Chuck Berry: The Complete Discography, 1955-1964.

Since Chuck Berry died a month ago, I've been listening to nothing but his music. It is easy music, in that it doesn't demand much & rewards the listener tenfold. There is also not that much of it, in the classic period anyway.

11 albums, to be specific.

& of those 11 albums, one is a multi-artist compilation, one is a duet record, & two are greatest hits LPs.

So it's really more like 7 records. Of which one is a poorly-masquerading "live" album of mostly-previously-released material.

So 6 records. At any rate, you get the picture.

Chuck Berry's first decade of music from "Maybellene" in 1955 through "Promised Land" in 1964 will always be his paramount era that the rest of his career (& most other rockers' careers) will be held against. It was all released on Chess Records & it was all classic. You can hear him hit the ground running (literally, in a song about a car) with a fresh new sound in the middle of the '50s, chase it over the course of a string of hits over the remainder of the '50s, try to find new roads in the early '60s, get thrown in jail for a few years, & then rebound upon release with some of his finest music in 1964.

Soon after 1964, his music lost its steam; only one song after this period--"Let Me Be Your Driver"--is considered a Chuck Berry classic, & it's essentially a rewrite of a song from this period. It's no wonder that by 1966, Berry had jumped ship to Mercury Records, where he recorded a few minor gems (& far more inferior re-recordings of his earlier hits), found his way back home to Chess Records like the prodigal son of a Brown-Eyed Handsome Man, & scored a fluke hit with the throwaway novelty "My Ding-A-Ling" in 1972, but by then, he was already living off of his back catalog, all of which is included here.

What follows is reviews of all the albums he released in his first decade of music-making--or, the albums to first contain this music. Not every song that he released in this period is here; by my count there are five MIAs: Both sides of the "Beautiful Delilah"/"Vacation Time" single, the Christmas tune "Run Rudolph Run," & the B-sides "That's My Desire" & "O Rangutang," which were issued as the flips of "Anthony Boy" & "Nadine," respectively. None are truly essential, although "Beautiful Delilah" & "Run Rudolph Run" remain fine classics that are readily available in the digital era.

But for our purposes here, we will focus on the albums as, incidental as it may have been in rock's infancy, they are the way in which rock music has been packaged for the last 50 years.

& it goes without saying that Chuck Berry has contributed more than a few classics to the genre.

All of these albums are ranked on the following five-star scale:

***** = Classic

**** = Great

*** = Good

** = Fair

* = Poor

There's more than enough here to keep your heart beatin' rhythm & your soul keep a-singin' the blues.

Rock, Rock, Rock [Chess, 1956] ***

Chuck Berry's first appearance on an LP was also Chess Records' first LP, period--which says a lot about the mid-1950s R&B/blues market since they were the home of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, & many more. But the occasion of Berry's appearance in the film Rock, Rock, Rock--along with Chess & (Chess subsidiary) Checker--label-mates The Moonglows & The Flamingos) was reason enough to put an LP together, & they came up with this, the archetypal rock soundtrack. Although Berry only sang one song in the film, "You Can't Catch Me," he gets his three other biggest hits up to that point to round out the LP, "Maybellene," Thirty Days," & "Roll Over Beethoven," along with other songs by The Moonglows & Flamingos that similarly did & did not appear in the film. As we will see, the strictness of the 1950s LP market prevented these classics to be MIA from Berry's first several albums, with "Thirty Days" not making an LP until the following decade. But his own LP catalog's loss is this LP's gain, as it stands as a snapshot of African-American rock the year that Elvis broke the music through. That said, it's interest is primarily a historical one, with Berry's tunes sticking out like lightning & pointing the way to the future that none of the artists could have ever imagined.

