7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7

Legacy

Davis was injured in an auto accident in 1972, curtailing

his activities, then retired from 1975 through 1980. He

returned to public notice with The Man with the Horn

(1981) and subsequently dabbled in a variety of musical

styles, concentrating mostly on jazz-rock dance music, but

there were also notable experiments in other styles. Davis

won several Grammy Awards during this period for such

albums as We Want Miles (1982), Tutu (1986), and Aura

(1989). One of the most-memorable events of Davis’s later

years occurred at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1991, when

he joined with an orchestra conducted by Quincy Jones to

perform some of the classic Gil Evans arrangements of the

late 1950s. Davis died less than three months later. His

final album, Doo-Bop (1992), was released posthumously.

Chuck Berry

(b. Oct. 18, 1926, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.)

S

inger, songwriter, and guitarist Chuck Berry (born

Charles Edward Anderson Berry) was one of the most

popular and influential performers in rhythm-and-blues

and rock-and-roll music in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s.

Raised in a working-class African American neighbour-

hood on the north side of the highly segregated city of

St. Louis, Berry grew up in a family proud of its African-

American and Native American ancestry. He gained early

exposure to music through his family’s participation in

the choir of the Antioch Baptist Church, through the

blues and country western music he heard on the radio,

and through music classes, especially at Sumner High

School. Berry was still attending high school when he

was sent to serve three years for armed robbery at a