Berry wrote this when he was serving time in jail for transporting a girl across state lines for immoral purposes. He had to borrow an atlas of the US from the prison library to plot his hero's journey from Virginia to California.
In this song, Berry tells the tale of a poor boy who heads to California from his home in Norfolk, Virginia. The journey takes by bus, train and airplane through much of the United States. When he finally arrives, he calls back home to tell them he made it.
In 1974, Elvis Presley recorded a version of this which reached #9 in the UK and #14 in the US.
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