Chuck Berry Live Tapes

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 are only available for listening online at Wolfgang's Vault, a commercial site which runs on the archives of promoter Bill Graham.
In this blog article I explained a legal (at least here) method to create an audio CD from the online show. And guess what, someone did!
On eBay and in various places you can now find a CD titled "Career on the riffs", which contains the show of December 29th, 1967. The CD has a label (Vintage Masters) and a number (VMCDR-116). The cover looks professionally made, but all in all the CD is handmade: a burned CD and a home printed cover.
Since Wolfgang's Vault does not allow you to sell CD copies of their contents, this seems to be an illegal copy. Let me know if you know better.

By the way: The creators of this CD cannot have learned about it here, because if they had, they would have omitted Steve Miller from the printed band listing.

For those who don't know it yet:
The famous Chuck Berry BBC show from 1972, best known from the Six Two Five bootlegs, was rebroadcast by German/French ARTE TV.
During this week, the video is available for you to watch at

arte.tv/plus7

Enjoy!

[Edit July 30: Removed embedded video as no longer available at arte.tv]

Last year I talked about the various Chuck Berry concert recordings available from San Francisco 1967. Fred Rothwell now told me that there's another concert recording from this era freshly at Wolfgang's Vault. Here's the link.
This third concert at Wolfgang's Vault is closely related to the last of the SF concerts described which was from December 29th. The newly released concert was the first of this set, recorded at the Winterland on December 26th, 1967.
Again Berry is backed by the Steve-Miller-less Miller band, i.e. Peterman, Turner, and Davis. All three are very quiet in the background, though. You almost cannot hear them. Also there's next to no audience noise. I leave it to you to decide whether this is good or bad.
The released concert is a little over 30 minutes long, so I expect some parts are missing. What's included is interesting, though. I don't remember many live tapes (if any) in which Berry performs "No Particular Place to Go" or "Back in the U.S.A.". Therefore a five minute version of the latter comes as a true surprise. Recommended listening.

Angie, webmistress of fumbleontheweb.com, was so kind to tell us about a nice concert report written by Des Henly of the Fumbles:

Just some information plus a question: I am (besides being a great fan of Chuck Berry's music) a friend of the 1970s band Fumble who had many of Chuck's songs in their repertoire and also recorded some Chuck Berry songs like 'No Money Down' or 'Let It Rock'. In their new blog 'Des Henly's Rock Years', Des Henly talks about Fumble's experiences when they backed Chuck Berry at a festival in Frankfurt in June 1973. Great story, and perhaps you find it interesting to read.

Yes, Angie, I found it interesting to read. So will the other readers of this site. Look here: http://www.fumbleontheweb.com/archive/memories/blog_chuckberry.htm
Angie's question is:

Do you know if there is any video material of that event existing? Because I have heard rumours that there is...

I have not seen any video material from the Radstadion Frankfurt concert of July 22nd, 1973. I know there is an audience tape of this Chuck Berry performance in front of 20.000 people. Also there are various photos from this event used both in magazines (e.g. Posterpress) and on record covers. Here's a cut-out from Bellaphon BL15107 "Original Oldies Vol. 3" from 1974 (Click it for a larger version). If any reader knows more about this concert, let us know.

Update [2010-03-01]: According to several other photos of this Berry performance it seems to be sure that the photos used on the Bellaphon cover have been taken by famous German photographer Barbara Klemm.

Interestingly the article on Chuck Berry's appearance at German Beat-Club TV 1972 resulted in a large number of emails. Among these was one by Dirk saying

About one and a half years ago there was a Rarities issue of the Vinyl TV series in which they broadcast another previously unseen part of this show.

I checked and yes: On July 1st, 2007 German TV station EinsFestival broadcast a Beat-Club Rarities show including unseen performances by Ike and Tina Turner, the Kinks, the Doors (less Jim Morrison), the Grateful Dead, and an interview with a drunk Steve Miller.
Also included was Chuck Berry with "Roll Over Beethoven" as seen below.
The announcers also talked about why there are such unseen performances. They explained that when bands or singers took the time to travel to Bremen, they would not want to do this for three minutes of play. So they performed for half an hour or more and Mike Leckebusch (Beat-Club director) let the cameras run.
I also had some time to re-check the old Beat-Club broadcasts. These differ from the Lost Concert broadcast a bit in that both "Johnny B. Goode" and "Let It Rock" had a color feedback of the camera input projected on the blue-screen behind Berry and the band. The latter also has an insert listing the artist names Snow, Kinsley, Harrison, Campbell, and Berry.

