The Chuck Berry Collectors Blog

[The first draft of this post was titled What's In And What's Not. I spent days after days listening to these 20+ hours of music. And the more I listened, the more my article became a rant about the omissions, illogical selection and strange sequence of the tracks. Some friends proofreading my writing however complained about the tone of my draft. They remembered me that what I was reviewing is not a scientific piece of work - and probably has never been intended as such. They told me to see this box as an enjoyable piece of art, which it really is. I should better concentrate on all the hidden gems in this release. And they were correct. So I started from scratch. Here's the result:]

Bear Family's original marketing material for Chuck Berry: Rock And Roll Music – Any Old Way You Choose It (Bear Family BCD 17273 PL) promised "all of Berry's studio recordings for Chess, Mercury, and Atco plus a selection of live performances." If you're a die-hard Berry fan or collector you probably already have all the relevant releases and that means all the studio recordings and all the live recordings. Thus except for the beautiful books, is there any reason for you to spend $400/€300 for this box?

There is! The reason is that every single one of the 16 CDs comes with at least one hidden gem which you might want to have. Let's run through them:

CD 1
The first CD contains the studio recordings up until May 1957 including the two Joe Alexander tracks.
The hidden gem is La Juanda (or Lajaunda as it was incorrectly named by Chess). As you know from this blog, there are two slightly different versions of this song. The two versions differ in the overdubbed second vocal track. On this CD 1 we get to hear the version which was originally used on the CHESS 1664 single - and only there. All later EPs, LPs, and CDs in contrast included the other variant. Thus the single version of La Juanda is included here for the first time on CD.

CD 2
The second CD contains all the Chess recordings made between December 1957 and September 1958.
The hidden gem here is Carol. If you compare this track to the well known and indefinitely repeated version which you hear on all other CDs it will come up as a true surprise. While we are used to Carol sounding dull and dark, it now sounds light and clear. Finally someone took the original recording and released it in full sound quality just as it was on the original Chess single.

CD 3
The third CD covers the Chess recordings between November 1958 and early 1960.
The hidden gem on this CD is indeed an unheard-of Chess recording. Titled Fast B6 this is another instrumental/jam/warm-up from the Chess session tapes. For the first time we hear this previously unreleased Chuck Berry recording - or should I better say Johnnie Johnson recording.

CD 4
The fourth CD completes the session which ended CD 3 and runs until August 1964.
It contains no less than three hidden gems. First you will find I'm In The Twilight Zone which had been available on a promotional-only CD before but was omitted from the Hip-O Select set You Never Can Tell - His Complete Chess Recordings 1960-1966 (HIP-O-Select B0012485-02).
Also missing from this set but on this CD - and for the first time on CD at all - are the shortened versions of the songs Chuck's Beat and Bo's Beat such as they were first released on the single Checker 1089.

CD 5
The fifth CD starts with a session of December 1964 and runs ‘til the end of 1965.
There is no direct hidden gem on this CD but we will come back to it when talking about CD 11.

CD 6
The sixth CD covers the last session for Chess in April 1966 and continues with the Mercury sessions up to March 1967.
This CD not only contains the Mercury recordings which were on the original vinyl albums. It also includes all those additional songs which were not on the original releases but hidden on the 1980s re-releases. As those 1980s CDs have been extremely hard to find, the whole Mercury stuff is a reason to buy this box. And yes, in my opinion some of the Mercury recordings are gems indeed.
But besides that also this CD contains a hidden gem. The song Oh Captain was originally released on the album Mercury SR-61176 From St. Louie To Frisco. It always sounded strange as the two stereo channels were not in sync but offset for several seconds. This might have been by intention of artist or producer, though. Hey, it was hippie-era San Francisco where the album was finished. But it might also be just a technical fault which happened. There is no definitive answer, but Chuck Berry in an interview once complained about Mercury having destroyed his recordings.
Due to this, some Berry fan, said to be a Swedish sound engineer, had “repaired” the song by bringing the stereo channels back in sync. This repaired version has been floating around the Berry collectors’ community for many years. CD 6 now comes with an "official" synchronized version of Oh Captain, engineered by Mark Kennedy. This version clearly sounds much better than the originally released mess – at least to our ears. It may not have sounded better to a 1968 SF sound engineer on dope, though.

CD 7
The seventh CD completes the March 1967 session, runs through the remaining Mercury sessions and even includes the first session back at Chess from November 1969.
Again there is a hidden gem on it. Plus a correction for those who own the 1989 CD release of Concerto In B Goode. If you do, you will welcome that there is now a track separator between Put Her Down and Concerto In B Goode. On the early and so far only CD reissue this track separator was forgotten so you couldn’t access the 18 minute concerto.
But the true hidden gem is a version of Rock Cradle Rock we haven't heard before. The new version of this tune is not really an alternate recording but a different mix having some guitar solos added. This brings the originally very short (1:22 minute) song to at least 1:51 minutes and indeed makes it better.

