"C'est La Vie" Say the Old Folks

FEW ROCK BIOGRAPHIES rise to the level of their subject. But this past year has already seen extraordinary titles like Lightning Strikes, by Lenny Kaye, a musical memoir lived out in a beguiling new history, and Dilla Time, Dan Charnas’s life of rap producer and beat-meister J Dilla, (which has prompted a new documentary from Summer of Soul’s Questlove). RJ Smith has already etched a sturdy treatment of James Brown (The One, 2012), a figure who long deserved higher ground. Now, with Chuck Berry, Smith surpasses himself, portraying the shrewd, implacable trickster behind an ingenious catalog.