Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell,” was recently reimaged when two of the rock ’n’ roll legend’s grandsons and other St. Louis musicians released an EP with covers of the hit tune in mid October. The EP is the first musical release from CHUCK100, a multi-year campaign celebrating the 100th anniversary of Berry’s birthday, which will be Oct.
18, 2026. Gary Pierson is the attorney for Isalee Music Publishing Company, which controls Berry’s catalog. He is overseeing CHUCK100 and partnered with Grammy-nominated producer and engineer Carl Nappa to bring the EP to life.
They’ll release an EP every quarter leading up to the the 2026 anniversary. “We thought this project — where it wasn’t just one record, but it was something repeating over time — was a nice way to build towards 2026,” Pierson says. The buildup began in September with a CHUCK100 activation at Evolution Fest in Forest Park featuring one of Berry’s Cadillacs that appeared in the 1987 documentary “Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll.
” Pierson and Nappa brainstormed ways to incorporate music into the multi-year campaign, settling on bringing in local artists to create fresh versions of Berry’s classic tunes. “A lot of young artists are just doing some fantastic work, and we wanted to showcase them alongside some of these iconic songs,” Nappa says. Berry, largely regarded as the father of rock ’n’ roll, was born in St.
Louis in 1926. His music became the foundation of the genre, inspi.