Episode Details

When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened in 1986, Chuck Berry was the first inductee. That’s all that needs to be said, really, but we have some more if you want. There are, of course, the standard accolades: one of the best guitarists of all time, one of the best musicians of all time, one of the founders of rock & roll etc. etc. But Chuck Berry can boast one unique honor that no other rocker can - his rock music will be the only one heard by aliens.

Back in 1977, when NASA launched the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes into deep space, they included two copies of a golden record that contained a collection of sights and sounds of life on Earth. Therefore, if thousands, even millions of years from now, an intelligent alien species would find the probes, the golden record would act as a sort of time capsule. Among other things, the record includes a diverse 90-minute selection of music, carefully picked by a committee led by Carl Sagan to showcase the best that human culture had to offer. Only one rock & roll song made the cut - Chuck Berry’s iconic “Johnny B. Goode.”


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Further Reading:
https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/classes/1986
https://www.chuckberry.com/biography
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/music/
https://www.biography.com/musicians/chuck-berry
https://archive.org/details/chuckberrybiogra0000coll/page/26/mode/2up?view=theater
https://www.biography.com/musicians/chuck-berry
https://archive.org/details/chuckberryautobi00berr/page/n25/mode/2up?view=theater
http://www.chuckberry.com/biography#:~:text=GUITAR%20LESSONS&text=His%20friend%2C%20Ira%20Harris%2C%20showed,ballads%20to%20calypso%20to%20country
https://www.chuckberry.com/biography
https://archive.org/details/chuckberrybiogra0000coll/page/30/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/chuckberrybiogra0000coll/page/30/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/chuckberrybiogra0000coll/page