After School Session [Chess, 1957] ****

Six months after Rock, Rock, Rock, Berry got his own full-length album debut After School Session, & it stands as one of the classic debuts in rock history. Stripped of hits like "Maybellene," "Thirty Days," & "Roll Over Beethoven" (all of which were culled for the Rock, Rock, Rock soundtrack), After School Session does its job quite well & is a testament to the high quality of Berry's initial output. The album is remarkably well-paced, with up-tempo rockers alternating between mid-tempo blues for a variety that one might not expect when you only hear Berry's big hits. The opening run of the anthemic "School Days," the lovely instrumental "Deep Feeling," the fast & sly "Too Much Monkey Business," & the sweet blues of "Wee Wee Hours" get things off to an especially remarkable start. If the rest of the album doesn't quite live up to these, few albums could. "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" finds Berry dipping his toe into politics, "Havana Moon" is a near proto-Jamacian style groove, & "Downtown Train" is as terrifying a rockabilly number as has ever been waxed. But it's the odd deep cuts, like the long-forgotten '50s ballad "Together (We Will Always Be)" & the jazz-inspired "Drifting Heart" that show both where this new music Berry was helping to shape had come from--& hints at other places it could have gone.

One Dozen Berrys [Chess, 1958] ***

As one of rock's first major artists, Chuck Berry also experienced one of rock's major curses: The second album sophomore slump. In his case, it isn't bad per se--no album with "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Rock & Roll Music," & "Reelin' & Rockin'" could be--but it definitely feels like a holding pattern as opposed to a leap ahead. Aside from the aforementioned hits, the Chuck Berry classic to make the LP was the minor hit "Oh Baby Doll," which has aged worse than any other of his early string of hits. The album is filled out by, well, filler--instrumentals and B-sides, & little of note. The only exceptions are "Guitar Boogie" (the godfather of The Yardbirds' "Beck's Boogie"), which serves as a aerobic workout for rock guitar, & "It Don't Take But A Few Minutes," which shows that Berry could throw a decent rocker together in what sounds like was no more than a few minutes. Worst of all is "Low Feeling," a slowed-down playback of the B-side "Blue Feeling" (which also appears earlier on this album), just shows how much they were scrounging for material. But they shouldn't have been. Like After School Session, One Dozen Berrys could have been greatly improved by the singles that already had appeared on Rock, Rock, Rock, but for the second time in a row, the absence of these songs when held up against the filler that took their place denied Berry of a great record. Luckily, this wouldn't happen again.

Chuck Berry Is On Top [Chess, 1959] *****

Chuck Berry's masterpiece is rock's great lost masterpiece. Although it rarely makes a "great album" list, the stupidly-titled, ugly-designed Chuck Berry Is On Top at the very least holds its own with his peers' '50s masterpieces like Elvis Presley, Here's Little Richard, & Buddy Holly's The "Chirping" Crickets, & might even beat all three. Finally--FINALLY!--whatever powers-that-be at Chess realized they were shooting themselves in the foot for withholding the songs from Rock, Rock, Rock, so for the first time, "Maybellene" & "Roll Over Beethoven" appeared on a Chuck Berry LP. This may not be worth much except for the fact that the rest of the newer material found him mostly matching if not surpassing this material. "Carol," "Little Queenie," & "Around & Around" are all classics, but it's the epic "Johnny B. Goode" at the end of the first side that blows the roof off the joint & stamps this album as a classic. Even "Anthony Boy" & "Jo Jo Gunne" are minor classics in the Chuck Berry canon. The only cutoff in quality comes at the tail end, with the borderline racist "Hey Pedro" & the fine-but-not-amazing instrumental "Blues For Hawaiians." They feel more like a coda that wasn't needed, but do nothing to blunt the whole record's impact. Which is a huge one.

Rockin' At The Hops [Chess, 1960] ***1/2

If you need evidence whether The Rolling Stones are impossible without Chuck Berry, look no further than this record. They covered three out of the first four songs that appear on it--the "Johnny B. Goode sequel "Bye Bye Johnny," the juke joint romp "Down The Road Apiece" & the blues standard "Confessin' The Blues"--in their early years. Even better is Berry's slashing cover of "Worried Life Blues," one of his finest blues covers, which perhaps was too good for even The Stones to touch. The rest of the album is filled out by the cool "Mad Lad," one of his most interesting instrumentals, the insipid "Too Pooped To Pop," somehow the biggest actual hit from the album, & some non-hit singles leftovers, the weird "Broken Arrow" (based on "Old MacDonald Had A Farm") & the sweet "Childhood Sweetheart." The Stones also covered the album's closer--the searing "Let It Rock"--which appeared as the live B-side to "Brown Sugar" in the UK. It is the best song on the album, & one of Berry's finest songs, period. Clocking in at under two minutes & oddly not containing its titular phrase, "Let It Rock" tells of a bunch of train workers shooting dice in a teepee on the track as a train comes & cannot stop. The song ends with the workers scrambling to leave & the train failing to break, but gives no indication to anyone's fate. More than any other song Berry ever wrote, it plays like a folk song, effortlessly tying together workingmen, gambling, & trains, in an unresolved cloud of mystery. No wonder The Stones loved it. Apparently along with the rest of the album.

