Johnnie Johnson played piano on some of the most inspired, most enduring records of rock 'n' roll's first decade.

And it's all because his saxophonist called in sick on New Year's Eve in 1952.

		Festival schedule The third Annual Johnnie Johnson Blues & Jazz Festival runs from tomorrow through Sunday at Palatine Park in Fairmont, W.Va. For information, go to www.johnniejohnsonblues.com. The Friday show begins at 6:30 p.m. with Muddy Waters' son, Big Bill Morganfield, taking the stage at 9 p.m. Saturday's show begins at 4 p.m. Johnson makes his first appearance at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, followed by the Nighthawks and the Kentucky Headhunters. Sunday's show begins at 1:30 p.m., with Johnson performing at 3:30 p.m. A three-day pass is $30 in advance; $35 at the gate. Tickets for individual days are $10 for Friday and Sunday, $20 for Saturday.

Johnson brought in a fledgling St. Louis guitarist, Chuck Berry, who'd been playing professionally for only maybe six months, "I asked him to sit in for me that night. And that night lasted many years."

He could tell from start, he says, that Berry was a different breed.

"We were doing standards back in that time, and what Chuck came in there doing, this rock 'n' roll, it was a novelty thing," he says. "There wasn't no black American doing hillbilly music."

No one sounded like Chuck Berry by the time the Johnnie Johnson Trio came to Chess Records in 1955, the same year Berry "motorvated" all the way to No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts with a hillbilly-flavored car-chase song called "Maybellene." It also spent 11 weeks at No. 1 on the R&B charts.

And the hits kept coming, positioning Berry as both the archetypal rock 'n' roll guitarist and the poet laureate of pre-Bob Dylan rock 'n' roll: "Roll Over Beethoven." "School Day." "Rock & Roll Music." "Sweet Little Sixteen." "Johnny B. Goode." "Carol." "Almost Grown." "Back in the U.S.A."

And those were just the hits. The album cuts were often better.

After spending two years in federal prison on a Mann Act violation for bringing a 14-year-old Spanish-speaking prostitute across state lines to work as a hat-check girl in his St. Louis nightclub, Berry bounced right back with three more pop hits -- "Nadine (Is It You?)," "No Particular Place to Go" and "You Never Can Tell" -- at the height of the British Invasion.

Eventually, he and Johnson stopped working together regularly, although they came together for the celebrated Berry documentary, "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll," released in 1987. Although the film was timed to honor Berry's 60th birthday, Johnson gets his due as well when Keith Richards observes that many of Berry's greatest hits were written in piano keys, suggesting that the melodies were Johnson's.

In 2001, Johnson was inducted as a sideman into the Rock Hall of Fame.

"It's a great feeling," he says. "You feel like you accomplished something that every musician doesn't do. It feels great to know that you will be remembered by a lot of different people and they can come to this rock 'n' roll building in Cleveland and see your name up there. That's an honor."

Johnson was all of 4 when he started playing piano, an upright his mother had bought more as a decoration for their home in Fairmont, W.Va., than as an instrument. His parents couldn't pay for lessons, so he learned by practicing along to everything from big band jazz and swing to country on the radio. His early heroes included Count Basie, Art Tatum, Earl Hines, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis.

He made his local radio debut at 8 and was given a chance to play alongside members of Count Basie's band as a Marine. He'd enlisted in 1943 and had seen some action in the Marshall Islands before joining the company band, the Barracudas.

He returned from the service and found out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life after spending some time in Chicago, sitting in with Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim and Little Walter. He finally settled in St. Louis in the spring of 1952, forming a trio and landing a regular gig at the Cosmopolitan Club. Johnson and Berry would play the Cosmopolitan every weekend for two straight years before recording "Maybellene" and other hits that would inspire everyone from Johnny Thunders to the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and pretty much every significant rock 'n' roll act of the '60s, from Bruce Springsteen to the Donnas.

Today is his 80th birthday. But Johnson, who's released six solo albums, is still performing regularly, headlining a festival this weekend in his hometown.

The Johnnie Johnson Blues & Jazz Festival is in its third year, this time featuring the Kentucky Headhunters, a band whose latest album is blessed with a guest appearance by the legendary Johnson.

"Last year," Johnson says, "it got rained out almost but the first year, they had a record-breaking crowd there."

These days, he says, "blues and jazz are my preference."

And rock 'n' roll music?

"Not now, no," he says.

Johnson has done some traveling lately with Bo Diddley. And he and the fledgling guitarist he hired in 1952 still get together on occasion in St. Louis, where they both live.

"I see him every other so often," Johnson says. "We played at a club in St. Louis."

As for doing something more than playing in a local club, he says, "There's been mention, but the way we travel, it's hard to get both of us together at the same time."