The Chuck Berry Vinyl Bootlegs, Vol. 2: Six Two Five

A note on bootleg records first: A bootleg record is a factory-produced vinyl record released and sold without authorization by the artist or owner of the recording. Bootleg records may contain known recordings, but most often bootleg records either contained studio outtakes or live performances. The first bootleg records were seen at the end of the 1960's. During the 1970's and 1980's lots of different bootleg records were produced. In the early 1990's bootleggers changed to use CDs instead of vinyl records. I do not encourage the production and sale of bootleg records as I find that artists, composers, producers, and the rest of the recording industry deserve a financial compensation of their work.

This series of articles is going to describe the Chuck Berry vinyl bootlegs released in the 1970's and 1980's. For any record collector these items are important to know of, even though you don't necessarily need to have them. Omitted from all the usual discographies, information about these records is next to void. Given the secret nature of the bootlegger business there are no exact dates, numbers, or origins. I have tried to collect this information from various sources and mostly from my own collection of records. If you can add anything of worth to the information given here, I'd be glad to know!

This is the second part of this series and it covers a typical kind of bootleg record: a live show recording.

Chuck Berry - Six Two Five - Driving Wheel LP 1001 / Maybelline Records MBL 676

As typical for many bootlegs, the Six Two Five bootleg origins from a live show. Here it's Berry's concert for British Broadcasting BBC held at the BBC TV Theatre, Shepherds Bush Green, London, UK on March 29th 1972. Most concert bootlegs stem from professional recordings made during the concert, either cut directly from the mix or soundboard or produced for radio or TV broadcast. We don't know the exact origin of this concert recording, but the quality is high and the contents is exactly that of the original 45 minutes TV broadcast by the BBC. Thus it may have been cut from the TV transmission or directly from the edited BBC tape.

Two vinyl variants and one professionally made CD of Six Two Five exist. All show the exact same black&white photo of Berry shot from a TV screen. Also the font and placement of artist name and record title are the same. The three variants differ in the print below the photo.

Variant 1 reads Driving Wheel 1001 in the lower right corner. The lower left corner displays the Driving Wheel logo. The cover itself is blank white, the cover image is printed on a yellowish paper almost the size of the cover. The paper is glued onto the front cover.



It is not clear if the sheet containing explanations and track listing was separated from the cover initially. My copy has this sheet cut to 163x170mm and glued to the back of the cover. It has some sentences about the BBC show including the very interesting telling of a list of songs played but not broadcast. This list can only come from either the BBC themselves or from someone who was present during the original concert. Besides this, the back sheet names the album An 'S F T F' Production and lists five 'names' for which credit's due.



In addition to the sheet there's also a blue number stamped on the back cover. I don't know if this is the individual copy's number or the produced quantity, probably the former. Mine reads 00400.

The tracks on this record are as follows (spelling as on the back sheet):
Side 1

1. Roll Over Beethoven
2. Sweet Little Sixteen
3. Memphis Tennessee
4. South of the Border
5. Beer Drinking Woman
6. Let It Rock

Side 2

1. Mean Old World
2. Carol
3. Liverpool Drive
4. Nadine
5. Bye Bye Johnny
6. Bonsoir Cherie/Johnny B. Goode

While all of the songs as well as Berry's stage banter are very worth listening to, especially because Berry used a band, Rocking Horse, he had practiced with during the week before, the most interesting number is Berry's version of South of the Border, or South of Her Border as Berry puts it. This is the only song from this concert which has been released on an official record: Chess (UK) 45rpm single 6145027.

The Driving Wheel bootleg has a simple label reading only Side One / Side Two and 33 1/3 RPM. As you can see, the record is pressed in a purple-colored vinyl.



An interesting detail is the etching in the dead wax of Driving Wheel LP 1001. It reads DWLP-721-A/B. It is quite probable that 72 refers to the year of production. We'll return to this etching in a minute.



Variant 2 of Six Two Five has almost the exact same cover. The same size front sheet is now printed on white paper. The main difference is that the text Driving Wheel 1001 is missing from the lower right corner. The Driving Wheel logo itself is there, though.



The back cover is blank and to my knowledge there wasn't any insert or back sheet. The track listing is part of the record labels only.



Here you can see that this variant was released as MBL 676 on a label called Maybelline Records. Again the number 676 might point to the date of production.
As I said, it's interesting to look at the etching in the dead wax. On this record it reads DW1001A/B.



This makes it clear that this record was produced using a different, a new master disk. The reference to DW1001 makes me believe that for mastering the Maybelline bootleg they used a copy of the Driving Wheel bootleg as the source - and not the original tape.

In the early 1990's yet another variant of Six Two Five appeared. This time it was a factory produced CD. The front cover still looks the same. Only the lower parts are cut off and a label name ARCHIVIO is inserted. The catalog number is given as ARC 001. According to the print on the CD and a red stamp on the back cover this CD was Made in Italy 1991. As with all the information printed on bootlegs this is not to be taken too seriously.



By listening to the CD it becomes very probable that also the CD master was created from one of the two vinyl editions.

To read the other parts of this series on Chuck Berry vinyl bootlegs, click here:

• The Chuck Berry Vinyl Bootlegs, Vol. 1: Rare Berries
• The Chuck Berry Vinyl Bootlegs, Vol. 3: America's Hottest Wax
• The Chuck Berry Vinyl Bootlegs, Vol. 4: Telecasts