Two weeks ago German digital TV channel EinsFestival broadcast a half-hour show titled "Vinyl: The Lost Concerts - Chuck Berry". A fellow collector was so kind to send me a copy on DVD. Thanks!
It turned out that this lost concert has been used in part for various broadcasts, but also contained some unknown and interesting footage.
The "show" was recorded in Radio Bremen's TV studio on March 24th, 1972. Berry was touring England from 22nd to 29th March backed by Rockin' Horse. The band consisted of Mike Snow on piano, Jimmy Campbell on guitar, Billy Kinsley on bass and Dave Harrison on drums. On the 24th they flew over to the town of Bremen to record some songs for German TV station Radio Bremen. (I'm guessing here as the recording can also have happened in some studio in England.) They returned to perform in Liverpool the next day and ended the tour at the BBC studios in London to perform in front of TV cameras again, this time for BBC's Sound For Saturday show. This London show is best known for the Vinyl bootlegs called "Six Two Five" containing most parts of the excellent show.
In Bremen, Berry and the four-piece band performed in front of a blue screen and without audience. The Lost Concerts contained recordings of the following songs:

• Memphis, Tennessee
  a previously unseen performance


• Let It Rock
  this cut was first broadcast in show #78 of the famous German Beat-Club show on May 27th, 1972, two months after the recording. You can watch this segment on a brand-new DVD set "The Story of Beat-Club, Vol. 3"


• Carol incorrectly titled Oh Carol
  has a false start and therefore remained unseen so far. A second reason might be that the cameramen were unaware of the duckwalk and could not follow Berry dancing along the studio stage.


• Wee Wee Hours titled with an extra In the
  this song features a short introduction by Berry and some fine blues playing by the band. It has some distorted black and white copy of the camera input projected onto the blue screen. This recording was used in the Beat-Club show of May 27th, 1972 and is likewise available on the DVD set noted above.


• School Day incorrectly titled Ring Ring Goes The Bell
  here the blue screen shows a moving image of the then current London Sessions album. This clip was not used in the Beat-Club show, but in another Radio Bremen broadcast called "Musikladen" on December 13th, 1972. You can get this clip on the DVD "Best of Musikladen, Vol. 13"


• You Never Can Tell obviously mislabeled as well: C'est La Vie
  probably the best song recorded here, but unseen until now. Berry jokes around with the band, modifies the text at will, and inserts some nice guitar solo. Indeed a lost gem. Note: One of the first Beat-Club broadcasts already had a clip of You Never Can Tell, though just audio with Go-Go girls dancing and Berry record covers in the background.


• Johnny B. Goode
  performed nicely including duckwalk, piano solo and all. This segment was used in the Beat-Club broadcast of May 27th and is included both in the full "The Story of Beat-Club, Vol. 3" DVD set as well as in a cheaper single DVD called "Beat-Club Best of '72"

The Lost Concerts broadcast end with another segment from School Dayseen before, though this time without the album cover projected onto the blue screen.
Missing from the new broadcast is an interview conducted with Berry while he was in Bremen. This interview has been used in a later Radio Bremen radio show. Read here the details about the CD set containing this interview.



Note: Torsten Schmitt's book "Beat-Club: Alle Sendungen. Alle Stars. Alle Songs" claims that the full set of songs has been broadcast on December 31st, 1972 as part of the show "Das ist Rock 'n' Roll". I have not read or heard this anywhere else. If it were, there would surely exist some bootleg tape or video of this, none I have seen so far. As Schmitt is also incorrect with the backing band here, we leave this open to further research.