CD 8
The eighth CD continues in November 1969 and includes the studio recordings up to February 1972.
The hidden gems on this CD are two edited versions which have been available before only on vinyl. Both Johnny B. Goode and Reelin' And Rockin' from the London Chuck Berry Sessions live album had been edited to fit on the singles they appeared on. While the full length versions have been re-released often, these two edits are available on CD here for the first time. In case you ask: the version of Reelin' And Rockin' is the edit for the US single Chess CH-2136.

CD 9
The ninth CD starts in February 1972 and continues until August 1974.
Collectors will immediately notice a song called You And My Country which had not been listed on the 2010 Hip-O Select set Have Mercy – His Complete Chess Recordings 1969 To 1974 (HIP-O-Select B0013790-02). However, the recording itself is on the Hip-O set, though called Me And My Country. That was an error because You And My Country is both the original title under which this song first became known when its lyrics were published in the songbook Rock’n’Roll Poet and it is what Berry sings about.
The hidden gem on CD 9 is an edited version again which was only available on vinyl up to now. Bio had been edited down half a minute to fit on the US single Chess CH-2140. CD 9 contains this edited version, while the unedited version is on CD 10.

CD 10
The tenth CD contains the remaining Chess studio sessions from August 1974. Plus.
I tried hard, but didn't find any hidden gem on this CD. It does include the full-length versions of three songs which were in edited form on CDs 4 and 9, though.

CD 11
The eleventh CD contains the 1979 studio recordings published on the Atco album Rockit SD 38-118, but starts with 14 Chess recordings from the early 1960s.
This includes various, significantly different stereo versions of well-known Chess songs. These had been published in the 1960s and 1980s. Also included are a few alternate takes - and two hidden gems.
The first hidden gem on CD 11 is the stereo version of Diploma For Two which had not been available on CD before. The second hidden gem is even more interesting. Jamaica Farewell on CD 11 is the version from the UK variant of the Chuck Berry In London album (Chess CRL-4005). This is a different recording/take from the one published in the US which is on CD 5. The differences are minor and except for the differing run time hard to spot, but this version is here for the first time on CD. It was even omitted from the Hip-O sets.

CD 12
The twelfth CD contains three Chuck Berry concerts from 1956, 1958, and 1963.
The whole 1963 show is a hidden gem as it was not heard before. From the discography we learn that Chess recorded four shows with Berry on October 25 and 26, 1963 at the Walled Lake Casino, Detroit. Only the two Saturday shows had been released on the Hip-O Select set You Never Can Tell - His Complete Chess Recordings 1960-1966 (HIP-O-Select B0012485-02) and even those incompletely. Here is the complete first show of Friday which was not on the Hip-O set.

CD 13
The thirteenth CD continues with the Walled Lake Casino recordings containing the complete second set of Friday and the complete two sets of Saturday. Of these three shows the first has not been available before. The other two were known for the most part, though both Memphis and the spoken introduction were omitted from the Hip-O release. Even though there are some duplicates when Berry played the same song in multiple shows, there are also some numbers such as Dust My Broom and Too Much Monkey Business which are not often heard in Berry concerts. With the two sets of Friday, October 25, 1963 we get some new and interesting stuff which had been unreleased so far.

CD 14
The fourteenth CD contains the 1967 recordings made in San Francisco and first released on Berry's first official live album Mercury MG-21138/SG-61138 Live At Fillmore Auditorium. When that album was re-released on CD in 1989, Mercury added five more songs from the shows. CD 14 of the Bear Family box contains the exact contents of that 1989 CD, i.e. the more complete recording. The only difference is that here the 8:36 minute medley which starts the show is logically divided into three individual tracks.

CD 15
Very well known is the chronologically next live recording from Toronto 1969 which takes up the full fifteenth CD. This concert has been re-released on albums and CDs dozens of times. There seems to be a complete tape of this concert somewhere as several of the cheap releases include spoken introductions, stage banter and reaction to audience input. CD 15 however includes the cut-off separated songs as they were originally released on the album Live In Concert by Magnum.
The hidden gem which was not heard on this and any other releases is a version of Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight called Bonsoir Cherie which had been available before only on the video and DVD releases of this concert.

