Chuck Berry Rock And Roll Music - Any Old Way You Choose It - The Complete Studio Recordings ... Plus! (16-CD Deluxe Box Set)

Chuck Berry

• Every single and LP track, starting with a rare pre-Chess single with Joe Alexander from 1954!
• All the celebrated and legendary Chess singles and album cuts from 1955 to 1966 and from 1969 to 1974.
• All the Mercury recordings, and the Atco album. Every surviving alternate take as well.
• Classic Live Recordings from 1956 to 1972.
• Exclusive introduction by Sir Paul McCartney.

• In Rolling Stone’s list of The Immortals—the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, Chuck Berry is listed at Number Five.
• Six of his songs are in Rolling Stone’s Greatest 500 Songs Ever Written.
• In Rolling Stone’s Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time, Johnny B. Goode is Number One.
• He was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2000. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984.
• When he was in the first round of inductees into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, his induction read: While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together. It was his particular genius to graft country &, western guitar licks onto a rhythm &, blues chassis in his very first single, 'Maybellene'.

Press Reviews:

Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry Rock'n'Roll Legend

18. Oktober 1926 in Saint Louis
18. März 2017 in Saint Charles

Chuck Berry 1926 – 2017

One of Rock ’n’ Roll’s last living legends has passed away. The incredible Chuck Berry died March 18, 2017. The world of Rock music has lost its most influential pioneer, a seminal guitar stylist, the author of some of the most remarkable songs in Pop music history, and the inventor of the famous “duck walk“.

Early influences were Muddy Waters’ earthy electric Mississippi style Blues, the powerful Rhythm ’n’ Blues of Louis Jordan, and Nat ’King’ Cole’s vocal style. Chuck Berry was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on March 18, 1926. During the mid-fifties, he developed his own trademark style, transferring the Blues in Chicago into a new genre, propelled by his unique and sharp guitar riffs and his original songwriting.

His simple but catchy guitar riffs had influence on generations of Rock guitar players. Without his brilliant ideas, his energy and songs, and his guitar playing, the story of Beat music in Europe and Rock music in general would have to be re-written. Both, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, had quite a number of Chuck Berry originals in their early repertoire.

Chuck Berry died in Saint Charles County, Missouri. – R.I.P.

John Lennon said, "if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."  

Chuck Berry

How essential was Chuck Berry to the primordial development of rock 'n' roll? Without his mammoth contributions, the idiom as we know it now simply wouldn't exist. Sure, we can cite his essential early influences (Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker, and a smidgen of Charlie Christian spring to mind), and there's no denying that there were precedents galore for Berry to draw from (the age-old debate about precisely what constitutes the first rock 'n' roll record will rage on for as long as anyone collects and reveres classic postwar R&B, blues, and country). But there can be little doubt that Berry devised much of the musical vocabulary that came to define the genre. Not only did he brainstorm the way rock guitar was supposed to sound, he captured and illuminated its rebellious teenage attitude through his extraordinary wordplay. He wrote virtually all of his Chess hits, a staggering accomplishment unto itself.

For a generation of kids, Chuck was rock 'n' roll.

He never made it onto 'The Ed Sullivan Show' during his '50s heyday the way Elvis did (considering the way Old Stoneface censored Presley's swiveling hips, the vision of Berry's guitar-thrusting splits and Duckwalk probably left him weak in the knees), but his legion of fans gobbled up each of his blistering Chess smashes the moment they hit the shelves. Countless bands covered his material, whether on wax or just onstage at local teen dances. When it came to filling a dance floor, Maybellene or Johnny B. Goode never failed to rock a house, no matter who happened to be playing them. The irony of it all was, Chuck was nowhere near his teen years when his debut single Maybellene catapulted him to immediate stardom in 1955. In fact, he was pushing 30. But he connected with the teenaged demographic so intensely, and his lanky, loose-limbed frame and acrobatic guitar antics looked so youthful, that no one ever questioned his emergence as a wry spokesman for their generation. Souped-up hot rod Fords, high school cuties, and the pure, unadulterated joy of rock 'n' roll were the subjects Chuck sang about the most and identified with the closest, and the kids readily embraced him as one of their own.

