Fred Rothwell's
Long Distance Information: Chuck Berry's Recorded Legacy (Music Mentor Books, 2001) is the ultimate book for any serious Chuck Berry record collector: All Berry sessions, all the songs, all the session musicians, where to find which song if ever released, and tons of additional stuff.
First published in 2001 the book consists mainly of a 240 page commented "sessionography", a list of 93 recording sessions Chuck participated in between 1954 and 2000. For each session Fred lists the musicians and the songs recorded, whether released or not. For every song he shows a few main records containing it. He also fully describes and critizises every recording.
Chuck Berry's recorded legacy is not complete yet, though. After publication of Fred Rothwell's book we found out about an additional recording session which took place in Summer 1989:
On Saturday, 12th August 1989 Chuck Berry performed at the Yokohama Arena, Yokohama, Japan. The concert was part of a promotional tour for Jeff Beck's new album
Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop With Terry Bozzio and Tony Hymas. Originally planned for August 6th, the show was postponed due to heavy rain. In addition to Chuck and the Jeff Beck Group other performers were Neal Schorn's Bad English, the Steve Lukather Band, and Richard Marx. While planned as an all-star session with Jeff Beck assisting the other bands, Chuck used a band on his own (and not a good one, as you can hear). Segments of his performance can be heard on a 4-CD set recorded live during the show. The bootleg is called
New Gigs '89 (Private Master PM047/48/49/50). Chuck performs his typical instrumental introduction which leads into
Roll over Beethoven, followed by
Let It Rock. Next is an aptly named
Blues Jam based on
Oh Baby (You don't have to go). The 25 minutes on the CD end with a version of
Johnny B. Goode, but it may be that Chuck performed other songs as well.