CD 16
The sixteenth and last CD of this set contains several live recordings from the 1970s plus one rare studio recording and some tracks which you can count as a live recording or a studio recording just as you want to.
From 1972 there is the concert from Coventry which was used for the second side of Chess album CH-60020 The London Chuck Berry Sessions. Three songs, Reelin’ And Rockin’, My Ding-A-Ling, and Johnny B. Goode, were released both on this album and in heavily edited form on several Chess singles. A fourth song, Roll ‘Em Pete, was even overdubbed with additional instruments and released as the flip side of Chess single CH-2140. As said above, these edited versions can be found on CD 8 of this box, some for the first time on CD at all. The original long recordings are on this CD 16 along with four more songs from this show which were first released in 2010 on the Hip-O Select set Have Mercy – His Complete Chess Recordings 1969 To 1974.
The first hidden gems on CD 16 are two additional songs from the Coventry show plus a short instrumental and an introduction. All four tracks are released here for the first time.
In 1964 during his first tour in England, Berry and his backing band The Dominoes played some numbers at the BBC Studios for the BBC Saturday Club radio show. There was no audience, so you may argue if this is a live or studio recording, but who cares. Parts of this recording had been available before on a vinyl album Dominoes & King Size Taylor (excerpts only) and on a poor unofficial CD Chuck Berry In London (some tracks only and in lousy sound quality).
Thus the second hidden gem on CD 16 is that for the first time we hear the five songs complete and in very good quality. Interestingly some crackles suggest that these five songs have been transcribed from a vinyl recording, though one that wasn’t available to the public.
The list of hidden gems continues with the last three tracks on CD 16. First you get the 1977 recording of Berry's version of the Dr Pepper advertising song along with the corresponding interview. Then again from 1977 there is the final live recording in this selection. This medley of Reelin’ And Rockin’ and Roll Over Beethoven was recorded for the motion picture American Hot Wax about Alan Freed and as such was released on the corresponding soundtrack album. All three tracks had been available on vinyl only and are here on CD for the first time.

Summary
Thus, is the 16 CD box worth its price even if you already have all of Berry's released recordings? Definitely!
Every single one of this 16 CDs contains some hidden gem. If you'd see a single CD offered at $20 which would contain only one of those hidden gems, wouldn't you buy it?
Here we get sixteen of these! We get most of the contents of the 12 Hip-O CDs. We get the complete contents of the five Mercury CDs, each of which alone easily sold for $50, if offered at all.
And as hidden gems we get:

• one song which was forgotten on the Hip-O sets
• twelve tracks which were available on vinyl only before
• three studio recordings which had not been available before at all, and
• twenty-five (!) live recordings - all unreleased until this great box arrived.

Thus, even if you think you already have all of Berry: Think twice and get one of these boxes soon!

[You are certainly awaiting details on the new Bear Family 16-CD box from a record collector's point of view, i.e. what's new or important. However, a close deadline had me to write a review for the German Rock'n'Roll Musikmagazin first. Thus please be patient until I come up with the details. For now, enjoy this translation of my review.]

Chuck Berry: Rock And Roll Music – Any Old Way You Choose It
Bear Family BCD 17273 PL, 16 CDs, 350 pages in two books

Collectors of our kind of music already know: When Bear Family takes care of one of our favorite artists, you can purchase the result without any doubt, no matter if they cover Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, or as here Chuck Berry. So why write a review then? Because there are collectors who think more than twice when a box comes with a price tag of 300 Euros (or $400). So what do you get for the money?
One thing you will get is simply everything, no less than the total musical works of Chuck Berry. Just turned 88, this pioneer of rock music in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s worked for the labels Chess, Mercury, and Atco. During these times more than 300 studio recordings originated. And all of them are in this box.
The Chess recordings had been reissued in 2008 to 2010 by Hip-O Select, a sub-label of Universal Music. Likewise the Atco recordings are available on CD.
But here we also get the Mercury recordings (1966 to 1969). While there had been a CD reissue in the 1980s, those were pressed in very little quantity and are extremely hard to find. Which is a pity because also in the late 1960s Berry recorded several interesting songs. One highlight are the tracks recorded in Memphis together with a set of musicians who later performed with Elvis on numbers such as In The Ghetto or Suspicious Minds.
So we get Berry's complete studio work including his Mercury period. Which makes up for a total of 11 CDs. These CDs have been compiled in a way that every Rock'n'Roll fan may want to listen to an arbitrary one without getting bored. This is in contrast to the Hip-O Select sets which got lost in alternative takes presenting multiple versions of the same song in sequence often. With this Bear Family Box, there is only one version each, the most well-known variant. Only with a small selection you may find a second variant hidden on a different CD, e.g. where the hit version had been highly modified against the original album version.
In addition to the complete studio history of Berry, five further CDs show an interesting comparison: a cross section through his live performances of that time. This starts with segments from an Alan Freed show in 1956 and ends with the stage recordings made for the Alan-Freed-Memorial movie "American Hot Wax" in 1977. Included are several recordings which had been available before only on rarest vinyl or not at all.
Bear Family would not Bear Family, though, if these twenty hours of music weren't accompanied by writings at least as interesting. And therefore this box does not only come with one album-sized book, it comes with two!