Born October 18, 1926 in St. Louis

Berry's road to fame was not without its speed bumps and extended detours. Born October 18, 1926 in St. Louis, he progressed musically from the tame pop melodies he heard on his family's Philco radio by Kate Smith, Gene Autry, and Bing Crosby to the big band swing 78s of Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, and Count Basie and ultimately to the blues platters of St. Louis Jimmy, Big Maceo, and Wee Bea Booze. A well-received performance of piano-playing orchestra leader Jay McShann's Confessin' The Blues at a 1941 Sumner High School assembly was a turning point. Berry had dabbled in piano at home (he hailed from a musical environment; his older sister Lucy was a promising mezzo-soprano), but here he was onstage, backed by equally young guitarist Tommy Stevens. That experience inspired Chuck to pick up an axe himself (Berry would revive McShann's tuneon Chess in 1960). He practiced on a four-string guitar on loan from a classmate, honing his chops and learning as many songs, both pop and R&B, as he could.   Unfortunately, music wasn't enough to keep the teenager on the straight and narrow.

A robbery spree across part of Missouri with two equally inexperienced accomplices in the autumn of 1944 culminated with the trio charged with car theft, which landed Berry and his pals in the Algoa Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men in Jefferson City, Missouri. Chuck sang with a gospel quartet and joined an R&B combo while in stir, serving nearly three years of his ten-year sentence before being sprung in October of '47. He returned to the Gateway City, got married, and started making inroads into playing music in local taverns, trading up from four strings to six and working hard on the physical schtick, utilizing his axe as a prop, that would enthrall American teens a few years later.

His first electric guitar

Once Berry acquired his first electric guitar from radio musician Joe Sherman (Chuck was a janitor at WEW, where Sherman played live over the air), the die was cast. He took lessons from St. Louis jazz guitarist Ira Harris and grooved to the riffs of Carl Hogan, lead fretsman for Louis Jordan's Tympany Five. In 1952, Tommy Stevens invited Chuck to sing with his combo at Huff's Garden in East St. Louis, Illinois, a gig that lasted for half a year. Blues and calypso were part of their show, but Berry wasn't averse to breaking out a rousing hillbilly ditty, much to the surprise and delight of his audiences. Then pianist Johnnie Johnson gave the young guitarist a call, asking him to play that New Year's Eve at the considerably larger Cosmopolitan Club, another East St. Louis gin joint, with his Sir John's Trio.

That call changed Chuck's life.   "I employed him one night to work for me, because one of my original players couldn't make it,"said the late Johnson, born July 8, 1924 in Fairmont, West Virginia (for the record, the absent musician was saxist Alvin Bennett, who had suffered a stroke and would never play again). Johnnie, who had arrived in wide-open East St. Louis only nine months earlier after playing in Chicago in a combo with bassist Milton Rector, alternated tried-and-true pop standards such as Stardustand Deep Purple on his trio's set list with earthier blues and boogie numbers. He recalled the novelty of Berry's genre-hopping fondly. "It was something new, and everybody was very interested in it, especially coming from a black guy playing hillbilly music."

Drummer Ebby Hardy rounded out the trio, who continued on at the Cosmo with Chuck installed as the new focal point. During a break from Johnson's employ, the dynamic guitarist starred at the Crank Club in St. Louis proper with his own combo under the paper-thin alias of Chuck Berryn to avoid the ire of his religious-minded father. In 1954, Chuck made his debut on wax as a sideman on a single for Oscar Washington's tiny Ballad label by Joe Alexander, known to his local fans as Calypso Joe. The record didn't sell a lot of copies, but at least it represented a tentative beginning for Berry in the studio.

Chuck subsequently returned to gigging with Johnson at the Cosmo, his local star rising steadily. Having had an alluring taste of the studio life, Berry was eager to inaugurate his own recording career. St. Louis offered few opportunities on that front, but Chicago certainly had plenty. Chuck arrived in the Windy City with a buddy for a weekend's worth of club-hopping in May of '55. On the South Side, they encountered a marquee advertising Muddy Waters, the undisputed king of Chicago blues.

"I was playing at a club at 3609 Wentworth, the Dew Drop Lounge,"

said the late Waters. "He happened in on me. He must have been up from St. Louis, wandering around." After Muddy finished his set, Chuck approached him and told him of his desire to make a record of his own. Naturally, Waters recommended the company that he'd scored so many hits for: Chess Records. "I'm the man that sent him to the place," said Muddy. "I give him the address, told him they open at nine o'clock, be there at 10. Tell Leonard Chess I sent him there!'"