Goodmann Group lets us hear some Rock'n'Roll Music

Whenever I come across an unusual Chuck Berry record, I try to find out where it stems from, what it is about and why it is special in some way. As long as Morten Reff's Chuck Berry International Directory book is not out, the only good sources for this are Fred Rothwell's book Long Distance Information and the Goldmine Promo Record & CD Guide. When both fail I ask Morten Reff for help.
But when I recently got me a new 2LP set, Morten was of no help at all. Not because he did not want to. He just did not know this record. This is the first time such happened since Morten and I started to exchange Berry information, which is a lot more than ten years by now.
To be honest, the album I found is not really a Chuck Berry album in its direct sense. But it is related to Chuck Berry in many ways. First, it contains 23 Chuck Berry songs, 19 recorded by Berry himself plus 8 Berry songs recorded by other artists such as Johnny Rivers, Ronnie Hawkins, Rod Steward, Elvis Presley, or the Beach Boys. And yes I know that the math does not work, but indeed some of the songs are on this set sung twice by both Berry and some other singer. And secondly, this album's cover shows nothing more than the line "Just let me hear some of that rock'n'roll music" which as we all know is a Chuck Berry quote.

The 2LP set was produced by The Goodman Group Music Publishers in 1979. The Goodman Group is a group of music publishing companies which was under supervision of Gene Goodman (brother of band leader Benny) until Marshall Chess (son of Leonard Chess) took over the business after Goodman retired. Along with the Chess Brothers, Goodman and his brother Harry in August 1953 formed Arc Music Publishing which owned and used the copyrights of all of the material coming out of Chess Records, including Berry's — and still does today.
Like other publishers, the Goodman Group presented their catalogue to the industry not only in writing, but also on records such as this. "This two-record compilation contains excerpts from 100 of our most successful copyrights, along with a summary of chart activity" wrote Gene Goodman on the back of this set. And indeed there are 100 well-known songs included, all in recordings by their original artists or in famous cover versions by e.g. the Beatles or CCR.
All songs come in excerpts of a minute or a half, sometimes as a combination of multiple recordings. So you hear Berry start with Back in the U.S.A. until Linda Ronstadt takes over after the first verse. It's quite funny to listen to this collage, especially because it is not in chronological but in alphabetical order (by song title). Usually the better-known versions are included, such as Rod Steward singing Sweet Little Rock And Roller instead of Berry. Sometimes the better-known versions seem to have been out of reach, such as with Around and Around which is not sung by the Stones but by Berry himself.
All in all this is an interesting Berry-related item. It is probably rare as it was only produced for industry experts and never available for sale. I have not found any description of it on the Internet yet. But it's not too rare. I helped Morten to get a copy for himself and if you look around, you might be able to find one for yourself as well.