The main book was written by three authors, each of whom having written one or more books on Chuck Berry already. Bruce Pegg not only tells Berry's story on more than 100 pages, he also describes the circumstances of recording sessions and the origins of the songs. Fred Rothwell, who also acted as a producer for this box, added more than 30 pages of discography listing in detail each and every recording, musician, and important release. Morten Reff as the second producer not only made sure that in this collection all those tracks are found which had been missing on CD before. He also opens his archive of international record covers for us.
Due to this you not only find all the US covers displayed, but also the most beautiful records from all over the world, ranging from South Africa to New Zealand - of course in full color and best quality. Next to these there are approximately 1.000 photos: views into the recording studios, performances world-wide, concert posters, advertisements and so on. Many of these photos can be seen here for the first time, or at least for the first time in this outstanding quality.

Chuck Berry at the Star-Club, Hamburg, June 1964

Which takes us to the second book from the box which tells of a sensational discovery: In 1996 journalist and blues expert Bill Greensmith gets a message from a friend regarding a photographic archive due to be dumped. In three rooms filled with hundreds of boxes Greensmith encounters some early Chuck Berry pictures. The house owner explains to him that the photographer, her husband Harry Davis, was a cousin of Berry. This was when Greensmith started to look through negative after negative.
His findings are astonishing: Not only had Davis shot Berry's wedding photo. He is also the originator of many of the early PR photos. Already in 1952 Davis takes first portraits of Berry with guitar and stage suit. Some shots from this or other early photo sessions were used by Chess for covers and songbooks even ten years later. Most of the photos have been unknown, though, until they are shown now within this box.
Whereas it doesn't stop with the publicity shots. Harry Davis and his camera also joined Berry at performances in St. Louis, e.g. in the Cosmopolitan Club. Thus on Harry's photos we see Chuck Berry and Johnnie Johnson on stage, several month before their first hit record.
The most interesting negatives, transparencies and prints Bill Greensmith restored and collected for this book. They are shown in large format, in astounding good quality, some even in color. This is a true gem, not only for Berry fans.

Chuck Berry at the Cosmopolitan Club, St. Louis, 1954

The text from the books and the uncounted stunning photos almost make for the price of the box by themselves. And in addition you get the bonus of Berry's total musical work on 16 CDs. Even if you think you already have everything by Berry, you will read or hear things yet unheard-of such as an insider's look into Berry's UK tour 1965, an advertising song for the Dr Pepper soft-drink, or the repaired version of a song once messed up during the original production.
As we know from Bear Family, there is very very little to object. Worth a discussion might be the strategy to include only the "most well-known" variant of a recording. With some songs one would prefer to also be able to listen to a different, sometimes even more original version. Where it couldn't be avoided, some tracks have been dubbed from vinyl records which you can hear sometimes. And for the 1969 concert having an uninterrupted audio track instead of separated songs would have been nice. All these are minor comments, though.
If you haven't been engaged in Chuck Berry's music much before, in this box you will find everything you will ever want to know about or hear from him - this is a complete collection. If instead you already have a lot of Berry material, you will still find many rarities and some first releases you don't have, not to miss the two incredibly good books you get with the box. Even if they cost 300 Euro (or $400): These seven pounds Chuck Berry are recommended unconditionally!

The box is right now available from Bear Family or from your favorite record seller. Here's a list of some links to compare prices.

Here's a message to those of you anxiously waiting for the new 16-CD box made by Bear Family promising to contain all of Berry's CHESS, Mercury, and ATCO recordings plus more.
Chuck Berry: Rock And Roll Music had been planned to be released no later than Berry's 88th birthday on October 18th. However, problems with some suppliers caused a small delay.
Bear Family just told me that the boxes are shipping now. First copies to dealers went out on Monday, first copies to end users were shipped today. So expect your copy to arrive soon.
Those who ordered the more expensive Guitar Case Edition will have to be patient, though. Even though Bear Family ordered the guitar cases months ago, they are still waiting to get them. As of today, Bear Family expects the limited Guitar Case Edition to be shipped by the end of November.