A few weeks ago I learned about a new CD out there. Deliver Me From the Days of Old (Crying Steel Records CSR001) was a bit difficult to get as it is not stocked by the usual CD shops on the net. Even though this is a professional looking CD, it seems that the creators of this CD did not have the rights to publish the recordings contained.
The CD is a collection of all the Berry recordings never transferred to CD before - well, maybe not all, but many. You'll find Roll 'Em Pete, the Chess recording even missed in the Charly 9-CD set. You'll find the two recordings from the American Hot Wax soundtrack. There is the complete Tokyo Session LP and the two extremely rare recordings from the album The Day of R&B. All the stuff you have in your vinyl collection but never listened to for years.
In addition the CD contains the four songs recorded during the Newport Jazz Festival 1958 which were to be found on a rare Swedish CD before only. And finally they included the two unreleased Chess masters taken from the ARC Music Promotional CD. For details read the corresponding sections of this site.
This is a lot of good stuff. Whoever created this CD really knew about Chuck Berry recordings and what is easy to get and what not. The same holds for the 8-page booklet which has many excellent Berry photos in addition to complete details about the included recordings. They even included cover photos of the original vinyl albums. Very well done!
To my ears some of the vinyl transfers run too fast, maybe ten percent or even more. But what really is a pity is that this CD is not official meaning that you have to hunt for it on record markets. This collection should have deserved better.

On February 6th, 2008 Chuck Berry received the Golden Camera Lifetime Achievement Award. The show was recorded in Berlin and broadcast by German TV two days later.
I had to record the show on video due to business travel. But when I looked at it today, it was more than disappointing.
The introduction by Klaus Meine was ok, even though it was nothing more than just a few sentences everyone could have said by reading any half-page biography. Why didn't Mr. Meine tell a bit about how Berry's music influenced him personally or the Scorpions as a band?
When Chuck entered the stage, the standing ovations from the crowd (all famous TV people by themselves) was long and great. It was easily to see how much Chuck was moved emotionally. Looked like this was not something he went through often before.
Chuck's thanking speech was basically a poem recitation. I really would have liked to hear this in his original language. Unfortunately German TV found it necessary to not only translate Chuck's words, but also to broadcast this translation much too loud. The translation of course was no longer in rhyme or even a poem, just some senseless sentences. A pity! If someone has a recording of the speech in original language, I'd love to get a copy.
And then came the worst part of all. Chuck Berry lip-syncing to "Roll over Beethoven". A song he still performs today in every concert multiple times each month. But German TV (as most other TV stations today) requested play-back. So we see Chuck standing in front of a band of famous German musicians. And we hear the Chess recording of 1956 play! There's the famous guitar solo - but there is no lead guitar on stage! Chuck just singing (well, opening and closing his mouth). The rhythm guitarist always turned his back to the camera, obviously ashamed of this performance. You see the musicians exchange views and shaking their heads. What a pity! This could have been a great moment, but it was just shameful.
Niels Rozeboom placed a video recording of the Berry segments at YouTube, in case you want to look for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmVfHzZz50U
The best part of the show Niels missed to post, though. Because also Robert De Niro received a Lifetime Achievement Award, each and every woman on stage talked to De Niro who was waiting in the audience, either requesting a date or an autograph. Only German TV clown Stefan Raab took the opportunity to tell: "Sorry Mr. De Niro, but I love Chuck Berry!"

Late addition: Wolfgang Guhl pointed me to an article on echo-muenster.de. There Steffi Stephan explained that a live show was planned first, but did not work out due to "organizational complications". Which means that the organizers could not provide Chuck with the guitar he requested, and that they could not agree on the numbers to perform. Thanks for the link, Wolfgang!