New Juke Box Hits [Chess, 1961] **

Ironically, the album titled New Juke Box Hits was the first Chuck Berry album to not contain a single charting record. The album's driving opener, "I'm Talking About You"--also covered by The Stones--was its lead single & should have been a hit, but everything else on the LP pales in comparison. The best Chuck Berry music is utterly timeless; everything on this record that is not "I'm Talking About You" sounds like 1961. Desperate to stay competitive as the first wave of rock & roll crashed into the teen idol music of the new decade, this album added backing choruses and smooth saxophones to the sound, taming it for a pop audience that didn't care. (Just check out the spoken intro to the maudlin "Little Star"--on second thought, don't.) Only a few stray places does Berry's wit & style come to the surface, but these were fleeting glimpses. This isn't necessarily a terrible record, it's something that's arguably even worse--near forgettable, disposable pop.

Chuck Berry Twist [Chess, 1962] *****

By the time that Chuck Berry Twist appeared, Berry was in jail serving time for driving an underaged girl across state lines in a violation of the ancient & racist Mann Act. & just like RCA Records put out Elvis' Golden Records when he went into the Army, Chess used the break in new material to issue the first Chuck Berry compilation--& like Elvis' Golden Records, it stands as one of the finest collections ever issued. While there would be bigger & more comprehensive Chuck Berry anthologies, none were better programmed than this: From the opening "Maybellene" & "Roll Over Beethoven" through the masterful closing suite of "Johnny B. Goode," "Rock & Roll Music," & "Back In The U.S.A." The latter makes its debut on a Chuck Berry album, along with "Come On" & "Thirty Days." Sure, there are some nuggets missing--most notably, "Too Much Monkey Business," "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," & "You Can't Catch Me"--but they aren't noticed with the aforementioned cuts, as well as "Around & Around," "Come On," "Let It Rock," & the second-side opener "School Days." If you don't believe me, take your copy of The Great Twenty-Eight or The Definitive Chuck Berry & construct a playlist to Chuck Berry Twist. You'll thank me.

Chuck Berry On Stage [Chess, 1963] *

With Berry still in jail, this is the point where Chess Records goes from being crafty (Chuck Berry Twist) to desperate (this LP). Quite simply, every element of this album reeks of desperation. For starters, it isn't a live album at all, but a collection of studio recordings (oldies, leftovers, & outtakes) with overdubbed applause to give the impression of a live album. Eight of its 13 tracks had been previously released (albeit without fake clapping), & of the 5 that weren't, one of them--"Brown-Eyed Handsome Man"--was an inferior alternate take of a released song. Most pathetically, two of the songs get renamed--"Sweet Little Sixteen" & "Blues For Hawaiians," as "Surfin' U.S.A." & "Surfin' Steel," respectively--to try & cash in on the surf music craze that Berry helped to inspire. (& yes, "Surfin' U.S.A." is a rewrite of "Sweet Little Sixteen," but it was still misleading to boast the former on the LP cover & only contain the latter.) Of the four previously unreleased songs, only "I Just Want To Make Love To You" is worth seeking out, but even then, as the original studio undubbed version. In an apparent attempt to atone for their sins, Chess Records now has Chuck Berry On Stage available on iTunes in a double-length version: The original LP, followed by the original versions of the songs, unedited. But the original LP of retitled surf songs with false applause is an almost meta act of rock packaging: A masquerade that double-backs & masquerades on itself.