In early 2008 I wrote a blog article on the various recordings of Chuck Berry concerts in San Francisco in 1967. Three of these shows had been only available for listening online at Wolfgang's Vault, now Concert Vault, a commercial site which runs on the archives of promoter Bill Graham and concert recordings from many other sources.
These recordings have now been made available as a 2-CD set called Check Me Out! (Crying Steel CSR02). It includes all three concerts available at the Concert Vault:

• March 18, 1967 - Winterland, San Francisco
  This confused me a bit at first, because in 2008 Wolfgang's Vault had this concert dated March 19, which would place it to the Fillmore Auditorium and not to the Winterland where Berry and the Grateful Dead played on March 17 and 18. For some reason, the date of this recording has changed, though the recording itself didn't.
• December 26, 1967 - Winterland, San Francisco
  This concert was not available when I first wrote about these recordings. I added some comments in a 2009 blog post.
• December 29, 1967 - Winterland, San Francisco
  a quite interesting concert with some very looong versions.

For some reasons the creators of the CD added one more concert recording, which has nothing to do with the Winterland or with San Francisco. The only thing common with the Winterland concerts is that this recording also stems from Concert Vault. The four tracks are the audio segment of a video originally recorded on November 2, 1972 and broadcast as part or Don Kirshner's "In Concert" series for ABC TV. At the Concert Vault you can listen to it and concurrently view Berry perform. This is post-Ding-A-Ling and therefore does not fit to the Miller Band recordings here at all.
Anyway the 2-CD set is a nice professionally made item. And it even contains a recommendation for this site in its liner notes. Thanks!

Two weeks ago, I wrote a first report on the upcoming 16-CD boxset by Bear Family. At that time all I had was a press release and some early photos.
In the meantime Bear Family added the boxset to their online catalog. You can now pre-order the set at the Bear Family Store.
They also included a complete, though little detailed track listing. This now gives us a first look at what is included in the box, and what is not. The contents is interesting, though a bit different from what I wrote earlier.
Bear Family has promised the COMPLETE studio recordings of Chuck Berry. However I find that my definition of "complete" differs a bit from theirs. Their definition of "complete" means that you will get EVERY song Berry ever recorded, but you will get just ONE version of every song.
This is in contrast to e.g. what Hip-O-Select had in mind with their three 4-CD boxes. If you look at Hip-O's first box, you'll find five different versions of Sweet Little Sixteen. As these variants often differ only slightly, listening to such a CD is boring for most. And if you have followed this blog closely, you know that even Hip-O missed to include some previously published tracks.
On the new Bear Family boxset there will be only ONE version of Sweet Little Sixteen plus the demo version. Thus you will not be bored by listening to eight variants of the same song. This is good. But you will need to buy additional CDs to complete your collection.
From the track listing it is a bit unclear which version we will hear. There is only one version of Sweet Little Sixteen, so it's probably the sped up hit single version. But there is also only one version of Merry Christmas Baby, which can either be the version used for the CHESS single, or the one used for the CHESS album. We will see. It seems that all the alternate or early takes are missing - at least unless they have been published under a different name before. So there's only one version of Betty Jean on the set, but there are three takes of Vacation Time: the single version plus the two alt. takes from America's Hottest Wax, known as 21 and 21 Blues. We will have to do some research once the boxset is available.
The sequence of the tracks on the 16 CDs is also a bit unclear. Basically it follows the recording dates, but the Joe Alexander takes are after How High The Moon. And between the Chuck Berry '75 album tracks and the ATCO tracks there are 18 CHESS tracks which were recorded in the 1960s. I expect the books to explain more about these recordings.
Bear Family's press release and order form also promise that with the Mercury and ATCO recordings "all surviving alternate takes" are included. From the track listing it seems that there is only one additional Mercury track and not a single alt. take from the ATCO sessions.
CDs 1 to 11 contain studio recordings, CDs 12 to 16 contain live recordings. Most of these are well-known such as the 1956 Alan Freed Show recordings. Included are some which were difficult to get before, such as the Newport recordings from 1958, the two songs from the American Hot Wax movie, or the BBC sessions with King Size Taylor & the Dominoes. Unheard before are two more shows from Detroit 1963 and a couple of additional recordings from Coventry 1972. From the Fillmore and from Toronto there seems to be just the well-known recordings.
Almost at the end of CD 16 you will find the 1977 Dr. Pepper promotion song. I did not see any other of the rare recordings from our Radio Show and Promotional Records section.
In total, the CD set seems to fulfill a bit less than what the PR promised. It will, however, contain several previously unreleased tracks and a lot of what has been very difficult to find up to now. Stay tuned: more when I learn more about this box ...

[Update: The videos are now available from the Polar Prize website at http://www.polarmusicprize.org/home/prize-ceremonies/2014-2/. And they included another very nice cover version which was not shown in the original broadcast: Sabina Ddumba and Melinda De Lange singing Havana Moon!]

