CHUCK BERRY
Most everyone alive knows, to some degree, the importance of Chuck Berry to the development and definition of the musical art form we know today as "rock ‘n’ roll", along with its explicit (and implicit) relationship to that amorphous, yet all-embracing cultural phenomena that we call "rock," which still defines a great deal of the borders of our musical parameters. But I wonder how many people really know Chuck Berry’s music, in any real depth. I am assuming that just about everybody knows a few basic songs, even if they are covers by such later artists as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and just about everybody else in the rock cosmos. But that is no substitute for the real thing.
The fact remains that for more than a decade (1955-1965), Chuck Berry wrote, performed and recorded one of the most original, astounding and entertaining bodies of music of just about anyone in the 20th century. The sheer number of hit singles the man created is astonishing, and while this may represent his most important work, there is a wealth of recordings of great depth and variety that complement and support the astounding legacy left by his most recognizable hits.
And then, of course, there is the extraordinary variety and endless creativity of the singles themselves. I am supposing that I do not have to go too far in arguing that Chuck Berry, along with Elvis Presley, is the most important architect of the form and meaning of rock ‘n’ roll. And even more than Elvis, he wrote, performed, created and embodied the basic aesthetic principles, ritual presentation, and the basic content of everything that we now know as rock music. In other words, basically all of the popular music that we (Western civilization, which has now gone global) listens to. He is unquestionably one of the most important artists of all time.
I do not feel that I have to write a long and detailed essay explaining just why this is so. For one thing, in the course of this retrospective and analysis of his recording career, it will become blatantly obvious - if it isn’t already - just how brilliantly original, protean and influential Chuck Berry’s work really was. But that is precisely the question - how obvious is it to the average music lover today? And that brings me back to the original question of how many people actually listen to Chuck Berry, actively, at least to the point that they are basically conversant with his work? Because I do not think that this is a legacy that we either want to miss out on or to let go of easily. Of course, I can make the same point about Bach, Beethoven, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis (and I will). But because rock (and all of its various mutations and sub-divisions) has become the common daily currency of our listening habits, and therefore define us and our culture to a larger degree than other available art musics, it behooves us to be closely in touch with its roots. But perhaps the ultimate argument is, finally, that listening to Chuck Berry is so much damned fun.
Is fun a good enough criteria to demand historical and aesthetic awareness and appreciation? Perhaps not. But when the fun is this profound, I’m going to argue that you can make a pretty good case for it. Because there can come a point where fun transmutes into something more profound, something closer to that word that I probably overuse: it becomes transcendence. And Chuck Berry (and rock ‘n’ roll in general) was always fundamentally about transcendence. This music was not just a pleasurable experience to its millions of advocates. These were people whose very lives were transformed by the power that this music not only intimated, but demanded to take a revolution in the hearts and minds of the young and apply them post-haste to the culture in which they occupied. This was music with a mission, and the mission was transformation. It was opening your ears and mind to a new way of thinking about the myriad possibilities of life in a bold new world. To drive the point home, we must also remember that this music, always, from the time of its inception to each important burst of growth: from Chuck and Elvis, to the Beatles and the Stones, to Bowie and Roxy Music, to the Ramones and the Sex Pistols - to Nirvana and Green Day - has always been, fundamentally, seditious.
Rock ‘n’ roll has always, by nature, by very definition, been a veritable threat to the existing social order. It represents the ultimate, self-contained freedom of individual expression as it manifests itself in opposition to the mind-numbing conformity of a plastic, empty consumer society that demands unflinching obedience, soul-destroying drudgery, and a thoughtless commitment to forms of cultural behavior that have lost all meaning within the boundaries of a decaying, de-mythologized carcass of a civilization going cold and dead with no promise for the future. That is what rock ‘n’ roll set itself up against, and any "rock" music worth its salt always will.
But we’ve been around long enough to see this music - our cultural inheritance - watered-down, co-opted by corporate forces that not only want our money but our unquestioned obedience. We have witnessed the spirit of this great, inspirational, soul-releasing musical force ripped off and used by its enemies as a weapon against those very same freedom fighters that once used it as both their banner and their ladder, in order to corrode their minds into a deadlock of acceptance and complacency which ultimately results in a cultural fascism that constantly threatens to take that fatal next step into political control.
And that’s why we must listen to Chuck Berry.
Well, perhaps I’ve gone a little too far. But not by much. If rock music - if music - is to have any meaning at all, lest it become simply the cliché-spewing entertainment division of a mass-media spectacle of unthinking consumer conformity, then it must maintain its conscious power to challenge. And that’s what rock ‘n’ roll does: it challenges.
