Graham Reid | | 1 min read
With only one notable exception – his godawful '72 hit My Ding-A-Ling – nearly all of Chuck Berry's best known songs came in a rush on the Chess label in a five year period from August '55 when he released Maybellene.
Berry was one of the greatest and most important figures in the development of rock'n'roll and popular music for many reasons: he brought the guitar to the forefront of rock'n'roll (cheap, portable, flexible cf the piano), wrote his own songs and many were clever lyrically and they were also about cars, high school, dating, the dance, parents and he celebrated rock'n'roll itself.
He was cheerleader for the new music: "Just let me hear that rock and roll music . . ."
And he was prolific, his three albums between May '57 and July '59 were stacked with rock'n'roll classics (later covered by the Beatles, Rolling Stones and dozens of British acts in the early Sixties).
His songs were witty, told stories, were inventive (he made up words like "motorvatin' ") and were deliberately aimed at teenagers. He was as astute as he was gifted, he knew what the kids wanted and as a brown-eyed handsome man he would deliver it..
"Hail hail rock'n'roll, deliver me from the days of old" -- in School Days
Maybellene, recorded in Chicago, May 1955
You Can't Catch Me, recorded Chicago, Dec 1955
School Day, recorded Chicago, Dec 1956
Sweet Little Sixteen, recorded Chicago, Feb 1958
He championed rock'n'roll as a new musical style
"roll over Beethoven and dig these rhythm and blues"
Roll Over Beethoven, recorded Chicago early 1956
"just let me hear that rock and roll music, it's got a backbeat you can't lose it"
Rock and Roll Music, recorded Chicago, May 1957
Johnny B Goode, recorded Chicago Feb 1958
There was a 2017 digitally remastered collection of his three original albums onto high quality double vinyl which included Sweet Little Sixteen, Reelin' and Rockin', Rock and Roll Music, Down the Road Apiece, his seminal reconfiguring of Route 66 and other classics.
No, it didn't pick up his essential Chuck Berry Is On Top album from mid '59, but it did add five extra songs, among them Brown Eyed Handsome Man, You Can't Catch Me and Back in the USA.
These three albums from '58, '60 and '61 and those bonus songs give you an excellent starter on the story-telling, zeitgeist-grabbing rock'n'roll of the late Chuck Berry, a man we know to have been salacious and somewhat grubby, not averse to songs full of sexual innuendo.
But his songs have been much covered for decades and even right now there are guitarists learning his riffs.
Elsewhere has previously claimed to have been as important as Elvis.
Here's the considerable evidence in his favour.
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