Next to his induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, the Polar Music Prize is probably the most important award given to Chuck Berry for his lifetime role in creating most of modern rock music.
On Tuesday (August 26th, 2014), the prize ceremony took place in Stockholm, Sweden. Chuck Berry did not attend, neither on stage in Stockholm, nor by use of a video message. The official reason is that due to illness Berry is not able to travel. But not only Berry missed this important event. None of his family did attend either. We would have expected Charles Jr. or Ingrid to at least accept the prize on behalf of their dad. Instead someone choose British singer and producer Dave Edmunds to stand on stage, shake hands with the King of Sweden, and read a three-sentence letter from Berry. Even though Edmunds covered several Berry numbers such as Promised Land (1972) and Run Rudolph Run (1982), Edmunds is not necessarily my first choice for a Berry stand-in.
The video of the ceremony is not yet available at the Polar Music Prize website (www.polarmusicprize.org). However, in case you missed to watch it live, you can view the full ceremony as broadcast by Swedish TV4 from the TV station's website today and until Friday. So if you accept watching (too much) Swedish advertising, go ahead and have yourself an interesting hour.
The link to the broadcast is http://www.tv4play.se/program/polar-music-prize?video_id=2950197.
Do not be confused that the first segment containing interviews on the red carpet and a small film about the manufacturing of the prize statuette are in Swedish language. The full ceremony afterwards is in English!
You will be confused, though, at how easy the Swedish manage to mix Rock 'n' Roll music and classical music into a single program. It's kind of easy this year because the other winner, opera director Peter Sellars, is more of a "modern" classical artist, while Berry is more a "classical" modern artist. In mixing both styles, during the concert you'll see the full orchestra perform a number called "The Guitar Battle of Wartburg" which includes steel and electrical guitars.
There is not a single recent image or video snippet from Berry shown during the whole show. His biography and such is underlaid with segments from the "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll!" movie. Thus the most recent Chuck Berry is from 1986! While film makers from the committee were in St. Louis during a Berry show at Blueberry Hill, all they show is the announcement outside the doors plus a few sentences by Joe Edwards of Blueberry Hill and by Chuck's son Charles Jr. To me this looks as if there was some other problem besides Berry being ill.
Another video message shown during the ceremony is - as usual - by Keith Richards.
During the one-hour show several Berry numbers are performed, each by well-known Swedish artists from the 1960's 'til today. Some cover version are quite nice, others ... well ... judge yourself. You'll hear:

• Amanda Jenssen - Rock And Roll Music
• Jerry Williams - You Never Can Tell
• Maria Andersson (ex Sahara Hotnights) - Come On
• Nisse Hellberg (Wilmer X) - Little Queenie
• Kim Cesarion - No Particular Place To Go
• Kajsa Grytt (ex Tant Strul) - Memphis, Tennessee
• Dregen and Nicke Andersson (ex Hellacopters) - Johnny B. Goode

At TV4 the last track (which is quite goode) is faded early. If you want to hear it in full, you have to watch the second broadcast as well. It is from the after-show banquet: http://www.tv4play.se/program/polar-music-prize?video_id=2950877. It's worth watching, especially when you see the Queen of Sweden really enjoying Chuck's music. And it contains some snippets of Dave Edmunds and Nisse Hellberg performing "Roll Over Beethoven". Did I say that Edmunds is not my favorite Berry interpreter?

[Updated, now with prices and images!]
Bear Family, the famous German record company, informs me - and you - about their newest Chuck Berry product:


Rock And Roll Music - Any Old Way You Choose It - The COMPLETE Studio Recordings ... Plus!

To be issued in a few weeks, this new Berry box contains sixteen CDs plus almost four hundred printed pages.
As we know it from Bear Family, this is to be the definitive Berry collection. There is no better and there never will be.
Here's a first view according to Bear Family's Detlev Hoegen. Be sure I'm going to report details as soon as I have them.

• all the CHESS recordings we know from the three Hip-O-Select boxes - plus those they forgot to include
• all the Mercury recordings we know from the already rare 1980s CDs plus unreleased tracks
• the ATCO studio album and more
• live recordings from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s
• an updated discography by Fred Rothwell
• a biography and other writings from Bruce Pegg, Mike Snow, and Roger Fairhurst
• hundreds of pages with photos by Harry Davis, Chuck's uncle, taken during Berry's early career
• previously unseen photos by Jean-Marie Perrier
• an introduction written by Paul McCartney
• plus plus plus

Thanks to designer Mychael Gerstenberger of Malbuch/Berlin, I can show you early photos of the contents. As with all images on this site, click for a better view.



