Chuck Berry, The Definitive Collection

Chuck Berry Biography Chuck Berry's vast contribution to the music world is reflected in the plaudits he has won from many of the most well known artists who followed him. As a songwriter, guitarist and performer, he shaped rock and roll and has more than earned his place in the Top 5 of the Rolling Stone list of The Immortals. In 2004 six of his songs found their way onto the magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs... Chuck Berry is still alive. Sixty years ago, he invented rock 'n' roll. He all but vanished. He still plays, though. Even records new material. But not for us. . . . He was maybe six, maybe seven when he found his father's perpetual-motion machine Friction. It didn't work. But the son chuck Berry made something that's still going. You still hear it today, One of the first records he made was tucked away inside the Voyager spacecraft, chosen to represent humanity itself to the cosmos, and that spacecraft is now somewhere way out there, on the edge of the solar system, barreling through the frictionless vacuum. So he succeeded where his father failed. He created something that will go on forever. Chuck Berry invented rock 'n' roll. Okay, nobody invented rock 'n' roll. It's a patchwork of blues and country and folk, and it's more than that, too. Chuck Berry's music wasn't totally anything. His first single, "Maybellene," was built out of an old white hillbilly country song, then fed through the blender of Berry's guitar and Willie Dixon's bass until something entirely new poured out. And whatever that was, that new sound, that white-black hybrid, Berry ran with it, and the rest of the world did, too. There's no arguing that the songs that Berry wrote in the mid-1950s - songs like "Johnny B. Goode," "Sweet Little Sixteen," and "Roll Over Beethoven" - are the bedrock substrates underlying pretty much everything we now call rock 'n' roll. "If you tried to give rock 'n' roll another name," he said, "you might call it Chuck Berry."

STEELY DAN Chronicles (2006 US exclusive limited edition 3-CD set comprising of the albums Cant Buy A Thrill Countdown To Ecstasy and Pretzel Logic containing a total of 29 tracks presented in unique 6" x 10" hardback book style pack complete with individual album booklets. This copy has some minimal storage wear with contents immaculate now long deleted!)

We may not know who wrote the book of love, but the author of the rock & roll dictionary was Charles Edward "Chuck" Berry. You've got a signature guitar riff that other giants (think Rolling Stones) have based entire careers on. Songs such as "School Day" told teen tales as though they were novels. "Too Much Monkey Business" in where Bob Dylan discovered poetry and rap music found a contemporary starting point. "Johnny B. Goode," "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Back in the USA"--the titles alone evoke unparalleled rock atmosphere. If this three-CD set contains less unreleased ephemera than the usual box, it's because there are so many essentials to squeeze in. This one's got 'em all, A to Z. --Ben Edmonds

The second volume of complete Chuck Berry Chess masters takes us from 1960 to 1966 with 108 tracks spread across four CDs, including 18 unreleased tracks! And among those unreleased tracks are a 45-minute live concert from 1963 (red-hot versions of Johnny B. Goode and Let It Rock ). Other highlights include original stereo versions of such hits as No Particular Place to Go; You Never Can Tell , and Nadine (Is It You?) , plus two jams with Bo Diddley, Chuck's Beat and Bo's Beat . Everything is documented inside a lavish booklet. Flat-out brilliant...you need this.

The 20th Century Masters series is the best-selling single-artist line in music history and is being re-released by Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) in its ground-breaking, environmentally-friendly packaging format. A first for the music industry, the standard package (both sleeve and tray) will be completely paper-recyclable, continuing the company's long-standing commitment to being "green."

To further reduce the amount of paper in the Eco-Pack, the CD booklet will no longer be offered. Official liner notes are easily accessible on the Internet at http://www.ilovethatsong.com/green.

UMe is the first North American music company to replace the traditional jewel case with recycled paperboard sleeves and the plastic tray with trays made from PaperFoam®, a new packaging technology from Shorewood Packaging, a business of International Paper, that is paper-recyclable and biodegradable. Shorewood Packaging is the first North American packaging supplier to produce disc trays from PaperFoam®.

From the rockabilly flavored Maybellene to the adrenalin rush of Dear Dad (both about automobiles!) this formidable collection spans ten years and over 20 Hot 100 hits. They're all here. School Day, Rock And Roll Music, Roll Over Beethoven, Sweet Little Sixteen, Johnny B. Goode, Nadine, No Particular Place To Go. This is a non-stop hymn to the USA; a crash course chronicle of high school hops, teen romance and rock 'n' roll cartography. Hear the most imitated electric guitar licks of all time; driving riffs which separate Chuck Berry music from the jump blues of his predecessors.

'Every guitarist I auditioned would have to play Johnny B. Goode' (Ronnie Hawkins). Chuck Berry is an enigmatic man. Charming one minute and cold the next. But this hit-packed compilation is red-hot from start to finish.

'Why should I write songs? Chuck Berry wrote them all!' (George Thorogood).

It was, it's been said, Chuck Berry who started it all and, in truth, his influence is incalculable and deeply felt especially by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. As John Lennon once put it, if you wanted to give rock 'n' roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'; Jagger and Richards are said to have met when Richards clocked a Chuck Berry album under Jagger's arm.

No other songwriter has articulated the demands of the consumer society so vividly nor understood the feelings and frustrations of youth so perfectly (yet, remarkably, he was 31 when Sweet Little Sixteen was released). Chuck wrote unforgettable playlets about automobile gadgetry, wayward women, classroom repression and rock 'n' roll itself. Each of these 32 tracks is a monument to his trademark guitar, the vibrant economy of his lyrics and the unifying, uplifting and enduring power of a catalogue which provided the biggest single stimulus for the '60s R&B revival, the Merseybeat explosion and the British Invasion.

Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll!

Fulfilling Phil Chess's prophecy, Chuck Berry returned to Chess Records in 1969 after a three year stay with Mercury Records. And it was like he never left, as his very first session produced a great two-sided single, "Tulane" b/w "Have Mercy Judge." The record didn't chart, but it was obvious that Chuck was truly "back home" (as his first album back on Chess was called) and already producing high quality "Chess" recordings once again. This third and last 4 CD set of Chuck Berry's Chess recordings collects every available master and alternate from "Tulane" till the label shuttered its doors to recording new music. The 71 tracks here include his only #1 ("My Ding-A-Ling (live)"), plus 22 previously unreleased recordings, ranging from cool in-studio jams/instrumentals ("Turn On The House Lights," "Rockin'") to 4 additional live recordings from the smoking concert that produced the live side of The London Chuck Berry Sessions; from an intimate, small group session in October of 1972 which produced two throwback "Chuck blues" tracks, "Blues #1" and "Annie Lou," to Chuck's renditions of "Jambalaya" and "Dust My Broom." There's also a live version of "South Of The Border" only previously released as a "B" side in the U.K. and the hot concert London Sessions per formance of "Roll `Em Pete," also originally only released in edited form as a "B" side with a different rhythm section dubbed in - this set has both the complete original and single versions. As with the two earlier volumes, Have Mercy includes liner notes by Berry biographer (and the set's co-compiler) Fred Rothwell, great period photos and graphics, as well as complete sessionby- session credits.