It Was 50 Years Ago Today.

On June 2, 1967, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

From the moment Sgt. Pepper came out, it was hailed a watershed moment in rock history, with the London Times famously declaring it "a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization."

It has long since become the default answer to The Greatest Album Of All Time, much the way Citizen Kane is the default Greatest Film Of All Time. Pretty much every major critical rock poll from the World Critic Lists of 1978 & 1987 on down has ranked it on top, with the epicenter of rock criticism Rolling Stone declaring the greatest album of the last 20 years in 1987 & then as the greatest album of all-time in their much-celebrated list of the 500 greatest albums in 2003.

& yet, in recent years, its stature has fallen greatly. Just as it was once automatic to put it on top of any album list, it has now become fashionable to let it tumble 20 or 50 spots, or to leave it off completely. In the last 20 years, The Beatles' own Revolver has often kicked it off its throne, but other candidates have ranged from The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds to Nirvana's Nevermind to Radiohead's OK Computer.

So which one is it? Is Sgt. Pepper a major cultural landmark or an overrated psychedelic relic?

The answer is as simple as it is complex--it is both.

Part 1: Sgt. Pepper Is Genius.

Sgt. Pepper began in the heady late days of 1966, some six months after The Beatles released Revolver. For the first time in The Beatles' short recording history, there was no new album of material ready for the Christmas season. Their UK label filled the gap with A Collection Of Beatles Oldies--a compilation of hits that itself was never really much of a hit itself, probably because fans already owned most of the material.

Come February 1967, three songs were completed, two of which ranked as their finest work to date: John Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever" & Paul McCartney's "Penny Lane." The third song, McCartney's "When I'm Sixty-Four" was fine, but not even close to the standards of the other two. Faced with pressure from their label, producer George Martin was tasked to release a single of new material. In what he later called the biggest regret of his professional career, he chose the two best songs, "Strawberry Fields Forever" & "Penny Lane," & released them as a single. While the long-term has proven it to be literally the greatest single of all-time, the short-term upshot was that The Beatles were back to square one for their new album (this still being the era when singles & LPs were largely treated as separate entities).

With their finest work taken from them, they could have gone into a frustrated stupor; instead, as the story is told, they turned around & began work on the song that many believe to be their masterpiece: "A Day In The Life."

Months of studio time followed. As The Beatles locked themselves into the studio world, the outside world raged on, wondering at their silence. Having retired from touring the previous year, there was little evidence that they were a band, let alone the greatest one in the world.

But when Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club's Band came out on June 2, 1967 (& May 26, 1967, in the UK), The Beatles got the last laugh.

They were reborn as a new band--Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band--& now the album was the concert. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was the opening theme; "With A Little Help From My Friends" was the call to community (sung by "Billy Shears"); "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" was a trip-within-a-trip; "Getting Better" was their version of The Great Society; "Fixing A Hole" was their retreat into solitary contemplation; "She's Leaving Home" was the generation gap; "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!" was the psychedelic carnival fairground; "Within You Without You" was the philosophy lesson; "When I'm Sixty-Four" was the invocation of the elderly; "Lovely Rita" was the celebration of the proletariat; "Good Morning Good Morning" was the agricultural frontier; "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" was the close of the show; & "A Day In The Life" was the epic finale as state-of-the-art Lennon/McCartney rock & roll. Theirs was a complete world that included all & excluded no one.

Sgt. Pepper was NOT the first concept album, but it was the first to be universally recognized as one, given its obvious structure (Sgt. Pepper & his band) & all-for-one spirit. For the first time, a rock album was treated as a single work, played in entirety on radio & studied over headphones, as one would listen to a symphony.

Part of the shock of its quality came from the fact that, for the first time, The Beatles were given control over their US releases such that they could release the same version of an album on both sides of the Atlantic. Prior to this, the American Beatles albums truncated & mixed up The Beatles' music in a cheap ploy to get more albums out of them. Just look at their previous album, Revolver, which was missing three whole songs--"I'm Only Sleeping," "And Your Bird Can Sing," & "Doctor Robert"--all of which were Lennon's, which meant that the album had a completely different (& less effective) shape. Furthermore, with no singles culled from Sgt. Pepper (whereas Revolver contained the tracks of the double-sided single "Yellow Submarine" & "Eleanor Rigby"), it felt more like a single work, with all tracks contributing to a single make-believe concert.

& all of this was reinforced by the packaging. For the first time, full lyrics were printed in an album, encouraging closer readings of the music. The LP pressings also contained little Sgt. Pepper novelty cut-outs that reinforced the carnival feel. & then of course there was the cover, designed by pop artist Peter Blake, which remains the finest album cover in history.

Blake asked The Beatles to makes lists of who they most would want to attend a Beatles show & then took their answers & made the now-famous crowd behind them. Most striking are the wax models of the Beatlemania-era Beatles, looking down at THE BEATLES written out in the flowers below the Sgt. Pepper bass drum. It is with them that the show goes from a concert to a funeral, as The Beatles are reborn as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Sgt. Pepper didn't so much change rock history as much as it broke it in half, perfectly capturing a peace-&-love era right at the moment of its formation, & closing it off into a utopian bubble. Almost all of the albums that tried to respond to on its own terms failed miserably--check out The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request (better yet, don't)--& only further reinforced how special The Beatles really were. The Beatles themselves never fully recovered from it either. Their next project, Magical Mystery Tour, was their first grand failure, while The Beatles (A.K.A. "The White Album") began the long splintering of the group that would continue through the ill-fated "Get Back" project (later released as Let It Be) & the swan-song Abbey Road. Glimmers of unity remained, but they were usually isolated exceptions to the rule.

Not that you can blame The Beatles. With Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles elevated rock music to the level of Art, which was to be enjoyed, ingested, studied, & even revered.

It showed that something as seemingly ephemeral & disposable as rock music could create something that was meant to last.

Or did it?

Part 2: Sgt. Pepper Sucks.

As the definitive Beatles wall-to-wall masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band began falling out of favor around 1987, when The Beatles' catalog was first released on CD. The living ex-Beatles insisted on issuing the albums in their UK formats only, which meant that American audiences were hearing the way they were supposed to sound for the first time. It quickly became apparent that a little album called Revolver could give Sgt. Pepper a run for its money.

That can (& will & is) debated elsewhere, but I've always defaulted to the mystic Beatles' chronologer Ian MacDonald whose must-read analysis of The Beatles (& their music & the '60s) Revolution In The Head posited that song-for-song, Revolver is their finest album, but where Sgt. Pepper beats it is in spirit.