Bear Family claims that this is everything by Berry you ever wanted to have - and for most collectors they are definitely right. There is some additional studio material and tons of live recordings, but only a completionist like myself will want to have that.

The price for the box will be 299 Euros (appr. $400), thus it's save to say that you better start saving money immediately.
Those who want even more might try to get one of only 88 limited Deluxe Editions of this box. To celebrate Berry's 88th birthday on October 18th, Bear Family packs the contents of the box (16 CDs, 2 hardcover books) into an original-size Gibson ES series guitar case. Price will be 499 Euros (appr. $660).

[This is a minor correction to the October 2011 rewrite of a blog article originally posted on September 7th, 2011. Additional research revealed more facts and corrected some factual errors in the original post.]

In July [2011] I had to correct some common knowledge about Johnny B. Goode. Based on findings by Josep Rulló of Barcelona/Spain we learned that there were some errors with the so-called "complete" release of Berry's 1950s Chess recordings on HIP-O-Select's 4-CD-set Johnny B. Goode (HIP-O-Select B0009473-02).
Josep had another comment:

Sweet Little Sixteen – There's a lot of takes of this song in the Hip-O-Select set, but I think the one first released on the “America's Hottest Wax” LP is not there. I haven't heard that album for ages, but I seem to recall it had a false start (guitar intro only) and a complete take, wherein Chuck mixes the lyrics of the last verse with the lyrics from the first verse, and ends with “back in school again”. This line is not heard on any of the five (well, really four) takes used on the Hip-O CD set.

Josep's email started a long discussion about the various versions of Sweet Little Sixteen which can be found on the 4-CD set. And more importantly with the help of Morten Reff and Fred Rothwell we discussed in detail which versions can NOT be found on the 4-CD set.
The first part of Josep's comment was quite easy to solve. Just like with Johnny B. Goode take 2 the engineers at Universal clipped off the false starts when mastering the 2008 CD set. This happened to both the demo version (track 5 on CD2) and the previously unknown alternate take 11 (track 7 on CD 2). To listen to these false starts (and some studio chatter with the demo) you need to go back to records and CDs published in the 1980s.
The second part of Josep's comment lead into some more detailed discussions about the lyrics Berry sings because musically the multiple takes are very similar. Here's Josep again:

There are several lyrical differences between the available takes, but the most prominent one is in verses 1, 4, 5 and 7. On the master, Chuck sings “Boston, Pittsburgh, PA” in verses 1 and 7, and “Bandstand, Philadelphia, PA” in verses 4 and 5. Taking this as a starting point, you can find several variations. On the demo, take 3 and take 11, he even sings “Bandstand, Pittsburgh, PA” on verse 5, which is wrong not only lyrically, but also geographically !!. Of course, I think Chuck knew the lyrics perfectly, and in most of those takes he was merely trying to get the band together without paying much attention to the words, but this is useful to us today in order to tell one from the other.

By "master" Josep refers to the variant which finally made it to Chess single 1683 released January 1958. Given these lyrical variations one can differentiate between the four variants on the HIP-O-Select box easily:

• CD 2, track 5 - the "demo" version with Lafayette Leake on piano. Berry sings about Boston in verses 1 and 7, and about Bandstand in verses 4 and 5, but has the Bandstand mis-placed to Pittsburgh in verse 5.
• not on the set - the "demo" version complete with false start, studio talk and an extra guitar note at the end. This was first released on the bootleg LP "America's Hottest Wax" (Reelin' 001, 1979). The first legal release was on a German budget album called "The Giant's [sic] of Rock'n Roll" (K-tel TG 1367) in 1982, though less the false start. In full it appeared on Chess CXMP 2011 "Chess Masters" in March 1983 and Chess LP 9190 "More Rock'n'Roll Rarities" in August 1986. Note that for some reason the HIP-O-Select box only tells the original US releases.
• CD 2, track 6 - take 3 of the second recording session, the one which leads to the final recording and has Johnny Johnson on piano. This was unreleased until 2008 when it made it to the HIP-O set. Here Berry sings "Boston" in verses 1, 4, and 7, while the only "Bandstand" in verse 5 is mis-placed to Pittsburgh again. The recording ends with some studio talk.
• CD 2, track 7 - take 11, in which Berry puts "Boston" into verses 1 and 4, while verses 5 and 7 are about "Bandstand". Again Berry places the Bandstand to Pittsburgh during verse 5. This recording ends with someone coughing into the microphone. Again this version was unreleased before it was included into the HIP-O set - even though the box booklet incorrectly claims that this version had appeared as an alternate take on "Rock 'n' Roll Rarities" (Chess LP 92521, March 1986).
• CD 2, track 8 - take 14. Finally Berry gets the lyrics right in the way we know it: "Boston, Pittsburgh PA" in the first and last verse, "Bandstand, Philadelphia PA" in between, that is verses 4 and 5. The take ends with Chuck joking that they finally got it. This version of take 14, though without the final studio talk, was first released on the 6-LP set "The Chess Box" (Chess 80001) in 1988.
• CD 2, track 9 - take 14 again, though without the studio chat and accelerated by five per cent. It is this variant which was finally released as a hit single in 1958.

