Announcements

As you might have already seen, the Collector's Guide to the Music of Chuck Berry looks a bit different than before.

I tried to make the site better readable. This includes different fonts and colors, but most importantly it includes the placement and size of images.

All cover scans are now placed in separate columns to the left and right of their corresponding description. This leads to some images displaying slightly smaller than before. However, as you certainly know, you can click on each and every image to see a larger and higher resolution version.

The site should display correctly on all of the common browsers both on computers and smartphones. Please check with your equipment. You may need to refresh the display in order to have your browser show the most recent version and not a cached copy you looked at before. If you encounter any display problems with the new look please let me know in email. Include a short description of your equipment.

While working on the layout I also included several changes to the contents. This includes a few new images, some changes to descriptions, and correction of a few factual or spelling errors. Enjoy!

Those of you who follow these articles and the accompanying web site regularly will notice some recent changes.

As you know, this web site not only describes all of Chuck Berry's recordings and where they first appeared. I also show images of all these original records, CDs, and books.

Every image is contained twice: Within the text there is a smaller version working like a thumbnail image, when you click it you get a higher resolution image full of details. I spent a lot of work photographing the covers, enhancing them, repairing damages and so on.

Unfortunately I find this work misused all over the Internet. The copyright notes at the bottom of each page tell explicitly that the rights to all original covers belong to the corresponding record company, publisher, and their artists. It also says that the copyright to the enhanced digital photographs of these covers as shown on these pages belong to the author of this web site and the company owning it.

The copyright note says that you may use these images within other web sites if (1) you link to the original image (and not copy it) and (2) YOU TELL WHERE YOU GOT IT FROM. However, I find more and more websites using my work without telling the origins and at least linking back to the original pages. Interestingly these web sites pretending to show my work as their original contents (and thus stealing my work) are not only those who also offer to download the corresponding music (and thus stealing Chuck Berry's work). I also find many blog entries such as mine which talk about a record or another and simply take the image from my site. Which would be OK if they follow the rules listed above.

I know that Google and the like make it perfectly easy to find any text or image and to pretend that it would be yours. However, every web author knows that digital contents (such as photos and texts) is copyrighted just like any book or song. If you use foreign contents, you must have the original author's permission and depending on the use must pay them. I offer free re-use of the Chuck Berry-related texts and images on this site at no charge, but you must ask and you must tell the origin.

As most people do not ask and do not tell the origins, I decided to place the origin into the image itself. Thus in addition to the hidden copyright notes in all of the images here, every photo now has a watermark which tells where it comes from. I know that this makes the images useless for reprints. So if you want to use some of the photos from this site in a publication, such as Fred and Morten did with their books, let me know and I will provide you with an unmodified digital image. All others need to live with the watermarked images, sorry.

Only a few weeks after the CD release, the contents of Hip-O-Select's latest issue "Have Mery - His Complete Chess Recordings 1969 to 1974" is now also available for MP3 download and purchase at amazon.com.
This allows me to add more sound to these pages. As you know, throughout the discography wherever you see a little speaker icon next to a song title, clicking on this icon plays a short sample from this recording. Since the Listen To pages also include the samples of other variants of this specific song, you can easily compare versions.
By adding the samples from "Have Mercy" to the Back-at-Chess chapter there are now almost 400 song samples on this site - 392 to be exact.
If you are interested in getting the complete MP3 file and not only a 30 seconds sample, you can simply click on the Buy Now button of the amazon MP3 player. This directly gets you to the corresponding sales page at amazon.com.
[Disclosure: If you purchase an MP3 file through the samples from this page, I will receive a minor percentage of the amount you pay.]

I have completed the links to the amazon MP3 offers.
This means you can now listen to excerpts of

• all Chuck Berry recordings from Chess records between 1955 and 1966
• more than half of the Mercury recordings
• some of the later Chess tracks
• the 60th birthday concert
• the Atco recordings
• and various live recordings from Toronto, Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Coventry, Wembley and Peterborough

99% of the 334 MP3 clips are offered by amazon U.S.A., a few are only available from amazon UK or amazon Germany. In those cases I added links to the corresponding files on these sites.
I think I have found all the Chuck Berry tracks offered by amazon. This turned out to be much more complicated than what you would expect. Here are some of the problems I ran into checking out the almost 1.000 MP3 clips listed by amazon's search function:

• amazon (or the suppliers) digitize albums, not songs. Therefore one and the same recording such as the Chess version of Maybellene is listed 12 times from various albums. And don't be confused that running times may vary several seconds.
• Especially the live versions such as from Toronto vary in length a lot, but we know this from the CDs already.
• Sometimes the same recording is listed under various titles.
• There's a huge mix of incorrect spellings both with song titles and artist names.
• Almost none of the live version contains any kind of information about recording date or place.