This has always made sense to me. When you listen to Sgt. Pepper as an isolated entity, it works, it comes around, it feels united--as evidenced by when the title song's reprise collapses into "A Day In The Life." But this is as a stand-alone piece. Time has shown the '60s dream-land of Sgt. Pepper itself collapsed into the '70s wasteland of punk & the postpunk music that would follow. In capturing the '60s spirit, it has become a spirit in a different sense of the word: A ghost that is dead-on-arrival in the modern age.

When you try to dissect it, it falls apart. The only songs about Sgt. Pepper & his band are evidenced in the title track, "With A Little Help From My Friends," the reprise, & "A Day In The Life." Otherwise, the songs simply don't hold together. Also, the album suffers from a lot of Paul McCartney. The Side 1 stretch of "Getting Better" to "Fixing A Hole" to "She's Leaving Home" has always bored me, even when I know I'm intellectually supposed to love it. George Harrison's sole contribution, "Within You Without You," also bores me, even though recent criticism has elevated its quality substantially. (I would have preferred Harrison's first song recorded in the sessions, the cynical "Only A Northern Song," which was shelved & finally released on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack in 1969.) What makes the album for me, then, is the Lennon parts: The free vibe of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," the haunting atmosphere of "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!," the anything-goes merriment of "Good Morning Good Morning." The rest of the album I could take or leave.

& that includes "A Day In The Life." I've always found that song boring too--too long, too pretentious, too filled with things I don't care about. It works as a capper, but I'd never want to listen to it by itself. I'd much rather hear the allusion to it in David Bowie's "Young Americans."

& I get it. I was born over a decade after Sgt. Pepper came out, so I wasn't there. But what good is art if it can't be universally understood & appreciated? Furthermore, there's psychedelic music I love, such as The Beach Boys' SMiLE outtakes, The Rolling Stones' 1966-era work, & the early Pink Floyd singles, all of which hold up with the greatest rock ever recorded. I just feel that Sgt. Pepper itself is a brilliant, but ultimately hollow, shell.

Which brings us back to my two favorite psychedelic songs, the vibrant & timeless "Strawberry Fields Forever" & "Penny Lane." If The Beatles had only included those over say, "Fixing A Hole" & "Lovely Rita," then I could see a strong argument for The Greatest Album Ever Made.

But then again, what do I know?

I think that The Beach Boys should've waited & put "Good Vibrations" on Pet Sounds.

Part 3: Sgt. Pepper Remade.

So where does that leave us? Well, appropriately everywhere & nowhere. I would like to close with my own take on Sgt. Pepper, which I like to call "Sgt. Better," which I think of as the album that should've been had The Beatles not been so strict about albums & singles:

Side 1

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

2. With A Little Help From My Friends

3. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

4. Getting Better

5. Only A Northern Song
6. She's Leaving Home

7. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!

Side 2

1. Strawberry Fields Forever

2. Penny Lane

3. When I'm Sixty-Four

4. Good Morning Good Morning

5. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)

6. A Day In The Life

With all due respect to The Beatles' official Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, THIS is the masterpiece I'd want to hear.

After all, if Sgt. Pepper's is ultimately a make-believe show, then it's only keeping with its original spirit to make your own make-believe show out of it.

So to quote Sgt. Pepper's band themselves, we hope you will enjoy the show.

The Beatles: The Purple Album.

One of the ways in which The Beatles were revolutionary was that they defied greatest hits collections.

Most bands at the very least bank on them, & at most live off of them. Even artists as influential, established, album-centered, & varied as The Byrds, Sly & The Family Stone, Al Green, & Simon & Garfunkel have released essential greatest hits albums, which have become staples of their catalog.

Not so with The Beatles. While they were together, they authorized only one greatest hits collection, the UK-only A Collection Of Beatles Oldies, which was released for the 1966 Christmas season once it became apparent that no proper studio album would be ready.

A Collection Of Beatles Oldies was something of a missed opportunity. What could have been a definitive summation of their vintage years was instead bogged down by recent material that already had been released on LP, such  as the (only) six-month-old "Yellow Submarine" & "Eleanor Rigby," plus non-single cuts like "Michelle" and "Yesterday." Meanwhile, vintage bona fide hits like "Love Me Do" & "Please Please Me" were omitted altogether (probably because they had been released on the Please Please Me LP), along with fine B-sides like "Thank You Girl," "I'll Get You," & "This Boy," none of which had ever appeared on a proper Beatles album. A Collection Of Beatles Oldies tried to split the difference between the old & the new, but in trying to appease both sides, satisfied neither.

With the wealth of Beatles' hits, you can't blame them for not even trying again for the remainder of their career. The only exception was the Hey Jude LP, released in February 1970, which contained more recent hit single-only sides like "Get Back," "Lady Madonna," "The Ballad Of John & Yoko," & the title track, along with, oddly enough, the 1964 chestnuts "Can't Buy Me Love" & "I Should Have Known Better," for some reason. It too felt like a bit of missed opportunity.

& then...nothing. The Beatles broke up a few months after Hey Jude hit the album racks & all four Beatles went their separate ways.

But the temptation was just too great. Then, in 1972, the Alpha Omega bootleg came out, an unauthorized four-LP set that contained eight sides of Beatles hits (plus a few solo ones), arranged largely alphabetically. TV exposure made it increasingly popular, so something had to be done.

Beatles manager Allen Klein is credited with putting together 1962-1966 & 1967-1970, a pair of double-LP sets that tell The Beatles story over 54 tracks. They have since come to be known as "The Red Album" & "The Blue Album," named for the borders around their matching looking-down-the-stairs shots at opposite ends of The Beatles' career. ("The Red Album" cover photo was the cover of their first LP, Please Please Me, while "The Blue Album" cover photo had been planned for the appropriately-titled "Get Back" LP that was eventually released in a different form as Let It Be.) It was actually sequenced by then-Klein employee Allan Steckler, who had previously programmed the Hey Jude LP as well as The Rolling Stones' classic Hot Rocks compilation.

Initially touted as "the only authorized collection of The Beatles," both sets were released on April 2, 1973, & were major hits on both sides of the Atlantic. The albums remain the only place where you could get get all of The Beatles' original (UK) A-sides, as well as countless songs that were never released as singles, but are just as recognizable as ones that had. Plus, they had at least one song off of each studio album, giving a balanced collection of The Beatles' discography.