Over in the Chuck Berry Forum, Johan Hasselberg guided a reader to his description of the Chuck Berry concert recordings available at Wolfgang's Vault. This reminded me to finalize what I was writing on these and other recordings from San Francisco 1967.
During 1967 Chuck Berry was a regular guest at Bill Graham's venues "Fillmore" and "Winterland" in San Francisco. Currently we know of four concerts which have been recorded there and are available to us.
March 19, 1967 - Fillmore West
This concert recording is available for listening at Wolfgang's Vault. Wolfgang's Vault is a commercial operation by Bill Sagan which makes use of the archives of Wolfgang Grajonca, better known as Bill Graham. Until his death in 1991 the famous promoter Bill Graham had collected a huge pile of concert posters, concert recordings, and other musical memorabilia. Some of the contents of Wolfgang's Vault is for sale, such as for instance the original poster to this concert. You cannot purchase a CD with this concert, though. You have to listen to it online or cut yourself a CD with it.
The concert starts out with Berry talking about Bill Graham and how he called him to play there. According to the description on Wolfgang's Vault, the backup band is the later famous Steve Miller Band (Miller, Peterman, Turner, and Davis). You cannot tell, though. The backup band is nothing special at all. In fact, I don't hear Peterman's organ nor Miller's harmonica. The one who can be identified is Bill Graham, though, thanking Berry before the encore.
While this is a concert of Berry's greatest hits with not a single blues number, one track stands out. Listen to track 5 where Berry recites a poem, just like he later did on the San Francisco Dues album in 1971.
June 27 and 29, 1967 - Fillmore West
We usually count these two concerts as one, because this is what has been released by Mercury under the name Live at Fillmore Auditorium (Mercury LP 21138/61138). The first side of this very first Chuck Berry live album was recorded during the June 27 show, the second side during the June 29 show. Again the concert poster is available for sale at Wolfgang's Vault.
The original Mercury LP contained ten tracks of which the first and last were medleys. The LP was later re-issued on CD twice. Be careful which CD you purchase, because their contents is not identical. The re-issue by Rebound Records (314 520 203-2) is available from the usual webstores. It has two songs marked as CD bonus tracks both of which are not! However, the CD indeed comes with three tracks not found on the original album: Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, Reelin' and Rockin', and an early version of My Ding-A-Ling. This re-issue misses the Wee Baby Blues from the LP version, though!
An earlier re-issue by Mercury/PolyGram Records (Mercury 836072-2) contains all ten tracks from the original album, plus the three bonus tracks, and in addition Bring Another Drink and Worried Life Blues.. Unfortunately this more complete CD is long out of print and seems to have been made in very little quantity. If you ever see one, get it!
As before Berry is backed by the Steve Miller Blues Band which in contrast to most other of Chuck's backup bands here really takes part of the show. Most importantly to note is Miller providing second vocals to It Hurts Me Too, but also his prominent harmonica playing e.g. on Flyin' Home greatly enhances this performance. Again Bill Graham is heard introducing Berry, and at the end of the show Chuck asks the audience to applaude "the most wonderful promoter I ever had".
December 29, 1967 - Winterland
This fourth concert of 1967 again is to be heard in Wolfgang's Vault. The concert poster is on sale there as well, a bit expensive, though.
According to the site, Berry is again backed up by the Steve Miller Band. However, given that neither a harmonica is heard nor a duet sung (even though the duet single was out since November), it is to be doubted who in fact played there. Listen carefully to Bill Graham at the end of the show. Does he say "The Steve-Miller-less Steve Miller Band"? Maybe Miller wasn't on stage at all.
Due to this, we hear just another Berry concert typical of that time. Of interest is a very long version of Around and Around. Also Memphis, Tennessee is over 7 minutes long. Two songs are incomplete, probably because someone had to turn the cassette tape. And there is Bye Bye Johnny played as an encore, a title very seldom heard in Berry concerts.
It is a pity that we cannot purchase these concerts on CD from Wolfgang's Vault despite they sell other concerts at least as MP3 files.
How to create a CD from an audio stream
Whether it is legal for Wolfgang's Vault to broadcast these and hundreds of other concerts is a question currently in court. Thus it may happen that these concerts will be removed from the site's playlist at any time. Therefore you may want to create your own backup copy of these concerts. At least here in Germany it is legal to cut yourself a private copy of a radio or Internet broadcast. In fact we have to pay an extra amount on copiers, cassettes, and CD-ROMs which covers the artist's fees. It is not legal to sell such private cuts, so don't ask me.
Here is how you create your own backup copy of the concerts: (a) Hook your old tape deck to the computer speaker port, go to the concert site, press the Record button and let the concert play. (b) Get yourself a software which can record the audio output of your sound card into an MP3 or WAV file. Then burn the file onto a CD-ROM. I recommend to use Jens Fangmeier's Feurio! which is one of the best CD writing packages and the one I use - a licensed version, of course. Feurio! can record the concert and directly burn it onto a CD. Note that Wolfgang's Vault broadcasts each track on its own with short breaks in between. Gluing the tracks together is a bit more work you may not want to go through.