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 the following addition regarding Session 62:
Probably the correct running order of songs on the 625 show is as follows:
- Roll Over Beethoven
- School Day (unissued)
- Sweet Little Sixteen
- Memphis (Tennessee)
- Too Much Monkey Business (unissued)
- South Of The Border
- Beer Drinking Woman
- Let It Rock
- Mean Old World
- Carol
- Rock And Roll Music (unissued)
- Liverpool Drive [instrumental]
- Promised Land (unissued)
- Reelin' And Rockin' (unissued)
- Nadine
- My Ding-A-Ling (omit band, unissued)
- Bye Bye Johnny
- Bonsoir Cherie / Johnny B. Goode
The songs marked as
unissued are currently not available on vinyl or CD. For releases containing the other songs see
here. A one-hour version of this TV show was broadcast again by Swedish TV 2 on December 28, 2001. This broadcast displayed all the issued songs except for
Liverpool Drive and
South of the Border. In addition you could see and hear
Too Much Monkey Business,
Rock and Roll Music,
The Promised Land, and
Reelin' and Rockin'.