Chuck Berry – The Complete Chess Singles As & Bs 1955-61
Acrobat Music
www.acrobatmusic.net

Rating: A

It doesn’t get any more ‘classic’ than Chuck Berry.  That white boy Elvis gets all the credit, but I’m not sure if hard rock or heavy metal would have even been born without Chuck Berry.  Chuck was a guitar god well before there were such things.  He was a songwriter, a showman and a true rock star.

Chess Records was THE place to be recorded in the 1950s, and Berry signed on from a recommendation from none other than Muddy Waters in 1955.  Right out of the box, Chuck had a smash hit, a million seller in the classic song “Maybelline.”  The hits kept coming with “Roll Over Beethoven, “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” “School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes the Bell),” “Rock and Roll Music,” “Sweet Little Sixteen” and the granddaddy of them all, “Johnny B. Good.”

This collection contains them all, fifty songs in total... in just two-discs! We’re talking all of the A Sides and the B Sides, and there are some classic tunes that were ‘sides’, including “Round and Round” and “Reeling and Rocking!”

Chuck Berry changed the world of rock forever, and this 2-CD set has all of his most important works in the same collection.  This is the read deal, and Chuck proved way back when, that there truly is only one way to rock!

Track Listing
Disc 1:
1          Maybelline
2          Wee Wee Hours
3          Thirty Days (To Come Back Home)
4          Together (We Will Always Be)
5          No Money Down
6          The Downbound Train
7          Roll Over Beethoven
8          Drifting Heart
9          Brown Eyed Handsome Man
10        Too Much Monkey Business
11        You Can't Catch Me
12        Havana Moon
13        School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes The Bell)
14        Deep Feeling
15        Oh Baby Doll
16        La Jaunda
17        Rock And Roll Music
18        Blue Feeling
19        Sweet Little Sixteen
20        Reelin' And Rockin'
21        Johnny B. Goode
22        Around And Around
23        Beautiful Delilah
24        Vacation Time
25        Carol

Disk 2:
1          Hey Pedro
2          Sweet Little Rock and Roller
3          Jo Jo Gunne
4          Run Rudolph Run
5          Merry Christmas Baby
6          Anthony Boy
7          That's My Desire
8          Almost Grown
9          Little Queenie
10        Back In The U.S.A.
11        Memphis, Tennessee
12        Broken Arrow
13        Childhood Sweetheart
14        Let It Rock
15        Too Pooped to Pop
16        Bye Bye Johnny
17        Worried Life Blues
18        I Got To Find My Baby
19        Mad Lad
20        Jaguar And Thunderbird
21        Our Little Rendezvous
22        I'm Talking About You
23        Little Star
24        Come On
25        Go-Go-Go

By Jeb Wright