Chuck Berry's Greatest Hits [Chess, 1964] ***

Two months after Chuck Berry On Stage was released, Berry was released from prison. In April, this LP appeared, only two years & two months after Chuck Berry Twist. This was presumably to account for two songs that were missing from Twist--"Memphis, Tennessee," which was a hit for Johnny Rivers that same year & "Nadine," which was Berry's first post-jail single. It's a shame they didn't wait until later in the year, when "No Particular Place To Go" proved to be Berry's REAL comeback hit, but they couldn't have known that then. At any rate, Greatest Hits was the lesser of the two collections--in part because it only had 12 songs to Twist's 14, but also because its running order was too top-heavy, opening with "Roll Over Beethoven," "School Days," "Rock & Roll Music," "Too Much Monkey Business," & "Johnny B. Goode," instead of spreading the goods out more evenly. One perk though--both "Too Much Monkey Business" & "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" now made the cut (both could have been on Twist), along with "Memphis" & "Nadine." The other eight songs are the same, as both oddly include "Oh Baby Doll," which was apparently considered a major hit for him back in the day. & unlike every other Chuck Berry album thus far, this one made the charts at a cool #34, making it his first charting album. It's little wonder that Chess kept in print for decades to come.

Two Great Guitars [Checker, 1964] **

Chuck Berry's first studio album released after he was released from prison was a duet album with Bo Diddley, in which Berry was the featured artist (hence it was released on Chess subsidiary Checker, to which Diddley was signed). This may speak to Berry's popularity fading while in prison, but it is still odd to think of Bo Diddley as being the bigger artist, influential though he was. Perhaps that's why Berry gets the first side & Diddley gets the second; each side contains one regular-length, recently-recorded instrumental, followed by a long jam with the two of them. On Chuck's side, it's "Liverpool Drive"--which also would be included on his next LP--& the ten-minute "Chuck's Beat," which would be edited as the album's (non-charting single) single. It's a pretty cool track, as winding jams go, with Chuck's "chugga-chugga-chugga" rhythm taking center stage & allowing Berry some space to let loose on some licks that sound loose & ripe enough for a young Keith Richards to pick. Solid stuff, but not really a Chuck Berry record in the true sense, as given away by the side two closer, "Bo's Beat," which is of course built around Bo Diddley's signature rhythm. Clearly, this was all set up as a showcase for Diddley, but Berry is a ready & willing accomplice, fresh out of jail & ready to trade hot licks with the other guitar rock legend on his label.

From St. Louis To Liverpool [Chess, 1964] *****

As some like to tell it, this is Berry's studio masterpiece. The Beatles & The Rolling Stones had clearly reinvigorated his music (& his own tours of England had reinvigorated his energy), with Berry's first post-jail LP of original material the studio album of his career to beat. It didn't hurt that it contained some of the strongest material he would ever wax: "No Particular Place To Go," the stop-&-start car-&-romance lament that sounded so good & original you'd never notice it was based around the structure of "School Days" (or that it could be read as a tongue-&-cheek take on his crime that landed him in prison in the first place); "Promised Land," which told the story of east to west, rich to poor, & obscurity to fame, in a spiritual-quoting rocker with a folksong structure; & "You Never Can Tell," a hot, uncharacteristically guitar-less (in its central instrumentation, anyway) tale of two young newlyweds charting their life on their own cool terms. All made the charts & deserved to; also charting was "Little Marie," a sequel to "Memphis, Tennessee" in which the singer reunites with his lost lover & little girl. If the rest of the album sounded like B-sides in comparison, that's because they were, although none brought down the overall quality. "Our Little Rendezvous" was the flip to the minor hit "Jaguar & Thunderbird" (released on Chuck Berry On Stage), which would sound better rewritten as "Let Me Be Your Driver" the following year; "Go Bobby Soxer" was an ode to the new British Invasion teens who used to scream for Berry (& would scream for him again); "You Two" was a smooth swinger that reached for the style of Nat King Cole; only "Things I Used To Do" reached the mark of excellent, finding Berry in his most confident blues mode. Most bizarre was the inclusion of 1958's "Merry Christmas Baby," presumably because the album was released in November, but otherwise does not fit in with the rest of the proceedings. Luckily, there's more than enough strong recent material to cancel out any head-scratching it may have caused. As an album in the traditional sense--which is to say, all new, recently-recorded material (minus "Merry Christmas Baby")--this was the Berry album to beat, & so far he hasn't.

