Chuck Berry, the St. Louis native whose guitar-driven songs bursting with youthful energy helped to define the sound of rock and roll, has died at age 90. Berry's death was confirmed by the St. Louis County Police Department, which responded to a medical emergency at the musician's home.

Berry's music helped to launch the rock and roll era as a commercial force that would change global culture, and his guitar work was critical to establishing the sound and feel of rock's signature instrument from the 1950s into the '60s and beyond. His chart success continued from his breakout hit "Maybellene" in 1955 through to the unlikely novelty chart-topper "My Ding-a-Ling" in 1972, and he lived to see generations of musicians and fans recognize his signal influence on the genre.

Born in 1926 as Charles Edward Anderson Berry, the young man demonstrated an interest in music from an early age, but fame didn't reach him until he was nearly 30 years old — when Muddy Waters recognized Berry's gifts and introduced him to label owner Leonard Chess.

"Maybellene" was the first of a rapid string of hits on Chess; other signature songs include "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Rock and Roll Music." Berry's ecstatic but pithy songs, driven by his rhythmic lead guitar licks, celebrated rock and roll as not just a musical genre but a liberating force: songs like "School Days" were pitched directly to the growing teen market, which fueled the rock and roll explosion. "Roll Over Beethoven" was a statement of purpose: out with the old, in with the new.

Berry's tongue-in-cheek humor was balanced by the kinetic energy of songs like "Johnny B. Goode," which opens with perhaps the most recognizable guitar lick in rock history. Compared to Elvis Presley (often mentioned as the only other rock and roll star whose influence compares to his) and many other artists of their generation, Berry was distinctive for writing his own songs, helping to define the latter-day rock star as a self-contained singing, playing, and songwriting force. He was a charismatic performer, well-known for his signature onstage "duck walk."

A crossover success with both white and black audiences, Berry was acutely aware of the discriminatory nature of the music business and the society it served; songs like "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" commented on racial attitudes of the day. Berry gained a reputation as a sharp businessman, famously demanding to be paid for gigs on the spot, in cash, so as not to be taken advantage of.

Even as Berry's commercial peak passed in the late '50s, his music was a direct and inescapable influence on every major artist of the '60s: from American acts like the Beach Boys (who wholesale copped the "Sweet Little Sixteen" melody for "Surfin' U.S.A.") to British Invasion bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Artists like Bob Dylan learned from not just Berry's irrepressible energy, but his creativity with language: in a Berry song, you don't just drive, you "motorvate."

Berry's personal life, meanwhile, was marked by serious scandal. In 1962 he was sentenced to three years in prison under the Mann Act, for having transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines. He also served time for tax evasion in 1979. However, he remained married to his wife Themetta Suggs since 1948; the pair had four children, two of whom play on his final album Chuck (2017).

The recipient of innumerable awards and honors, Berry was an easy choice for induction into the inaugural class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. No list of all-time great rock songs that doesn't include several of Berry's could be taken seriously, and critic Chuck Klosterman posits that Berry will ultimately be remembered as the single must purely representative rock and roll musician.

"If you tried to give rock and roll another name," John Lennon once said, "you might call it 'Chuck Berry.'"