The set's successes & setbacks are tied to two ends of the same issue: Time. In terms of time as a linear historical element, the albums do their job beautifully, continuing at a pace that is at once succinct & yet hits all of the key points. Yet in the digital age, another kind of time has become a drawback for the set: The length of a CD. Like most rock & roll artists, as time continued linearly, The Beatles' songs increased in length. The 26 songs that comprise "The Red Album" clock in at under 65 minutes, while the 28 songs that comprise "The Blue Album" come to nearly 100 minutes. Given the modern 80-minute disc as a template, "The Red Album" easily fits on a single disc while "The Blue Album" does not.

In order to keep the aesthetics of the set (& the cashflow of a 2-disc priced collection), both "The Red Album" & "The Blue Album" were released on double-disc sets in both the initial 1993 CD release as well as the 2010 remaster. Although loads of bonus tracks could have been added at either point, they never were, thus further cementing the two sets as the (Apple?) core of The Beatles' canon. & with these releases as the only extensive greatest-hits releases authorized by the band themselves, it's unlikely this will ever change. They are, then, more than just a hits collection, but a self-portrait in the form of an archetypal boxed set.

With only 217 songs officially released while they were together, "The Red Album" & "The Blue Album" comprise nearly a quarter of them, such that there are two kinds of Beatles songs: Ones that were on these albums & ones that wasn't. I know that songs like "Twist & Shout" & "Do You Want To Know A Secret" were major US hits; "Rain," "Tomorrow Never Knows" & "Helter Skelter" were massively influential; & album cuts from the opening song of their first UK album, "I Saw Her Standing There," all the way through to the medley that closes the last album they would ever cut, "The Abbey Road Medley," are all key parts of The Beatles' story, but they are not stone-cold essentials because they are all absent from this collection.

& yet, there are drawbacks to the LPs. Although "The Red Album" covered a slightly longer period of time (with songs that generally shorter than their later counterparts), it contained slightly less tracks, 26 songs to 28 song on "The Blue Album." The former is all the more bizarre when you consider that Revolver--which many consider to be their finest album (if not the finest album EVER)--is represented by a mere pair of tracks, both sides of its "Yellow Submarine" & "Eleanor Rigby" single. Considering that Rubber Soul gets six cuts, one would think they could have thrown on at least two more from Revolver to make each LP set an equal 28 songs.

On the other hand, to my ears "The Blue Album" always contained two songs that were not deserving of this Beatles Canon: "The Fool On The Hill" & "Old Brown Shoe." Both are great songs in their own ways, but not classics in their own right. (I looked the other way on a third arguably dubious choice, "Octopus's Garden," because it's obvious a ploy to get a Ringo composition in there, but it also fills out Abbey Road's representation to four songs.) If you take out "Fool" & "Shoe," you get an equal 26 songs for both albums.

But in my Beatles analysis, I went a slightly different way. I realized that when you shaved off two of the Rubber Soul cuts from "The Red Album" (I opted for the fine-but-least-essential "Drive My Car" & "Girl) & "The Fool On The Hill" & "Old Brown Shoe" from "The Blue Album," you are left with 50 songs. Furthermore, if you move all of the material through Sgt. Pepper onto the first collection, you get a neat 30 songs for "The Red Album" & 20 songs for "The Blue Album," making each fit on a single disc.

Finally, I did some nitpicking around with the running order, such as placing "All My Loving" between "She Loves You" & "I Want To Hold Your Hand," since it was released between those two songs, whereas the original running order of "The Red Album" places "I Want To Hold Your Hand" first. I also moved around the order of "Help!" & "Yesterday" to match with these chronologies. For "The Blue Album," I put "I Am The Walrus" after "Hello, Goodbye," since "Walrus" was the B-side & "Here Comes The Sun" after the other Abbey Road cuts to match the running order of the original LP. All are relatively minor switches, but for me tell the more accurate story. & these songs are nothing if not an epic in rock & roll storytelling--collectively, they quite literally tell the story of modern rock itself.

I therefore present "The Purple Album," which is simply my tinkering of "The Red Album" & "The Blue Album" reconfigured into a two-disc set (or two playlists if you will):

Disc 1: 1962-1967

1. Love Me Do
2. Please Please Me
3. From Me To You
4. She Loves You
5. All My Loving
6. I Want To Hold Your Hand
7. Can't Buy Me Love
8. A Hard Day's Night
9. And I Love Her
10. Eight Days A Week
11. I Feel Fine
12. Ticket To Ride
13. Help!
14. You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
15. Yesterday
16. Day Tripper
17. We Can Work It Out
18. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Had Flown)
19. Nowhere Man
20. Michelle
21. In My Life
22. Paperback Writer
23. Eleanor Rigby
24. Yellow Submarine
25. Strawberry Fields Forever
26. Penny Lane
27. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
28. With A Little Help From My Friends
29. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
30. A Day In The Life


Disc 2: 1967-1970

1. All You Need Is Love
2. Hello, Goodbye
3. I Am The Walrus
4. Magical Mystery Tour
5. Lady Madonna
6. Hey Jude
7. Revolution
8. Back In The USSR
9. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
10. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
11. Get Back
12. Don't Let Me Down
13. The Ballad Of John & Yoko
14. Come Together
15. Something
16. Octopus's Garden
17. Here Comes The Sun
18. Across The Universe
20. The Long & Winding Road

The result is the 50 songs that comprise the official Beatles Canon.

You get every UK A-side & every UK & US #1 hit, plus four cuts apiece from Help!, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, & three cuts apiece from A Hard Day's Night, "The White Album," & Let It Be. Only Revolver gets underrepresented with two songs, but that's just a flaw in the initial program.

It's hard to go much lower than 50 songs when it comes to The Beatles, because then you have to start choosing between hit singles & key album tracks.

& once your down to one disc's worth, that's why 1 was invented.

Even though I will always hold a strike against it for omitting "Strawberry Fields Forever"--but that's a whole other story.

The Essential Chuck Berry.

There have been literally hundreds of Chuck Berry collections over the years.

To try & narrow his music down to the definitive canon, I investigated what I consider to be the 10 standard anthologies. What follows is a rating (on a five-star scale) & brief review of each, followed by the songs that appear most frequently on all of them. Many of these collections are out-of-print, but with the comeback of vinyl & the back catalog of iTunes, they may be easier to encounter than one might think.

Because, like the man said, "You gotta hear something that's really hot."

