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Chuck Berry

 - 

The Chess Box

 

Tracklist

(CD)
   1955 To 1958      
1-1   Maybellene      2:18
1-2   Wee Wee Hours      3:02
1-3   Thirty Days      2:21
1-4   You Can't Catch Me      2:42
1-5   No Money Down      2:56
1-6   Downbound Train      2:49
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* Items below may differ depending on the release.

          

Review


Maybellene," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Johnny B. Goode," "Memphis" and "Promised Land" are six damn good reasons a Great Retro Box treatment of Chuck Berry is long overdue. And there are sixty-five more just like them on The Chess Box, the first thorough, quality vinyl examination of Berry's vital Chess Records catalog and his immeasurable contribution to the sound, language and life force of rock & roll. The trademark guitar sting and witty, often barbed lyric narratives with which Berry transformed everyday teenage… Read More

life, the contemporary black experience and the healing powers of music into unforgettable pop playlets are a continuing influence on everyone and everything passing in his wake.

Blues auteur Willie Dixon is hardly short on whys and wherefores in meriting his own box either. Thirty-six of them are present and accounted for in this set, among them "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man," "Spoonful," "Back Door Man," "Little Red Rooster," "Seventh Son" and "Wang Dang Doodle." Dixon composed them all; he also doubled on some as producer and bassist. An infrequent performer, Dixon spread his signature over a virtual library of classic singles by his distinguished clients (including Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, Koko Taylor and Little Walter) during his 1951-69 tenure at Chess. Featuring the best and the most famous of those sides on three LPs (two cassettes or CDs), Dixon's box is an exhilarating if belated salute to a remarkable career, a Blues' Greatest Hits in all but name.

On first inspection, the Berry box, too, looks like nothing but hits. In fact, at his late-Fifties chart peak, Berry had only five Top Ten singles, and his sole Number One was the 1972 toilet-joke sing-along "My Ding-a-Ling." But if a hit can be defined not just by sales but by its lasting imprint on the audience that hears it and the art to which it aspires, The Chess Box is a monument to the musical durability of Berry's jaunty country-blues style (gassed up by ace sidemen like pianist Johnnie Johnson and drummer Fred Below) and the vibrant immediacy of his wordplay. Few songwriters have encapsulated the power and allure of rock & roll better than Berry ("I caught the rollin' arthritis sittin' down at a rhythm revue" – "Roll Over Beethoven") or captured its sexual potency with such wry, pithy humor ("If it's a slow song/We'll omit it/If it's a rocker/That'll get it.... C'mon, Queenie, let's get with it" – "Little Queenie").

As a black man enjoying white adulation, Berry in a very real way also equated rock & roll with his own pursuit of the American dream. Substitute "colored boy" for "country boy" in "Johnny B. Goode" (as Berry originally wrote it), and you basically have the story of Berry Made Good. True, Berry suffered from his success, doing jail time on a dubious Mann Act conviction at the height of the first wave of antirock hysteria. The hits were fewer after


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  Artist   Title   Format   Condition   Seller Price    
  BERRY,CHUCK   The Chess Box (1988 Original-3cd Boxset! Lp-sized Box + 36-page Illustrated Book! Anthology Of 'ches
Chess/mca Records Chd3-80,001
  CD   Vintage
United States
$58.00    
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  Chuck Berry   Chess Masters (1988, F)
  CD   EX Fun Records
Germany
$4.67    
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  Chuck Berry   The Chess Box
Box Has Some Light Aging. All Corners Intact. Discs And Booklet In Excellent Condition. Columbia House Pressing. Usa, Chess, Chd3-80.001, 1988
  CD   VG/M- Rock & Roll 
United States
$59.99    
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Chuck Berry Bo Diddley Muddy Etta Various - Chess History Sampler (promo)   Chuck Berry Bo Diddley Muddy Etta Various   Chess History Sampler (promo)
Ch3p-2789, Us 18-trk. promo Only Compilation. for Promotion Only / Not For Sale Us, Chess Records / Mca, Ch3p-2789, 1993
  CD   M/ M- CENOTEX
United States
$12.95    
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