It challenges you to throw off the chains of mind-numbing, sex-denying, life-repressing cultural traps and it demands that you stand up in defiance. That you dance through life, that you complain about your problems, that you protest your condition, and most of all that you celebrate your freedom as an individual, seizing every opportunity for clear, unadulterated personal expression as a fundamental and God-given right!
Okay, so I guess I did write a long and detailed essay. And maybe a lot of it was a bunch of bullshit that I can’t support without a lot more detailed evidence. I know a lot of people can be perfectly happy and live a rich and fulfilling life without Chuck Berry. I just wouldn’t want to be one of them.
Do you?
COLLECTING CHUCK BERRY
By far the most important Chuck Berry recordings are the ones he made for Chicago’s Chess Records during the decade 1955-1965, and the bulk of his greatest music, which forms the basic foundation for rock music itself, primarily comes from the singles he released (mostly) in the 1950s. This does not mean that Berry didn’t produce some great songs in the early 1960s (he did), nor does it imply that a great deal of the music that ended up only on albums isn’t worth hearing (it is). But unless you are ready to take the grand leap into completism by purchasing any of the Complete Chess Recordings boxes (which is by far the best way to appreciate Berry), you will do best to start off with a greatest-hits collection. I realize that for many people, this will be as far as they will wish to go with Chuck Berry, but even for those who plan to venture further afield, it is always nice to have a small, tight collection of Chuck’s greatest hits concentrated in any one place.
Of course, we now live in an age where anyone with a computer or IPod can form their own collection of personal favorites, but my sensitivity to the history and relevancy of the development of rock ‘n’ roll over time demands that any serious music-lover have at least one serious collection of Chuck Berry singles, organized chronologically, that can be absorbed in a reasonable time span. There is really and truly only one way to begin to grasp the sheer breadth and power of these amazing recordings, and that is to experience them (in a kind of fast-forward motion, of course) in the way that their original audience did. And that is to hear these songs as singles in the manner that they emerged over the course of several years.
So what is the definitive Chuck Berry singles collection? Well, to be really "definitive" I would have to say that include every Chess single, A- side and B-side that Berry released from 1955 to 1966. Now, you may construct that particular configuration if you like, and I will map it out exactly for you, but at this writing, there does not exist a commercial CD box like this. But even if one existed (or you construct one of your own), that still does not fit the bill for a more compact listening experience, and once again, it may very well go past the needs of some listeners.
Fortunately, there exists a single-disc entry to Chuck Berry’s music that is not only nearly comprehensive as far as hits go, but has entered into the rock music culture as something of an icon all on its own. And for many years, this collection has stood as the definitive introduction to the music of Chuck Berry, as well as the definitive one-disc compilation that is perfect for home or vehicle. (It’s also one of the greatest single rock albums of all time):
Chuck Berry: The Great Twenty-Eight (1982)
Originally released as a double-record vinyl set in 1982, with 7 songs per side, this magnificent compilation had even more of an impact when it was released on compact disc later in the decade. As the title suggests, there are 28 great Chuck Berry songs on here, almost all of them "hits," and arranged in (almost) chronological order of release. For three decades, this has been the place to orient yourself to the music of Chuck Berry. Clocking in at about an hour and nine minutes, it’s perfect for listening to in one sitting, and the sheer enormity and vitality of the songs collected here - not to mention their brilliance and variety - has turned countless repeated listeners into raving CB fanatics. Plus, with so many extraordinary tunes going down in one gulp, it made it possible for neophytes to quickly become familiar with an enormous center of one of the most important bodies of work in rock music history.
The collection also serves to prove a more-than-convincing argument for Chuck Berry’s greatness. Hearing this much brilliance and revolutionary innovation in just over an hour’s setting is simply an overwhelming experience. After listening to The Great Twenty-Eight it is virtually impossible to minimize either Berry’s genius or his undeniably great importance to the development of modern music. It’s also one of the most joyous, informative and fun collections of music ever put together. Listeners are drawn back, over and over in amazement and exhausted frenzy until they have every lyric and guitar lick down pat.