Due to this there may be errors. If you find one, let me know! Within a week there have been more than 1.000 accesses to the MP3 pages. Even though most of this were by search engines, it looks as if you find this addition to my site helpful. Tell me if I can make something even better. And no - there is no way to play the complete songs without paying for it.

This is a site about music. But it has been a site without music - until now.
In contrast to other music sites I had not included any sound clips or complete songs within this site. There was a good reason: If you use music for any commercial or non-commercial purpose, you have to pay the musician and the composer. Since I do not earn any money from this site, I cannot afford to license music for inclusion here. I know that other webmasters think and act differently and simply use music they cut from records or copied from somewhere. However, such is not only unlawful, in my opinion it is highly unfair against the creator of the music. How can you expect someone to create music if nobody is willing to pay them for it? It is really poor if like some weeks ago someone (himself a musician) asks me questions about some Berry tracks because he had a downloaded copy of a CD only - and not the commercial one with a great booklet answering his questions. Sigh!
OK, back to music. I recently found a legal way to provide you with excerpts from almost each and every Chuck Berry recording. Yes!
I started with Berry's original Chess era and added sound to every recording listed therein. That means you can now check out each and every recording Berry made between 1955 and 1966, including alternate takes and more. Isn't that great?
So if you see me mentioning as song such as

Maybellene

simply click on the loudspeaker symbol behind the song name. Try it!
Your browser will open a new tab or window where you should see one or in this case multiple Amazon MP3 Widgets. If it does not, this is because the widget needs both JavaScript enabled and a recent Adobe Flash Player installed. I'm sorry for that as this site nowhere else requires additional software other than a W3C-compatible Webbrowser (which I am proud of), but I decided that in this case the benefits overweight.
In the case of Maybellene there will be one widget for the original Chess version, one for the Mercury re-recording and several widgets for different live versions. If there are alternate takes, those will be displayed as well. Click on a widget to listen to this specific version. The widget displays controls for volume, pause and more.
This service is provided free by amazon.com. But of course you will not be able to listen to the complete track. There is a thirty seconds excerpt of each variant. That is all that is provided for free. If you are located in the U.S.A., you can use the widget's Buy MP3 button to purchase a DRM-free MP3 file of the complete track. Unfortunately amazon.com does not sell these MP3s to other countries and to make matters worse, other amazon stores do not stock all of the songs you find at amazon.com. That's a pity, but I cannot change it. Maybe I will add links to non-U.S. shops in the future like I did with the CD offers, but that's many days of work.
Please enjoy the new addition to this site and let me know what you think of it.

[Updated 11.11.2008]
Despite all the rumors and discussions happening in various online forums Chuck Berry's European Tour started today. Here is the schedule as officially published:

• 10.11. - Hallenstadion, Zürich (CH)
• 11.11. - Cirque Royal, Brussels (B)
• 13.11. - Club Ludre, Nancy (F)
• 14.11. - Le Zenith, Paris (F)
• 15.11. - Le Zenith D' Amiens, Amiens (F)
• 16.11. - Muziekcentrum Schaaf, Leeuwarden (NL)
• 17.11. - Jazz Cafe, London (GB)
• 18.11. - Jazz Cafe, London (GB)
• 19.11. - Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam (NL)
• 20.11. - Grugahalle, Essen (D)
• 21.11. - Olympiahalle, Innsbruck (A)
• 22.11. - SAP-Arena, Mannheim (D)

You may or may not have noticed, but for many months the pages of the website this Blog belongs to (http://www.crlf.de/ChuckBerry/) all ended with a question:

Would you be interested in buying a printed version of this website's contents?

Many readers clicked on this question and reached a poll questionary asking whether they would be interested and if, what they would be willing to pay for it. Over 150 readers filled the form with reasonable answers. Thanks to all of you!
In the meantime I had to remove the poll because 95% to 99% of the entered data came from automatic Spam-Bots entering random data just to see what it may be good for. Well, it was good for shutting down this kind of poll
Anyway I would like to summarize the results of the poll as those who entered their opinions might want to know what others thought.
As I said, in total there were some 150 useful replies. About 75% would be interested in buying a book version of this website. This corresponds to the opinions expressed in personal communication:

1. The site's contents is useful.
2. The site contains too much information to read it online, so you want to be able to read it offline while checking your record collection.

The second question asked how much you would be willing to pay for a printed version. The replies indicate that you have a reasonable knowledge of book prices and that you would be willing to spend a reasonable amount getting a book documenting Chuck Berry's complete recording output:

• The average suggested price for a black&white version is between US$20 and US$25.
• The average suggested price for a color version is around US$40.