* * *

Chuck Berry Twist: The Original Collection (1962). ****

Chuck Berry Twist was released by Chess Records while Berry was in jail, in a brazen attempt to get some product going for their artist as well as cash in on the omnipresent twist craze. It was the first anthology of his music, & as some like to tell it, the best, period. Rock criticism's old guard have paid it particular tribute, with Greil Marcus listing it in his classic rock discography in the back of Stranded and Robert Christgau once listing it as the fourth greatest record ever. As a listening experience, it simply rocks, but to my modern ears, it is lacking for omitting "Too Much Monkey Business" & "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" in favor of lighter fare like "Oh Baby Doll" & "Come On." However, the running order more than makes up for this; you'll be hard-pressed to find a better Side 1 opener than "Maybellene," a better Side 1 closer than "Reelin' & Rockin'," a better Side 2 opener than "School Day," & a better Side 2 closer than "Back In The U.S.A." All of which makes it seminal collection--no wonder it's still available on iTunes.

Chuck Berry's Greatest Hits: The Long-Time LP Standard (1964). ***

Chuck Berry's Greatest Hits came along two years after Chuck Berry Twist, but apparently too early in the year to catch his massive hit, "No Particular Place To Go." Featuring 12 cuts to Twist's 14, it cut some tunes to make room for the previously-M.I.A. "Too Much Monkey Business" & "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," as well as the classic "Nadine" & the big-hit-by-that-point (thanks to Johnny Rivers) "Memphis." Still, the running order felt top-heavy & clunky after the expert flow of Twist, diminishing the effect of what could have been a smoother, streamlined set. All of this made it a perfectly fine collection, but not the phenomenon that Chuck Berry deserved. Luckily, better ones would come along.



Chuck Berry's Golden Decade: The First Multiple-LP Set (1967). **

Chuck Berry's Golden Decade was apparently conceived as the one-stop shop of the vinyl era. In 1967, Berry had left Chess Records for Mercury, & the latter label quickly tried to cash in on their new acquisition by issuing an LP of re-recorded versions of hits masquerading as the originals under the deceptive title Chuck Berry's Golden Hits; the fact it remained in print well into the CD age just shows the ruthlessness of the music industry.

Mercury's greed had one good result, however--it forced Chess Records' hand to issue Chuck Berry's Golden Decade & gave him his first substantial anthology. (Mercury subsidiary Smash Records pulled the same trick with Jerry Lee Lewis a few years earlier; after issuing the re-recorded Golden Hits Of Jerry Lee Lewis, Sun Records responded with their first Lewis collection, Original Golden Hits, but I digress.) Golden Decade featured 24 songs over two LPs & remained a staple of essential rock LP lists well into the 1970s.

At first glance, it does its job, but then one look at the Volume 2 (1973) & Volume 3 (1974) that were to follow in the next decade, some glaring omissions can be found. For starters, two of Berry's best songs, "You Never Can Tell" & "Promised Land," are missing (although they all but make the second volume almost worth getting if you already have the first). But then again, so are "Carol," "Let It Rock," "Little Queenie," & "Come On." & what's taking these songs' places on Volume 1? Stuff like "Deep Feeling," "Too Pooped To Pop," & "Anthony Boy"--nothing detrimental, but also nothing that should make it into the first 24 classics over the songs that landed on Volume 2. All & all, a missed opportunity--no wonder it's long out-of-print.



The Great Twenty-Eight: The Classic (1982). *****

The Great Twenty-Eight has been making best-of rock lists in the obligatory Chuck Berry slot, at least since it was issued on CD in the '80s on a single disc. For much of the initial CD era, it was the disc to pick, especially since most stores only ever stocked the dreadful Mercury 1967 album Chuck Berry's Golden Hits of re-recordings. The Great Twenty-Eight came at a higher price point, but it was the greatest collection around; even after it lapsed in print by the late-'90s, it's continued to pop up on lists like Rolling Stone's original 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time (#21), TIME's Albums Of The Century & Entertainment Weekly's 100 Greatest Albums (the latter all the more astounding since it includes almost entirely studio albums, as opposed to greatest-hits collections).

& yet...I have always held a grudge against it for omitting two of Berry's stone-cold (albeit slightly later-period) classics: "You Never Can Tell" & "Promised Land." This is especially since both songs fit on a single CD along with the other 28 tracks. Why not put them on as bonus tracks, like The Beach Boys' Endless Summer did with "Good Vibrations"? The fact that "I Want To Be Your Driver," which was never even issued a single made the cut but these other two didn't only adds to the frustration.

However, if you can overlook these two songs, this is the phenomenal compilation that Chuck Berry always deserved. The running order is flawless--chronological (by recording), mostly--& it is little wonder that it is the default favorite of fans & critics all around the world.



The Chess Box: The Boxed Set (1988). *****

The Chess Box arrived in the late '80s with the first wave of CD boxed sets, along with other "Chess Box" masterpiece compilations of Berry label-mates like Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, & Howlin' Wolf. There has probably never been a better series of boxed sets in rock history. It also shocks me to write this, but The Chess Box is also the only collection TO THIS DAY that includes every one of Chuck Berry's US & UK charting hits. There have only ever been 33 of them. Sure, that's a bit too many for a single-disc, but surely with the double-disc sets, they must've thrown them all in right? Nope. Granted, some of his most classic standards like "You Can't Catch Me," "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," & "I'm Talking About You" never charted while non-essential tunes like "Little Marie" & "Dear Dad" did, but once you're past the length of a single disc, you think it would be second nature to put them all together.

Well, the only where this was ever done is The Chess Box. But it also has so much more: Deep cuts, jazz covers, & instrumentals; the only thing missing is the Mercury recordings from the mid-to-late-'60s (for obvious reasons), which only yielded two near-classics (at least in the relative world of Chuck Berry): "Club Nitty Gritty" & "Back To Memphis" (neither of which charted). Otherwise, Chess has it all.

Among the things this collection has is "My Ding-A-Ling," the 1972 live novelty recording that to this day is Chuck Berry's only #1 US (& UK) Pop hit. (Adding insult to injury, Berry's "My Ding-A-Ling" kept Elvis's "Burning Love" from the top spot, a far-superior song that should've been The King's final US #1.) Most rock scholars either ignore the song entirely or sit around chastising it (there is literally a book that picks it as The Worst Rock & Roll Single Of All-Time), but rock snobbery or not, it is an essential part of The Chuck Berry Story. I mean, even Bob Dylan is still waiting for his first US #1 Pop hit. & The Chess Box is the first official collection to include it. (Come to think of it, perhaps this is why everyone loves The Great Twenty-Eight so much--"My Ding-A-Ling" is nowhere in sight.)