The collection was (and remains) almost perfect - there are a couple of seriously glaring omissions. But it is still a whirlwind of a ride, damn nearly complete, and fine enough to be ranked at No. 21 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Its pedigree is impeccable. Here’s what you get:
1. "Maybellene" (July 1955)
2. "Thirty Days (September 1955)
3. "You Can’t Catch Me" (November 1956)
4. "Too Much Monkey Business" (September 1956)
5. "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (September 1956) (B-side of "Too Much Monkey Business")
6. "Roll Over Beethoven" (May 1956)
7. "Havana Moon" (November 1956) (B-side of "You Can’t Catch Me")
8. "School Day" (Ring Ring Goes the Bell)" (March 1957)
9. "Rock and Roll Music" (September 1957)
10. "Oh Baby Doll" (June 1957)
11. "Reelin’ and Rockin’" (January 1958) (B-side of "Sweet Little Sixteen")
12. "Sweet Little Sixteen" (January 1958)
13. "Johnny B. Goode" (March 1958)
14. "Around and Around" (March 1958) (B-side of "Johnny B. Goode")
15. "Carol" (August 1958)
16. "Beautiful Delilah" (June 1958)
17. "Memphis, Tennessee" (June 1959) (B-side of "Back in the U.S.A.")
18. "Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller" (October 1958)
19. "Little Queenie" (March 1959) (B-side of "Almost Grown")
20. "Almost Grown" (March 1959)
21. "Back in the U.S.A." (June 1959)
22. "Let It Rock" (January 1960) (B-side of "Too Pooped to Pop")
23. "Bye Bye Johnny" (April 1960)
24. "I’m Talking About You" (February 1961)
25. "Come On" (October 1961)
26. "Nadine" (February 1964)
27. "No Particular Place to Go" (April or May 1964)
28. "I Want to Be Your Driver" (1965 album cut)
Aside from a few notable omissions (and a few little out-of-chronology glitches), the collection is near-perfect. Once more, it has the advantage of having taken on a veritable life of its own as an album, and I, at least, find it a little difficult to criticize, let alone challenge, especially after years of pure bliss in absorbing precisely this configuration. Indeed, I am still tempted to maintain that every serious popular music fan must have this in their collection and be fully conversant with it. However, there are a few considerations that have led me to conclude that this immortal package has finally been supplanted as far as the essential single-disc collection of Chuck Berry is concerned.
Chuck Berry: The Definitive Collection (2006)
No, I don’t like the cover as well as The Great Twenty-Eight either. But there are other considerations.
First of all, this collection has 30 songs rather than 28. And more importantly, two of the songs that have been added are "You Never Can Tell" and "The Promised Land." I never understood why the latter was left off of The Great Twenty-Eight because it was such a great hit. Perhaps even more importantly, the old collection was compiled before Pulp Fiction shoved "You Never Can Tell" back into the public consciousness. Today, a Chuck Berry collection that is missing this iconic moment in American culture is seriously flawed.
Secondly, The Great Twenty-Eight has never been remastered since its original pre-digital 1982 release. Not for its release on CD in 1989, nor when it returned after being out print for several years. And people, believe me, the difference is enormous. Chuck Berry, of all artists, deserves to be heard in the best sound possible, and the clarity, dynamics and sheer punch of this material is so much better than in the former set that it’s ridiculous.
And if all that were not enough, consider this: The Definitive Collection, for some insane reason, sells for about half the price of The Great Twenty-Eight, at least at this time on Amazon. There’s simply no basis for argument anymore. This is the single-disc collection to get. This is where you begin with Chuck Berry today.
Let’s look at what you get:
1. "Maybellene" (July 1955)
2. "Thirty Days (September 1955)
3. "You Can’t Catch Me" (November 1956)
4. "Too Much Monkey Business" (September 1956)
5. "Roll Over Beethoven" (May 1956)
6. "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (September 1956) (B-side of "Too Much Monkey Business")
7. "Havana Moon" (November 1956) (B-side of "You Can’t Catch Me")
8. "School Day" (Ring Ring Goes the Bell)" (March 1957)
9. "Rock and Roll Music" (September 1957)
10. "Oh Baby Doll" (June 1957)
11. "Reelin’ and Rockin’" (January 1958) (B-side of "Sweet Little Sixteen")
12. "Sweet Little Sixteen" (January 1958)
13. "Johnny B. Goode" (March 1958)
14. "Around and Around" (March 1958) (B-side of "Johnny B. Goode")
15. "Beautiful Delilah" (June 1958)
16. "Carol" (August 1958)
17. "Memphis, Tennessee" (June 1959) (B-side of "Back in the U.S.A.")
18. "Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller" (October 1958)
19. "Little Queenie" (March 1959) (B-side of "Almost Grown")
20. "Almost Grown" (March 1959)
21. "Back in the U.S.A." (June 1959)
22. "Let It Rock" (January 1960) (B-side of "Too Pooped to Pop")
23. "I’m Talking About You" (February 1961)
24. "Come On" (October 1961)
25. "Nadine" (February 1964)
*26. "You Never Can Tell" (July or August 1964)
*27. "Promised Land" (November 1964 or 1965)
28. "No Particular Place to Go" (April or May 1964)
29. "I Want to Be Your Driver" (1965 album cut)
*30. "My Ding-a-Ling" (July 1972)
*not on The Great Twenty-Eight.
