(Originally ran April 4, 2008)

One of the first 45s I purchased with my own money was “Johnny B. Goode.”

Not Chuck Berry’s original single, which turns 50 years old this month, but a version by Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, taken from “Buck Owens in London.”

I bought it less for the song than because it was by Owens, then starring on “Hee Haw,” which I watched faithfully every week.

But it was my introduction to what might be rock ‘n’ roll’s quintessential song.

“Johnny B. Goode” is about the promise of rock ‘n’ roll, about loving the music and how it can change your life.

It’s about how rock ‘n’ roll can make a poor boy from nowhere a star; and, if you care to extrapolate, how rock ‘n’ roll can save a bored teenager from the stultifying sameness of suburbia, school and the like.

I think that’s how Lou Reed heard it. He wrote “Rock and Roll,” which is way more explicit about what music can mean: “Her life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll,” Reed sang.

Berry’s version is slyer, more of a nod and a wink than Reed’s wide-eyed adoration. But the message is the same.

“Johnny B. Goode” used to be a garage band litmus test. It was one of the first songs you played when you got together with friends and tried to make it through a song. It’s the first lick many guitarists ever learn.

In 1977, a recording of the song was launched aboard the Voyager spacecraft. It was part of a series of recordings representing Earth’s languages and cultures. Imagine some interplanetary being encountering Berry’s story of a country boy strummin’ to the rhythm that the drivers made - a quick and easy way to tell if they’re intelligent or not.

I’m not sure if this anniversary is going to get the sort of attention the Summer of Love got last year, or Woodstock is sure to get next year, but it should.

Every time a kid picks up a guitar for the first time and learns three chords, “Johnny B. Goode” lives again.