We'll have to see how Chuck sounds when it comes out later this year.

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.

Last Thoughts On Chuck Berry, 1926-2017.

Years ago, I once read that Chuck Berry is the rock upon which rock & roll rests; to this day, I cannot think of a better way to put his influence.

Only The Beatles, Elvis, Dylan, & The Rolling Stones can rival him in influence, & of those 4, only Elvis is conceivable without him.

Simply put, Chuck Berry is rock & roll.

The depth, range, & influence of artists who have covered him is staggering: The Beatles, Elvis, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Sex Pistols, Jerry Lee Lewis, David Bowie, The Animals, The Kinks, The Band--& that's just off the top of my head & only counting songs that were officially released on official albums. Throw in live recordings, jam sessions, & bootlegs, & you'd have basically everyone ever.

His music is the blood that flows through the veins of rock & roll; take it away, & the history of the music dies.

The Beatles cut their teeth on his records. They paid credit both directly, with blistering covers of "Roll Over Beethoven" & "Rock & Roll Music," but also indirectly, when Lennon lifted the "Here come ol' flat top, he come groovin' up slowly" from Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" to begin his classic "Come Together." Lennon could be forgiven though; it was simply proof that by 1969, Chuck Berry was simply rock's second mind.

The Rolling Stones' first single was a cover of Berry's "Come On," while one of their early standout covers was "Carol." They also went to Chess Records, the temple where Chuck recorded, & laid down a great version of "Around & Around," which was also covered by The Animals that same year. (David Bowie cut a version of the same song seven years later; it was originally slated to go on the Ziggy Stardust album.) Did I write that Chuck Berry was rock's second mind by 1969? I take that back. By 1965, Mick Jagger took the line "I can't get no satisfaction from the judge" from Berry's "Thirty Days" & wrote what many consider to be rock's definitive anthem.

Those people are wrong, though. Rock's definitive anthem came seven years earlier when Chuck Berry released "Johnny B. Goode."

From the blazing guitar intro through the lyrics and the solo, no one could ever beat it, not even Chuck himself. It was the story of the American Dream told through the eyes of a young guitarist, highlighted by those two-note driving solos that Berry used build rock guitar's (which is to say, rock's) basic vocabulary. Any time you hear someone blasting out those double-note riffs, they are reaching for Chuck Berry's performance in "Johnny B. Goode."

Yet that said, "Johnny B. Goode" was not surprisingly the toughest Chuck Berry song to cover. Both The Beatles & Elvis made passes on it in live performances, but neither could come close. To best illustrate the point, listen to The Sex Pistols set it aflame in an early demo where they can't play it & Johnny Rotten doesn't know the words. They end up shouting "Go! Go! Go!" because it's all they can do. It's a pathetic mess, but in its own raw way, it blows away those versions by The Beatles & Elvis.

Elvis couldn't do a Chuck Berry song justice until he tackled "Promised Land" in 1975, & it was his last truly classic recording. Berry had written it in jail some fifteen years earlier & like "Johnny B. Goode" before it, it too told a version of the American Dream, only this time from East Coast to West, &, as Greil Marcus pointed out when he called it the greatest American song of all time (as in, song about America), rags to riches. It's like one big musical montage that ends with a phone call to the folks back home where it all began.

When Elvis had the famous Million Dollar Quartet jam session with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, & Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry was virtually the only rock on the menu that wasn't someone already in the room. The majority of the session leaned on gospel, country, & blues, but there was a hilarious stretch where they try to remember the words to "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" & piece it together in a gesture of love & admiration, with Elvis strumming away frantically on the acoustic guitar. Once they finally get it, Carl goes into a story about coming off of tour with Chuck Berry.

Chuck Berry touring was an interesting thing by the 1980s, where Berry would show up to a club with his guitar in hand, get his money, then go onstage & play with whatever band was there. Every band knows his songs, he rationalized, because his songs are the rock & roll songbook. A young Bruce Springsteen was in one of these bands in the 1970s; twenty years later, he would back Berry at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Concert in 1995. In the years in between, he released a live version of "Run, Run Rudolph," proving even Berry's Christmas songs were nothing to be ignored.