Some of the chronology has been cleared up, but for some baffling reason, several songs remain out of sequence. Note that "My Ding-a-Ling" has been added to the end of the line-up. The inclusion of this silly live sing-along doesn’t bother me, especially as it was Berry’s only No. 1 hit. But look what it has replaced: "Bye Bye Johnny" is gone! Aaugh! That’s one of Chuck’s toughest later songs, and its exclusion (especially for "My Ding-a-Ling") is simply inexcusable.
Alas, my friends, if you truly wish to have a definitive one-hour-plus collection of Chuck Berry songs in the proper chronological order, you are simply going to have to concoct it yourself. If, however, you do not live within the obsessive bounds of this writer, you should be quite satisfied with this "so-called" Definitive Collection. (True obsessives are going to want The Great Twenty-Eight as well, just because.)
At any rate, people who feel they only want or need the "essential" Chuck Berry can stop right here and be happy for the rest of their lives. But what about those of us who feel that merely 30 songs is not "essential" enough for this great artist?
Now very few of you are going to be like me and demand the complete Chess recordings of Chuck Berry in all their three-box-set magnificence. Well, we have a couple of in-between choices for those of you who realize that you’re simply going to have at least two or three Chuck Berry discs to feel okay with yourselves. (And of course, today, you can always customize your perfect collection.
Let’s look at our next step up:
Chuck Berry: The Anthology (June 27, 2000)
This 2-disc collection really fleshes your portrait of Chuck Berry out. With 50 songs and clocking in at 2 hours and 11 minutes, it includes singles (including B-sides), album selections, blues recordings - even some live stuff. This is what I listen to now when I want to hear Chuck casually. It’s also got great remastered sound, and the cover is great. It costs around 15 bucks and is well worth it, though I do have to admit that it doesn’t have the concentrated power of either of the single-disc collections.
But hold on, just a minute. Look at this:
Chuck Berry: Gold (April 26, 2005)
This is exactly the same set as The Anthology shown above, re-released five years later, for some unknown reason, in this cheap-looking, ugly package. But look at this: while both packages are shown as being currently available, the 2-disc Gold package is currently retailing for $7.99 on Amazon! That’s cheaper than the 1-disc Definitive Collection!
This makes no marketing sense, but as a consumer/collector, this is a no-brainer. Rush to Amazon now if you need some Chuck Berry before somebody changes this! (Insane!)
Disc One
1. "Maybellene" (July 1955)
*2. "Wee Wee Hours" (July 1955) (B-side of "Maybellene")
3. "Thirty Days (To Come Back Home)" (September 1955)
4. "You Can’t Catch Me" (November 1956)
*5. "Down Bound Train" (December 1955) (B-side of "No Money Down")
*6. "No Money Down" (December 1955)
7. "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (September 1956) (B-side of "Too Much Monkey Business")
8. "Roll Over Beethoven" (May 1956)
9. "Too Much Monkey Business" (September 1956)
10. "Havana Moon" (November 1956) (B-side of "You Can’t Catch Me")
11. "School Day" (Ring Ring Goes the Bell)" (March 1957)
12. "Rock and Roll Music" (September 1957)
13. "Oh Baby Doll" (June 1957)
14. "Sweet Little Sixteen" (January 1958)
*15. "Guitar Boogie" (1958 album cut)
16. "Reelin’ and Rockin’" (January 1958) (B-side of "Sweet Little Sixteen")
17. "Johnny B. Goode" (March 1958)
18. "Around and Around" (March 1958) (B-side of "Johnny B. Goode")
19. "Beautiful Delilah" (June 1958)
*20. "House of Blue Lights" (previously unreleased)
21. "Carol" (August 1958)
*22. "Jo Jo Gunne" (October 1958) (B-side of "Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller")
23. "Memphis, Tennessee" (June 1959) (B-side of "Back in the U.S.A.")