About 5 readers suggested a price of US$75 or more. Thanks for the compliments! And about the same number suggested less than US$10. Hmmm....
Unfortunately printing a book is expensive. This site's contents adds to some 150 to 200 pages in print. Selling such a book for US$25 would require that at least 1.000 copies could be printed and sold at full price. This is not to expect, though, unless it would come from a mayor publisher. And printing the book for the 100 of you who already said they would buy it rises the price to the US$100 range.
Therefore unless a professional publisher approaches me covering most of the investment, I do not see a printed version offered in a bookstore ever. Sorry!
However, what I can envision to create is not a printed, but a printable version. I already experimented with creating a nicely laid out booklet. If I ever find the time I will put all of this site's contents into a document which prints clean and readable. I will then offer a version of this document for download so you can read it offline and print for yourself.
Such a printable PDF file will not be available for free, though. I will have to charge some amount to cover the effort spent. How much would such a printable version of this site's contents be worth to you? Let me know.

Hi everybody!
All of August not a single blog message was posted here. The reason was simple: I was traveling Denmark for some weeks - on a bike. A report will be posted soon at a different place on this site.
What did we miss in terms of Chuck Berry recordings? Nothing I know of. No new releases, no strange items found. So you did not miss anything.
Something you may have missed is Berry's performance at the U.S. TV show hosted by Jay Leno. You can view the segment on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVYh8i4_gh0. There's a discussion taking place at chuckberry.com about the quality of the performance with most forum writers highly praising Chuck. My view is a bit different:

Chuck's guitar 'playing' is next to inexistent. Whatever comes out of his guitar has nothing to do with the song - And I really LIKE the original recording! Also his singing misses all of the melody of the original. So just like Chuckie Boy I am disappointed when Chuck acts as a parody of himself such as in this show. Sorry!
Chuck created some of the nicest recordings of the rock music and authored a number of its greatest songs. But seeing him downplay these songs worse and worse over the last 40 years really hurts.
There's an old story about Chuck refusing to "dance" (playback) to his music in Dick Clark's Bandstand show. But seeing a performance like the one at Jay Leno's I wish he'd learned better.

In addition what you may have missed are the problems with Berry's last European tour where he missed some shows and the uncertainties about his upcoming European shows. I will not comment on those here as this site is dedicated to Berry's music - only! But I recommend you read some of the other Chuck Berry sites on the net before spending too much money on tickets.

This is a site about music. But up to now it does not let you hear music.
However, shops such as amazon.com not only sell music as MP3 files, they also provide samples for you to listen to before you buy. Each sample is a 30 seconds excerpt from the middle of the song. Thus it does not give you the full song, but at least you get something you can check and compare.
I am wondering if I should add such song samples to this site. This would allow you to click on a song title and listen to it. It needs some re-writing of the site's pages, but if you're interested, I'd do that over the next weeks. So please let me know if you think this is worth the effort.
Here's a sample of how the end result may work: the complete contents of Berry's last studio album:

In total amazon.com offers MP3 downloads (and samples) of more than 200 Berry recordings, from his complete 1950's stuff to obscure live recordings.
Click here to see and listen to all Chuck Berry MP3s at amazon.com

With the recent addition of news about rare Chuck Berry items offered on eBay, readers wondered how they could keep track with changes on this Blog.
I cannot add new articles on a daily basis as this is just a hobby and I have multiple other things to do which are more important than writing for this blog. So a new article is posted only once a week or less often.
How do you know if I added new contents? The trick is to use RSS. This Blog like many others offers an RSS feed providing you with the latest changes. An RSS feed is like a very short summary containing just the latest headlines.
To make use of this feature, you need to have a browser which knows what RSS feeds are. Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 (not 6) are examples. If your browser does not support RSS, there are many add-ons and seperate RSS readers out there. Simply google for RSS and your browser name and you will get tons of pages.
In Firefox an RSS capable website is shown by the RSS icon next to the site address:

In Internet Explorer 7 the RSS icon is highlighted if a site provides an RSS feed.
In either case, click on the icon and follow the prompts to subscribe to this feed.
Once done, your browser will check regularly if a new entry was posted on this Blog. The RSS information is very small, so this does not create any overhead or costs to be noticed. Depending on your browser you can now easily check for new contents. In Firefox, for instance, simply click on the newly added bookmark button to get the latest headers:

As a reader of the discography on this site you will know that by clicking on the Get It Now icon or on a record's label number you will go to a page showing you how to order re-issues or originals from Internet shops such as amazon. This is intended to simplify retrieving Berry recordings still missing in your collection. I have now extended this list of offers to include eBay items as well. Thus by choosing this option you will be presented with a list of Buy Now or auctioned items related to the record you are looking for. Usually these are re-issues, some eBay sellers also offer the originals. However, an eBay search can also guide you to some item completely unrelated. So be careful which item you bid on. Let me know if some of the eBay links do not work as expected.