& then there are the Chuck Berry songs that lead to other songs. Brian Wilson so clearly lifted Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" for The Beach Boys' 1963 breakthrough "Surfin' U.S.A." that Wilson eventually had to give him a co-authorship credit; years earlier, rhythm & blues singer Richard Berry (no relation) used the pidgin English of Chuck's "Havana Moon" as a main inspiration for "Louie, Louie," later immortalized by The Kingsmen in a song that all but invented punk rock.

& then there is the popular memory. Back To The Future (Marty McFly playing "Johnny B. Goode" while the film's greatest line is spoken: "Hey Chuck, this is your cousin Marvin, Marvin Berry! You know that new sound you've been looking for? Well listen to THIS!") & Pulp Fiction (the twist dance contest scene, set to "You Never Can Tell") put Chuck Berry into motion picture history in a way that even his own Hail, Hail Rock & Roll documentary could not. When John Lennon & Yoko Ono cohosted The Mike Douglas Show in the 1970s, they jumped at the chance to have Chuck Berry on, & then jumped at the chance to play with him on stage (it serves as a reminder that for everything that Lennon's presence supposedly represented about the counterculture, he was still most wowed by '50s rock & roll). & when NASA shot a rocket into space representing human culture, Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" was among its artifacts. Saturday Night Live famously quipped that the first response from alien life has been received & it is: "Send more Chuck Berry."

& as some like to tell it, Chuck Berry's 1955 first hit single, "Maybellene," was the first rock & roll record of them all.

The one & only time I ever saw Chuck Berry was 50 years to the day after "Maybellene" was released, in August of 2005, at the nightclub he owned in St. Louis, Blueberry Hill, which oddly named after a Fats Domino song. Even odder was that, after much fanfare about this being the 50th anniversary of "Maybellene," he didn't even play the song. My sister & I had gotten there early, stood in line for a few hours, & sat in the front row. Even though he was in his 80s, he came out like a king & was rock royalty in a way I have only ever seen in person from his contemporaries like Jerry Lee Lewis & B.B. King--those pre-television legends who could really hold a stage.

With his son leading the band, Berry played 10 songs in 60 minutes, 9 of his classics & one Jimmy Reed cover. He was spry, sprightly, having fun, & basking in the glow, & during "Johnny B. Goode," he even duckwalked, to my astonishment. He closed with "Reelin' & Rockin'," never one of my favorites at that time, but a favorite ever since. His band shrewdly pulled up girls onstage to dance (of which my sister was thrilled to be among the first, invited up by none other than Chuck Berry, Jr.), which allowed him to sneak out the back behind the wall of dancing girls. It was the rock & roll equivalent of disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

Now Chuck Berry is truly gone. It may be cliche, but it seems like there is nowhere else to end but with the final verse of "School Day," yet another song that, like so many others, is so vital to rock's repertoire but escaped my stream-of-conscious words above.

As the man said:

Hail, hail rock & roll

Deliver me from the days of old

Long live rock & roll

The beat of the drums, loud & bold

Rock, rock, rock & roll

The feeling is there, body & soul

Chuck Berry is dead. Long live Chuck Berry.

The Top 10 Band Songs.

The Band--guitarist Robbie Robertson, drummer Levon Helm, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson (all of whom sang except for Hudson)--remain one of the most influential bands of all-time, pioneering what has since become known as Americana; ironic since they are 4/5ths Canadian. But then again, it was their outsider status that made them see America as those within never could.

With about a half-dozen "Best Of"s lists out there for The Band, I figured I'd add my own. I could add another 20 songs, but 10 keeps it more manageable; regardless, honorable mentions go to "Yazoo Street Scandal," the stripped-down version of "Twilight," & the lovely "It Makes No Difference," the latter of which makes nearly every other list (& even tops one), but is left off because its alto-sax-&-guitar coda is endless & hasn't aged very well.

With that out of the way, let's get to the list.

10. "Bessie Smith," The Basement Tapes, 1975 (Album Track).

A beautiful ballad that is striking in its seeming desire to be taken literally: When the singer sings that they are going down the road to meet Bessie Smith, you believe him, even if he too has no idea what he'll do once he gets there; meanwhile, Hudson's sense of atmosphere--always The Band's secret weapon--has never been on better display.