Where other Berry albums are a cursory glance at the hits, this remains the full portrait of an American icon. Even though--or perhaps because--it contains "My Ding-A-Ling."



His Best, Volume 1 & Volume 2: The First Two Volume Collection Of The CD Age (1996-1997). ***

His Best, Volume 1 & Volume 2 are the result of Chess Records' 50th Anniversary, where they issued (mostly) one-disc, 20-song summaries of their biggest names: Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, & others. Of all the artists on their roster, only two were granted two-volume "His Best" sets: One was Muddy Waters. & the other was Chuck Berry. The result is a cross between The Great Twenty-Eight & The Chess Box, but lacks both the punch of the former & the depth of the latter. It misses the Top 10 R&B hit "No Money Down" as well as the fine "Run Rudolph Run" Christmas song, while including stuff like "Anthony Boy" & "Jo Jo Gunne." The second disc does a fine enough job running through the latter years, taking us up to "No Particular Place To Go" before soon dropping us off with "My Ding-A-Ling," as most modern sets would do. But in the end, it is the split nature of His Best that ultimately ruins it. Unlike an act like The Beatles, Berry's hits came very early on & there is no reason to buy Volume 2 unless you already owned Volume 1. Did Chess Records think anyone was gonna just get the volume with "Sweet Little Rock & Roller" & "Come On" at the expense of the one with "Johnny B. Goode" & "Maybellene"? Perhaps that's why they were issued a year apart.



Anthology: The Standard Two-Disc Set (2000; Later Issued As Gold in 2005). *****

The Anthology/Gold picks up the mantle from His Best, adds ten tracks for a cool 50, & sells it in a single two-disc package. Of the 40 tracks of His Best, only one fails to make the cut to Anthology, the less-than-stellar (but still charting) "Anthony Boy," which, while far from essential, is at least as good as "Jo Jo Gunne" & a few others that DID make the cut. The eleven additional tracks, however, do a lot to fill out the story: Among them, "No Money Down" is an oft-overlooked Top 10 R&B hit that finds the rock sound still coalescing from the blues; "Guitar Boogie" is the blueprint for Jeff Beck's "Beck's Boogie" with The Yardbirds; "House Of Blue Lights" gives a taste of Berry's classic R&B covers; & "Dear Dad" & "Bio" help to fill out the picture of his latter days at Chess. Any quibbles have to do more with what isn't here than what is--with the length of CDs, a few more tracks could have easily fit, so why not include "Anthony Boy," plus "Run Rudolph Run," "Merry Christmas Baby," & "Little Marie," which would have covered all of his charting hits, as well as all of his solo A-sides from 1955 to 1965? But in the end, these are quibbles & proof of the set's worthiness is that when Rolling Stone updated its 500 Greatest Albums list, they included this in the place of The Great Twenty Eight, because at that point the latter had gone out-of-print. & to this day, Anthology remains the best full-scope collection to get--although you now have to do it in the gaudily-repacked Gold edition.

The Best Of Chuck Berry (20th Century Masters) & Icon: The Single-Disc Samplers (1999 & 2011). ***

The Best Of Chuck Berry (20th Century Masters) & Icon are lumped together because they are nearly-identical sets that conceived of & made for the budget racks for those people who need some Chuck in their lives but can't bring themselves to cough up more than $4.99 to do so. In this regard, they do their jobs fine; The Best Of contains all of his Top 20 US Pop hits in 11 tracks; Icon includes these exact 11 tracks & adds a 12th, the #23 hit "Nadine," which now means it includes all of his Top 25 US Pop hits. There's nothing wrong with either, although it is a bit depressing to see "My Ding-A-Ling" get a slot over smaller but better hits like "Thirty Days," "You Can't Catch Me," "Memphis," "Almost Grown," "Back In The U.S.A.," "Promised Land," or about a half dozen others (even if "My Ding-A-Ling" is his only #1 Pop hit). Again, there's nothing wrong with these sets, but if anyone is worth shelling out a few more bucks for, it's Chuck Berry.



The Definitive Collection: The Current Standard One-Disc Set (2006). *****

The Definitive Collection seems to have come about from when the Universal Music conglomerate were issuing their Definitive Collection series & realized that The Great Twenty-Eight had gone out-of-print. The solution? This disc, which they might as well have named The Definitive Thirty. A whopping 27 of the 28 tracks of The Great Twenty-Eight make the cut, in nearly the exact running order, with only "Bye Bye Johnny" cut (even though it could have been included as a 31st track). Rounding out the set is the criminally-absent "You Never Can Tell" & "Promised Land" (oddly coming before "No Particular Place To Go," since the latter was the lead single off of the album that held all three), & the infamous "My Ding-A-Ling," in the live single edit. Thus, for the first time, all of Berry's Top 25 US Pop hits were gathered in a single place on a single CD (since the above-discussed Icon wasn't released until 2011). While The Great Twenty-Eight is the sentimental classic, this is the pragmatic choice of the modern age, if only because it includes "You Never Can Tell" & "Promised Land." &, oh yeah, his only #1 hit.

* * *

Collectively, these 10 anthologies collective feature over 75 different Chuck Berry songs. I polled them all & found that of these, there are 32 songs that appear on 4 anthologies or more. These I consider to be the Chuck Berry canon.

1. Maybellene
2. Thirty Days
3. You Can't Catch Me
4. Too Much Monkey Business
5. Brown-Eyed Handsome Man
6. Roll Over Beethoven
7. Havana Moon
8. School Days
9. Rock & Roll Music
10. Oh Baby Doll
11. Reelin' & Rockin'
12. Sweet Little Sixteen
13. Johnny B. Goode
14. Around & Around
15. Beautiful Delilah
16. Carol
17. Memphis
18. Sweet Little Rock & Roller
19. Little Queenie
20. Almost Grown
21. Back In The U.S.A.
22. Let It Rock
23. Too Pooped To Pop
24. Bye Bye Johnny
25. I'm Talking About You
26. Come On
27. Nadine
28. You Never Can Tell
29. Promised Land
30. No Particular Place To Go
31. I Want To Be Your Driver
32. My Ding-A-Ling [Live]

These 32 songs run exactly 82 minutes, so if you're making a playlist, you're fine, but if you're burning a single disc, you need to kick one or two off. My vote would be for "Too Pooped To Pop," in part because it's really, really dumb, but more expressly, it is the only song on the list not written by Chuck Berry. For all that has been said about Chuck Berry's pioneer sound & guitar playing, it is easy to forget that he was rock's first great singer-songwriter, a feat that would go unrivaled until Bob Dylan came along in the 1960s. But, of course, if you want to keep it in Berry's "Golden Decade" of 1955-1965 & boot off "My Ding-A-Ling," I wouldn't hold it against you. In fact, I might even encourage it.