24. "Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller" (October 1958)
25. "Little Queenie" (March 1959) (B-side of "Almost Grown")
26. "Almost Grown" (March 1959)
Disc Two
1. "Back in the U.S.A." (June 1959)
*2. "Do You Love Me" (previously unreleased)
*3. "Betty Jean" (1960 album cut)
*4. "Childhood Sweetheart" (1960 album cut)
5. "Let It Rock" (January 1960) (B-side of "Too Pooped to Pop")
*6. "Too Pooped to Pop" (January 1960)
*7. "I Got to Find My Baby" (August 1960)
*8. "Don’t Lie to Me" (1960 album cut)
9. "Bye Bye Johnny" (April 1960)
*10. "Jaguar and Thunderbird" (October 1960)
*11. "Down the Road Apiece" (1960 album cut)
*12. "Confessin’ the Blues" (1960 album cut)
13. "I’m Talking About You" (February 1961)
14. "Come On" (October 1961)
15. "Nadine (Is It You?)" (February 1964)
16. "You Never Can Tell" (July or August 1964)
17. "Promised Land" (November 1964 or 1965)
18. "No Particular Place to Go" (April or May 1964)
*19. "Dear Dad" (March 1965)
20. "I Want to Be Your Driver" (1965 album cut)
*21. "Tulane" (November 1970)
22. "My Ding-a-Ling" (July 1972)
*23. "Reelin’ and Rockin’ - Live (1972 album cut)
*24 "Bio" (May 1973)
*Not on single-disc collections.
As you can see, this gives you 17 additional cuts that are found on neither The Great Twenty-Eight or The Definitive Collection. But notice, there’s only a few more singles represented (nine, two of which are B-sides, and none of them "hits." Basically, what Chess has done with The Anthology/Gold is to flesh out Chuck Berry’s portrait a bit more, which in my opinion is rather a good thing, but it hasn’t really added much (if anything) that you could call "definitive." There are album cuts here, a good deal of blues, and mostly later cuts from his Chess career. Like I said, I prefer to listen to this over a single-disc set, but that’s primarily because I already know Berry’s hits so well that it’s nice to get more.
Now, we have to ask the question, to where do we step up from here? I mean if we really want to know Chuck Berry’s music. Well, for a couple of decades, this was the gold standard:
Chuck Berry: Chess Box (1988)
This 3-disc, 71-song collection was very impressive when it was released in the 1980s, back when box-set retrospectives were a new phenomenon. (It even won a Grammy for Best Historical Album.) It’s still available, at a little over 30 dollars. But why on earth would you pay that when you can get the 50-title Gold set for eight bucks! Plus, this has not been remastered. While I would not recommend you passing this up if you could find it for a fiver or so, the only really logical step up is right to the BIG BOYS. Alright, I think we can finally begin to call these sets definitive:
Chuck Berry: Johnny B. Goode: His Complete ‘50s Chess Recordings (February 19, 2008)
This is where obsessives like myself go. This is the first of three box sets that contain everything that Chuck Berry recorded for Chess Records throughout his career. And the first one is the most important, containing all the seminal recordings he made from 1955 to 1959: the whole story of how this great artist helped lay the foundations for all the music that we today refer to as "rock." Is it for everybody? Of course not. I know I am in a small minority of people who love and care about Chuck Berry’s music to want to get the complete picture. And not only am I intrinsically attracted to such a comprehensive collection for its own sake, but having all this material at my disposal helps me to contextualize his work so that not only can I understand more clearly how, when and why it was made, but to make sense of how it was marketed and distributed in the way it was. I’m no longer approaching this material merely as a fan or a critic, but as a historian, perhaps even as an anthropologist. So for me, this is the mother lode.
This collection not only allows me to listen to the actual chronological order of the creation of this extraordinary music, but it also helps allow me to explain the significance of the actual releases, to appraise not only what was recorded, but the way it was handled. Not only do I find it fascinating in itself, but it will allow me to communicate to other people the development of Chuck Berry and to sort through his discography in a more meaningful way. I guess in way, you could call it "higher criticism." But whatever you want to call it, whether this level of involvement with the music appeals to you or not, the bottom line is that it allows me to give more direction and insight into the music that people with a lesser interest I have do want to listen to with a lot more authority than I had before.
For example, with this collection, along with some good documentation in hand, I can detail and explain the development of Chuck Berry’s discography as it was historically released, so that I can clue in others as to what they might want to invest their own time and money in to get the most out of their level of Chuck Berry interest. And just as importantly - if not more - it may stimulate some people to help grow in their enjoyment and appreciation of this very important popular artist. And that’s basically the first thing I’m going to do with it.
If anyone who is reading this does happen to have anything even approaching this level of interest, I can tell you the basic facts. This first box-set collection has four compact discs, contains 103 songs, and has a playing time of roughly four hours and 51 minutes. I’m not going to list everything that it contains, because you can easily look that up for yourself if you’re interested. What interests me is re-constructing Chuck Berry’s career through analyzing his discography. So let’s go ahead and start that project right now!
COMING UP SHORTLY:
THE CHUCK BERRY DISCOGRAPHY, PART 1 (1955)
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