9. "Stage Fright," Stage Fright, 1970 (Album Track).

From the seclusion of their beloved Big Pink home to the audience they never quite knew how to face, this is the closest thing The Band ever came to an autobiography, sung by Danko in his most earnest performance at the microphone.



8. "We Can Talk," Music From Big Pink, 1968 (Album Track).

As with rock & roll itself, gospel had always been a secret engine driving The Band, & here it comes to full fruition in the piano-&-organ testimony found here, filled with overlapping vocals & call-&-response; it also features Robertson's sharpest set of vocals, a panorama of milking cows in Sunday suits, flames turning to chalk, and whips buried in the grave.



7. "Ophelia," Northern Lights -- Southern Cross, 1975 (#62 US).

Perhaps the most haunting mystery of Hamlet is whether Ophelia commits suicide, & this song not only runs with it--with the great line "Ashes of laughter/The ghost is clear," it seems to answer it; also features their best use of the ubiquitous horns that appear in the latter part of their career, driving home an icon of Shakespearean tragedy into a joyous funeral band march of the Dixieland South.



6. "The Shape I'm In," Stage Fright, 1970 (#121 US).

The Band always treated this song like it was the hit that it never really was (hence it's the second song in both The Last Waltz & their classic Best Of LP), but no matter--it kicks like the man sprung free from jail it portrays, & features the tragic Richard Manuel singing the most eerily foreshadowing lines Robertson ever wrote him: "Out of nine lives, I spent seven/Now how in the world do you get to Heaven?"



5. "Ain't No More Cain," The Basement Tapes, 1975 (Album Track).

An old chain-gang spiritual with all four vocalists trading verses (the order is: Helm, Robertson, Danko, & Manuel) while Hudson plays some down-home accordion; this is The Band at their most relaxed, natural, demographic, & effortlessly American--which is to say, their most Band-iest.

WARNING: THE VIDEO ABOVE IS NOT THE RIGHT VERSION OF THIS SONG. PLEASE SEEK OUT THE CLASSIC VERSION FIRST RELEASED ON DYLAN & THE BAND'S BASEMENT TAPES ALBUM, & NOW ALSO AVAILABLE ON THE BAND'S MUSICAL HISTORY BOXED SET & "BEST OF A MUSICAL HISTORY" ONE-DISC SAMPLER.



4. "Don't Do It," Rock Of Ages, 1972 (#34 US, #11 CA).

Their finest performance (& second-biggest hit), which remakes a minor Marvin Gaye song into a rock & roll history lesson: With The Bo Diddley Beat at its base, they add shouted vocals, funky guitar riffs, bluesy piano triplets, & country harmonies, all topped with New Orleans-styles horn charts from none other than the late, great Allen Toussaint.



3. "Up On Cripple Creek," The Band, 1969 (#25 US; #10 CA).

The Band's biggest hit & funkiest track, chockfull of accurate geography, horse races, Spike Jones records, and adultery.

2. "The Weight," Music From Big Pink, 1968 (#63 US; #35 CA).

The Band's most famous song; a quasi-religious pilgrimage through America about the burden of sin & the price of obligation, featuring the Devil, Miss Moses, & Crazy Chester's Dog.

1. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," The Band, 1969 (B-Side Of "Up On Cripple Creek).

The finest rock song about The Civil War ever written--all the more impressive that it was written by a Canadian (Robertson), albeit based on the stories of his Arkansas bandmate (Helm). Like all classic American Civil War epics--The Birth Of A Nation, The General, & Gone With The Wind--it told its tale from the Southern perspective, heightening the "brother against brother" narrative that we love to tell ourselves when the real narrative--SLAVERY--gets too ugly & disturbing. Of the many celebrated lines, such as Virgil Cane seeing Robert E. Lee or the bells ringing in the refrain, the one that always does it for me is "In the winter of '65/We were hungry, just barely alive." A casual listener would assume that this was 1965 (as the song was only recorded four years later), but in fact it is 1865.

& therein lies the magic of The Band: Their utter timelessness; & no song shows it better than this one, which could have been sung in 1965--or 1865.