So for those keeping score, 6 songs appear on all 10 collections: "Maybellene," Roll Over Beethoven," "School Days," Rock & Roll Music," "Sweet Little Sixteen," & "Johnny B. Goode." These are the core of the Chuck Berry Canon & should be considered essential rock & roll listening alongside the likes of Sgt. Pepper, Highway 61 Revisited, & Exile On Main Street--or more tellingly, Elvis's Sun & early RCA sides, Jerry Lee Lewis's early Sun sides, & Little Richard's records for Specialty.

Long live rock & roll.

The Top 10 Greatest Chuck Berry Songs.

A week ago today, the great Chuck Berry passed away. He was one of the most influential icons of the music, as well as its first great singer-songwriter.

Of the scores of classics that would flow from his pen & guitar, these are the ten greatest.



10. "Too Much Monkey Business," Single A-Side, 1956; #4 R&B.

If rock & roll long has been the outlet of "awkward teenage blues," it was Chuck Berry who first made it that way. Although he was a married man in his early 30s by the time he was a major star, he could think like a teenager, & turn the woes of adolescence into poetry. "Too Much Monkey Business" was his breakthrough in doing so, articulating the every day trials of going to school, the monotony of low-paying jobs, the annoyances of billings & payments, the frustrations in pursuit of romance. He also filled the allegedly simple music with more words than anyone could cram into a verse until a Bob Dylan plugged in nearly a decade later. Before Dylan turned to folk, you know the young teenage rocker from Duluth was studying songs like this one.

9. "You Never Can Tell," Single A-Side, 1964; #14 Pop / #14 R&B / #23 UK.

The Lost Generation for the Rock & Roll Generation, as a couple of ex-pat Americans get married in France, swapping New Orleans for Orleans. The details of teenage life were still intact--the hi-fi phono, the coolerator with TV dinners & ginger ale--but this was also a signal of a changing of the guards, finding the young characters growing up & getting married; appropriately, it was released the year The Beatles invaded America, as rock was transitioning from its first to second generation. It also had a structure closer to a folk song than Berry's usual blues-based fare. Perhaps this is why it sounded as fresh in 1964 as it did in the famous twist contest scene in Pulp Fiction some 30 years later--its sheer timelessness.

8. "Sweet Little Sixteen," Single A-Side, 1958; #2 Pop / #1 R&B / #16 UK.

Three years before James Brown hopped onboard the "Night Train," Chuck Berry was using rock music to unite the country by calling out cities until they became one big dance party, all centered around a sweet little sixteen-year-old rock and roll super fan. The idea was too irresistible not to lift, & so Brian Wilson used it as the template of surf rock's national anthem, "Surfin' U.S.A.," replacing the cities with beaches & adding six-part harmony. Never one to miss a trick, Berry sued him over it & currently holds a songwriting co-credit. Yet Wilson is not one to hold a grudge--after Berry's death this week, he said that it was Berry who taught him how to write a rock & roll song.

7. "School Days," Single A-Side, 1957; #3 Pop / #1 R&B / #24 UK.

If "Too Much Monkey Business" found Chuck Berry first articulating the language of youth, "School Days" found him perfecting it. Built upon a now-classic call-&-response blues structure (which Berry would use for another major hit in the following decade, "No Particular Place To Go"), "School Days" was two songs in one: A lament of life in the classroom, followed by the freedom of the after-school juke joint. The escape to freedom was reinforced with lines like "As soon as three o'clock rolls around/You finally lay your burden down," shrewdly borrowing a phrase from the old spiritual "Down By The Riverside." But the finest lines come at the end, & they rank among the most iconic in all of rock phraseology: "Hail, hail rock & roll/Deliver me from the days of old!" With "School Days," these words were a self-fulfilling prophecy.

6. "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," Single B-Side, 1956.

The party line is that rock didn't get political until the mid-'60s, when Bob Dylan brought the consciousness of folk into the music. But "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" shoots this narrative down. In the midst of the Civil Rights struggle, Berry wrote one of rock's slyest protest songs, & pulling off the rare feat of making it both funny & sexy. While the deeper layer of social commentary might have missed many of his white listeners, his African-American fans knew the song was code for a brown-skinned handsome man. Why else would the central character get "arrested on charges of unemployment"? Best of all was the final verse, which seemingly paid tribute to Jackie Robinson, winning the game like the brown-eyed handsome American hero he was.

5. "Promised Land," Single A-Side, 1964; #41 Pop / #41 R&B / #26 UK.

"This is the map, as 'The Poor Boy' sets out from Norfolk, Virginia, to discover the country: a journey that moves from poverty to wealth, from a bus to a plane setting down at LAX. All pop music that takes America as a subject—whether winding toward tragedy or toward an even sweeter harmony—runs off this mountain. Written when Berry was in prison; he needed an atlas to get the geography right, and when he requested one from the prison library, word went out that he was plotting an escape—which, of course, he was." -- Greil Marcus, "Promised Land: Thirty Records About America," Rolling Stone, May 28, 1998.

I got nothing to add, except, perhaps, I love his evocation of the old slave spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" at the end.

4. "Rock & Roll Music," Single A-Side, 1957; #8 Pop / #6 R&B.

The first great rock and roll song about rock and roll songs. In just two-and-a-half minutes, Berry characteristically covers A LOT of ground: He disses symphonies, clarifies his stance on modern jazz, and overlooks tangos; he praises the backbeat of the drums, the wailing saxophone, & the rocking piano; he goes across the tracks, way down South, a spiritual jubilee, & a honky-tonk jamboree; he dances, he gets shook up, he drinks home-brew from a wooden cup with a bunch of hillbillies. It all adds up to a sound that, like the sax player mentioned in the song, blows like a hurricane. No wonder The Beatles loved this song--& eventually turned it into one of their finest classic rock covers.

3. "Roll Over Beethoven," Single A-Side, 1956; #29 Pop / #2 R&B.

