mind. Nei­ther does the finicky crafts­man­ship that has always marked his music.

You can hear that rest­less­ness and alien­ation in the fol­low­ing track from his new stu­dio album, So Beau­ti­ful or So What, where we find the 70-year-old play­ful­ly con­tem­plat­ing “The After­life”:

When direc­tor David Hill­man Cur­tis and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ben Wolf paid a vis­it recent­ly to com­pos­er Philip Glass to film a pro­mo­tion­al piece for the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music, they were grant­ed just 30 min­utes. “He was booked sol­id the day we vis­it­ed his offices and actu­al­ly was being fol­lowed by a min­der who sat on the couch just out of the frame check­ing his watch,” said Cur­tis. “I’ve become a pret­ty good inter­view­er and was able to loosen Mr. Glass up a bit and he took it from there, giv­ing a great inter­view, and we were done in 30 min­utes.” In the result­ing two-minute film, Glass express­es amuse­ment over his recent fas­ci­na­tion with clas­si­cal music. “Where are my fron­tiers,” asks the com­pos­er, whose work is fre­quent­ly described as avant-garde? “My fron­tiers are actu­al­ly not in front of me. They’re behind me.”

You can learn more about Philip Glass and hear free sam­ples of his music at PhilipGlass.com.

Today is John Lennon’s would-be 71st birth­day, and it jogged my mem­o­ry, remind­ing me of this lengthy 1970 inter­view. Con­duct­ed by Jann Wen­ner, the founder of Rolling Stone Mag­a­zine, this impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion (lis­ten via iTunes) was record­ed short­ly after The Bea­t­les’ bit­ter breakup, and the emo­tions were still run­ning high. Run­ning over 3 hours, it is one of Lennon’s most exten­sive inter­views, touch­ing not just on the breakup, but also on art and pol­i­tics, drugs, Yoko, pri­mal ther­a­py and more. It’s not always flat­ter­ing, but it gives you a good feel for the man and the great artist.

The Rolling Stone inter­view is now added to our Cul­tur­al Icons media col­lec­tion. For anoth­er inter­view from the same peri­od, don’t miss John and Yoko’s appear­ance on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971. And note that Rolling Stone has a lengthy 7 part inter­view with Bono of U2: iTunes.

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter and we’ll keep point­ing you to free cul­tur­al good­ies dai­ly…