Recently Andy McKaie of Universal complained about this site's section on recommendations: The Starter's Collection (What you must have).
I welcome critical comments, especially from Andy - because I hope he welcomes mine as well. He had two things to note: my recommendations being outdated and my selection of the most important Berry CDs being illegal.
On the first topic, Andy was completely correct. I had not updated this section since 2001! Shame on me. Since then there have been several and very good compilations of Berry's work. So if my intention is to present a Starter's Collection to a fresh Berry collector, I have to present CDs which are relevant and currently on sale. Agreed!
On the second topic I disagree with Andy. He complained that the two most important compilations I recommended were not from Universal/MCA, but from UK's Charly Records. Andy insists that Charly never had the rights to produce these CDs (which was decided in court). So he says these were essentially bootlegs and I should not recommend bootlegs. Yes and no.
Yes, I shall not encourage you to produce or to buy bootlegged records. I create copyrighted material for a living and therefore I am very strict against bootlegging, may it be software, records, or copyrighted text such as this. Where this site shows or describes bootlegs, this is purely for documenting purposes. It is nowhere that you will find recommendations or even purchase information for unofficial releases here. The descriptions are for the collector only, showing that these items exist, usually because the legal copyright owners failed to produce the material in appropriate form.
Having said that, let's continue with No: In contrast to Andy's statements, in my opinion the Charly records and CDs are not bootlegs. I do not know about Charly themselves, although I think they were under the impression to own the needed licenses. Otherwise they would not have spend such an amount of work into creating very nice and expensive CD sets. In any case I am 100% certain that record sellers as well as buyers were confident that they traded legitimate releases back then. I know I was. These items have been legally sold and can be so re-sold today. And for items such as the Bio album, the Charly CD sets are still the only way to purchase CD versions of these songs in a legally correct way. So until Universal re-releases these, I will continue to recommend getting the Charly CDs, even though this is next to impossible nowadays.
In any case I have reworked the The Starter's Collection (What you must have). Enjoy and feel free to comment!

Over the last few days I updated several of the discography pages of this site. I included the new Complete 50's CD set and made some related corrections in the Chess section, changed one image in the Mercury section, and added some information to the Radio Stations section. Use the links to the right to see the corresponding sections.
You can always see the latest changes to this site using the Revisions page. This includes all additions and changes to the main pages of this site. Not included is this Blog as it is supposed to change often. Visit regularly or use the RSS feed to stay informed with the Blog contents.

Usually I write only about Chuck Berry records and books I own or at least have physically seen. This is an exception, simply because I and many others are awaiting this book for many years. So finally we are to see at least Volume One of The Chuck Berry International Directory. This book will answer all the questions you continue to send me in email about this and this record you have, about this and this cover, about this and this label...
Here's an edited quote from George Groom-White's press release:

Music Mentor Books of York, England are to publish an extensive reference work about rock'n'roll's most influential guitarist and composer, Chuck Berry.
Compiled by world-renowned Norwegian Berry collector and expert, Morten Reff, THE CHUCK BERRY INTERNATIONAL DIRECTORY will appear in four volumes. Each volume will be around 500 pages long and will retail for GBP 24.99 (approx US$ 50.00).
Volume 1 is scheduled for publication on 15 April 2008 and will contain discographies for over 40 countries, plus dozens of rare label and sleeve illustrations.
Volume 2 will be published later in 2008 and will contain details of bootlegs, radio albums, movies, TV shows, video and DVD releases, international tours, Berry's achievements and awards, his songs, roots and influence on other artists, tributes, Chuck Berry in print, fan clubs and websites, plus annotated discographies of keyboard wizard Johnnie Johnson and the ultimate Berry copyist, Eddy Clearwater.
Volumes 3 and 4 will be published in 2009 and consist of a massive listing of around 4,000 cover versions and some 800 soundalikes on record, in the movies and on TV that bear testimony to Berry's immense influence on Western popular music over the past half-century.
For more information, or to order online, visit the publisher's website: http://musicmentor0.tripod.com.

Given the task of collecting all this information about Chuck Berry record releases, books, DVDs, and cover versions, it is no wonder that Volume One has been promised for years. But now it's near and both Morten and George expect the April release date to be met. YES!
I would not bet anything on the dates George lists for the other volumes, but nevertheless: Write, Morten, write! We are waiting!

Late addition: To pre-order this book, Click Here!