A changing of the guards. As a record, it was pioneering rock & roll, but as a message, it was pure punk rock. For centuries, great music meant Bach, Mozart, & Beethoven, but with everything else in the post-WWII era, music demanded to get bigger, louder, & more modern. More than any other song, "Roll Over Beethoven" extended the new generation's middle finger to the old generation's aesthetics, righteously declaring their own new music would unseat the old. & most astonishingly, it did--at least, as much as a new music can. Rock has taken over classical--&/or all other refined musics--as the mainstream default for listeners of all ages & generations. It was Chuck Berry who was more than just a leader of the new sound, but a modern arts visionary. Tell Tchaikovsky the news, indeed. 

2. "Maybellene," Single A-Side, 1955; #5 Pop / #1 R&B.

"Maybellene" is one of those records that simply changed everything. While Elvis gets credit for being the "hillbilly cat" who stepped into the blues with "That's All Right" in 1954, his song was a regional hit that never made it to the national charts, & is much better-known today. However, Berry's first record, "Maybellene," was one of the biggest hits of his career, & found that it was just as revolutionary for an African-American man to discover country. Built around the one-two country stomp of "Ida Red," Berry appears to have taken the refrain of a love song & wed it to the verse of a car-race song. While it shouldn't work--is Maybellene a car? A girl in his car? A girl in the other car? Someone else entirely?--it does, & all but single-handedly establishes the subject-matter of the car & the sound of the guitar as central to rock & roll music. When "Maybellene" came out, the piano & saxophone were still rivaling the guitar as its signature instrument. After "Maybellene," & the future Chuck Berry hits it enabled, the guitar was enshrined at rock & roll's core.

1. "Johnny B. Goode," Single A-Side, 1958; #8 Pop / #2 R&B.

"The gateway from freedom, I was led to understand, was somewhere 'close to New Orleans' where most Africans were sorted through and sold," Berry wrote in his 1987 autobiography. "I'd been told my great grandfather lived 'way back up in the woods among the evergreens' in a log cabin. I revived the era with a story about a 'colored boy name [sic] Johnny B. Goode.' My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'colored boy' and changed it to 'country boy.' As it turned out, my name was in lights and it is a fact that 'Johnny B. Goode' is most instrumental in causing it to B."

Chuck Berry's signature triumph is a recasting of The American Dream as a rock & roll fantasy, going to the deepest origin of American slavery and using a guitar as the gateway to the sweetest freedom. It is also, not coincidentally, his finest guitar playing; though countless Chuck Berry songs begin with a guitar intro, none drive it home like this one, such that the double (!) guitar solo in the middle feels like a homecoming followed by a victory lap. & while many of his original recordings sound almost loose & sluggish to modern ears raised on the tightness of The Beatles & Rolling Stones covers that helped to familiarize these songs for the last 50 years, "Johnny B. Goode" is an exception--it is a tight, rocking performance that never gets old, often covered but never improved upon.

It is not only Chuck Berry's greatest song, but the greatest rock & roll record of them all.

The Top 10 Greatest Chuck Berry Covers.

As I wrote in my Last Thoughts On Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry's songbook is the rock & roll songbook. Only Bob Dylan is more covered than he is, but with 10 years on him, Chuck Berry's covers have the wider scope.

While I'm now listening to a lot of Chuck Berry, & a greatest list of his own best recordings is to come, I thought there was no finer tribute to his life & influence than the ways in which others have breathed life into his art. Hence this list, which attempts to fight through the countless Chuck Berry covers out there to make a definitive Top 10 list.

I tried to go by the quality of the recording (or in the case of The Sex Pistols, lack thereof), not who was doing it. I was very tempted by Bob Dylan's version of "Nadine," David Bowie's version of "Round & Round," & Jerry Lee Lewis's "Little Queenie," but ultimately left them all off because it would have been more about including those artists on the list, as opposed to their versions of Chuck Berry's songs.

Some of these songs were major career-defining hits, others were shelved outtakes or rough demos; some appeared at the dawn of an artist's career, others in the twilight. What they all have in common is a love for Chuck Berry--which is to say, a love for rock & roll itself.

10. The Sex Pistols: "Johnny B. Goode," Demo, c. 1975.

By the time The Sex Pistols emerged in the mid-'70s, the once-raw genre of rock & roll that Chuck Berry helped usher into the world had become lifeless & bloated. The Pistols helped to rebuild the genre by tearing it down to its studs, & here in a classic early demo later released on The Great Rock & Roll Swindle soundtrack, they take on Rock Version 1.0, wherein they attempt to play "Johnny B. Goode," the greatest rock song of all. SPOILER: THEY CAN'T. But if they sound like a bunch of no-talent snotty kids banging around in the garage that's the point. & even though they had yet to release their first single, singer Johnny Rotten's venom is already fully-intact, bluffing his way through the words like they were caustic nails. It was this same hellfire that helped to reignite rock for the next 35 years & counting.

9. The Band: "Back To Memphis," Studio Outtake, 1973.

As if anyone needed evidence of the range of Chuck Berry's appeal, look no further to one of the least-talented rock bands (above), followed by one of the most-talented ones here. Initially recorded for their 1973 album of classic rock covers, Moondog Matinee, this Berry super deep-cut was shelved in favor of a solid-but-unremarkable version "Promised Land." By the late 1980s, however, the reissue powers-that-be were reissuing this song on Band compilations everywhere, after dubbing in fake crowd fanfare to pass it off as a live performance. Here is the undoubted original studio recording, which shows why no one questioned the authenticity of the fanfare--it's the rare Band studio recordings that capture their contagious onstage energy.

8. Johnny Rivers: "Memphis," At The Whiskey A Go Go, 1964; #2 US.

This could be a sequel to "Back To Memphis" if it wasn't recorded nearly a decade earlier. It is also probably the most classic Chuck Berry song that no one realized was originally a Chuck Berry song. A down-home country ballad of a man pleading with a long-distance operator, it was remade into a minor rock classic with Johnny Rivers' live version here (it also interestingly inverts The Band's recording above in that instead of featuring a fake crowd on a studio recording, this is a real live recording that sounds like a fake one). & for those wondering how Johnny Rivers made a list with greater rock idols, perhaps he is a secret weapon of rock covers--when pressed for his favorite cover of one of his songs, Bob Dylan famously said Johnny Rivers version of "Positively 4th Street." So maybe his presence here isn't so strange after all.