All of the variants listed above have Berry singing "back in class again" at the end of verse 6. So where is Josep's "back in school again" version?
Indeed there is a recording of Sweet Little Sixteen which is very similar to the final take except for the piano solo and Berry singing "school" instead of "class". This was the next-to-final take 13 of the recording session. Josep found it on Chess RCD034-2 titled "Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll", released in Spain in 1991. The take first surfaced on the two-LP set "Rock 'n' Roll Rarities" (Chess LP 92521) in March 1986, though in edited form.
On that double album there is a so-called unreleased version of Sweet Little Sixteen, which is take 13 preceded by a false start. However that false start does not belong to that take! Those who have access to the session tapes tell that the false start actually opens take 11, while take 13 never had a false start. Thus like we have found out with Johnny B. Goode, we must learn that the CHESS/MCA engineers in 1986 created unreleased versions by clipping and pasting parts from multiple takes into what they found to be a reasonable sequence.
This also explains why the HIP-O set contains take 11 and claims that this was a known take: The engineers at HIP-O found the take with the previously known false start (take 11) and included it in the set, without noticing that the take did not continue as known - and in addition they clipped off the false start, which was the only segment of the take known before.
Thus for now we have to add the following variants to our list:

• not on the set - false start of take 11, originally released as the first part of the so-called unreleased version on "Rock 'n' Roll Rarities" (Chess LP 92521, March 1986).
• not on the set - take 13 in which Berry sings "back in school again" during verse 6, originally released as the second part of that unreleased version. In unmodified form released on "Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll" (Chess RCD034-2, Spain 1991)

This now makes sweet little eight Chess studio recordings and variants of this famous tune. Only five of them are on the HIP-O-select box. So far for "complete" ...

For the sake of completeness I do not want to forget to tell that there is another studio recording of Sweet Little Sixteen made 1966 for Mercury. You can easily distinguish that one from the 1958 versions by the prominent tambourine playing.

I want to end this long post with another comment from Josep:

Man, can you believe the hours we've all spent listening to those takes? It shouldn't be that difficult to sort this out!!! If this isn't love for the music, then I don´t know what it is...

I usually don't quote from press releases, but this is good enough to make an exception:

The parameters of rock music were set one day in May 1955, when Chuck Berry recorded his debut single “Maybellene”. Chuck Berry was the rock’n’roll pioneer who turned the electric guitar into the main instrument of rock music. Every riff and solo played by rock guitarists over the last 60 years contains DNA that can be traced right back to Chuck Berry. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and a million other groups began to learn their craft by playing Chuck Berry songs. Chuck Berry is also a superb songwriter. In the course of three minutes he conjures up an image of the everyday life and dreams of a teenager, often with the focus on cars. Chuck Berry, born in 1926, was the first to drive up onto the highway and announce that we are born to run.

These are the reasons why Chuck berry is going to be honored with the Polar Music Prize 2014 on August 26th by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden in Stockholm.
Besides being honored with a great ceremony and given a prize money of 1,000,000 Swedish Kroner (appr. $150,000), which Berry will appreciate more, this prize puts Berry in one line not only with other renowned popular artists, but with exceptional composers and performers of classical music as well.
The Polar Music Prize is a legacy from Stig Anderson (1931-1997), one of the most famous figures in the Swedish music industry. A songwriter himself with an output of around 3,000 published titles, many of them chart hits, Anderson managed some of the biggest Swedish artists of the 1960s and then in the early 1970s became manager, co-writer, and producer of Sweden's most important pop group, ABBA. Anderson's record company Polar Music released all the original ABBA albums.

[Since 1992] the Polar Music Prize is an international music prize, which is awarded to individuals, groups or institutions in recognition of exceptional achievements in the creation and advancement of music. The Polar Music Prize awards two Laureates in order to celebrate music in all its various forms and to emphasize the original intention of the Polar Music Prize: To break down musical boundaries by bringing together people from all the different worlds of music.

To learn more about the prize, visit their website at polarmusicprize.org. The site also contains videos of the ceremonies, so expect to see Berry there as well. Along with their press release, the Prize Committee published a nice and almost correct brief biography of Berry at http://polarmusicprize.org/announcement/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/PMP_biografi_CB.pdf