7. The Beatles: "Roll Over Beethoven," With The Beatles, 1963; #68 US.

To modern ears, Chuck Berry's original versions can sometimes drag a bit, even when the singing & playing are top-notch ("Johnny B. Goode," of course, is an exception to this). Often, when you name a classic like "Roll Over Beethoven," people are actually thinking of The Beatles cover of it, not because it is necessarily better, but simply tighter, faster, & more modern. In one of George Harrison's earliest vocals, he tries his hand at this classic & announces the arrival of a second generation of rock & rollers. Within a few years, albums like Revolver & Sgt. Pepper would be hailed as artistic achievements that actually would rival Beethoven in a very real way. But here, they're still having fun in a track that was strong enough to kick off their second American album & even be a minor hit on this side of the pond.

WARNING: THIS IS NOT THE ORIGINAL STUDIO VERSION OF THE SONG, BUT THE LIVE BBC VERSION. IT IS VERY CLOSE TO THE ORIGINAL, BUT THE ORIGINAL VERSION SHOULD BE SOUGHT OUT. IT IS BEST HEARD ON WITH THE BEATLES OR ON THE OLD 1970s DOUBLE-LP BEATLES COMPILATION ROCK & ROLL MUSIC.

6. The Rolling Stones: "Bye Bye Johnny," The Rolling Stones [EP], 1964.

It's not easy picking an early Rolling Stones cover of a Chuck Berry song; there were simply so many. "Carol" was strong enough to be released as a Top 10 hit in France, while "Around & Around" was a fine tribute recorded at Berry's own Chess Records. But their cover of Berry's little-known sequel record to "Johnny B. Goode" is the best to my ears, released on their first EP in 1963. It documents The Stones as raw & hungry, at once near-amateurish compared to the production values of their rival Beatles, yet able to provide a dense onslaught of sound that already full of toughness & swagger. Plus, lead guitarist Keith Richards already establishes himself as Berry's spiritual eager kid brother. They would record bigger & more popular Berry covers in the years to come, but the sheer sound of this one leaves the others in the dust.


5. The Yardbirds: "Too Much Monkey Business," Five Live Yardbirds, 1964.

Long before the likes of Cream, Derek & The Dominoes, & a sprawling solo career, Eric Clapton was a scrawny guitar hero in The Yardbirds. He was nicknamed "Slowhand" because he played his guitar so fast that he'd break strings & have to change them to the sound of a slow handclap; within months, "Clapton is God" graffiti began appearing in the London subway halls (much to Clapton's embarrassment). Before he left The Yardbirds for more greener (or rather, blues-ier) pastures, he left this searing document, taken from their sets at the Marquee Club. This song was their opener & they all but blow the roof off the top of it in the performance. While everything revolves around Clapton, I'm always most tickled by Keith Relf's vocals, solidly singing the words in verse, shouting them in another, & then dutifully reciting them in a detached sense of boredom that cuts to the teenage blues at the heart of the song. Before getting obliterated once again by those guitar solos.


4. The Million Dollar Quartet: "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," Studio Jam, 1956.

Long before the likes of Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry was rock & roll's premiere wordsmith. Compared to contemporaries like Elvis or Fats Domino, Berry's songs were epics where the others' were merely three-stanza poems. Berry was a man who truly loved words & putting them together in memorable ways. One realizes this when listening to the famous Million Dollar Quartet jam session where Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, & Johnny Cash turned to Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man." For several takes, you can hear them collectively honing in on the song, different people remembering different parts of different verses, until it all comes together here. If one needs any further evidence of strongly Berry was on the rock founders' minds, look no further than the fact that aside from "Don't Be Cruel," this is the only rock song sung by The Million Dollar Quartet for the nearly 80-minute session.

3. Buddy Holly: "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," Reminiscing, c. 1956; #113 US, #3 UK.

An opposite take on "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" by no less of a founding rock god. Precise where The Million Dollar Quartet was loose, & rocking where they were almost folksy, Buddy Holly's version of the song reshapes it into a driving rockabilly masterpiece (with a seeming tip of the hat to The Champs' "Tequila," although Berry himself loved a good Latin groove as well). & when the snare drum hits to emulate the high-fly being hit into the stands, it is a subtle use of sound effects that presages songs like "Penny Lane" by a decade. Although not originally released during Holly's lifetime, it saw the light of day just before The Beatles invaded America, even making the Top 5 in the Holly-loving UK.


2. Elvis Presley: "Promised Land," Promised Land, 1974; #14 US.

Elvis's last truly classic recording was also his first great cover of a Chuck Berry song. He had tried in overeager readings of "Maybellene" at the Louisiana Hayride & later in listless recitations of "Johnny B. Goode" in Las Vegas, but only his mid-'60s country take on "Too Much Monkey Business" was close to interesting, & only then because it was the only Elvis recording to feature the word "Vietnam." But in 1974, Elvis showed he still had something left to prove when he attacked Berry's "Promised Land." Perhaps it was because the song contained an idea as big as Elvis--THE Promised Land--that he was up for the challenge, but its rock star travelogue version of The American Dream never sounded better than in Elvis's telling. Cut at Stax Records, it provided Elvis with the last Top 15 pop hit of his lifetime, although it deserved to go all the way to #1.


1. The Beatles: "Rock & Roll Music," The Beatles For Sale, 1964.

The Beatles' cover of Chuck Berry's "Rock & Roll Music" is easily the greatest Berry cover of all time. It encompasses all of the key elements that can be found in the other songs listed above--a sense of rawness, of quality, of reinvention, of tightness, of fun, & of simple, irreverent joy. Like they already had with "Roll Over Beethoven" the year before, The Beatles took Chuck Berry's original & tightened it up, locking it together in a way that the original version merely suggested. The words were never the problem in Berry's original--it was that the music never matched their promise. The Beatles fixed all of that. With Lennon shouting his finest vocal this side of "Twist & Shout," the group shows that even in the wistful, post-A Hard Day's Night period of late 1964, they could still rock out with the best of them.

& in doing so, more than hold their own against none other than their idol, Chuck Berry.

WARNING: THIS IS NOT THE ORIGINAL STUDIO VERSION OF THE SONG BUT A CRAPPY LIVE VERSION. (THANKS, BEATLE LAWYERS!) THE ORIGINAL VERSION MUST BE SOUGHT OUT. IT IS BEST HEARD ON THE ORIGINAL BEATLES FOR SALE LP OR THE OLD 1970s DOUBLE-LP BEATLES COMPILATION ROCK & ROLL MUSIC THAT BARES ITS NAME.