The Chuck Berry Collectors Blog

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

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!

Let's begin this series with the record I use for the thumbnail of the Chuck Berry Rarities section of this blog. This may be the first Chuck Berry vinyl bootleg, or not.

Chuck Berry - Rare Berries - Kozmik KZ-501

As with most of the early bootleg records, Rare Berries did not have a printed cover but instead came in a plain white envelope. Attached were two sheets of paper which are black and white photocopies. All copies of this record I have seen so far have these sheets glued to the two sides of the record cover, so I don't know if they were delivered loosely initially. Both sheets don't have any standard paper size, so it's quite possible that they were already glued on the cover at their initial sale.

The front sheet shows a (poor) photo of Berry. He wears the colorful stage outfit he used to wear by the end of 1972 and early 1973. So this indicates a production date of not earlier than 1972. And probably also not much later as fully printed covers became common with bootlegs in the mid 1970's.
In addition the front sheet (225x292mm) tells the artist name in capital letters, the record name in all lower-case letters, the logo KOZMIK and the record number KZ-501.

The back sheet (207x283mm) repeats label, artist and record name. Next is a sentence explaining the record as "A Limited Edition album, featuring Chuck Berry's most obscure recordings, taken from the outset of his musical career." Following is a track listing and discographical details of the recordings.

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

1. RUN AROUND
2. ROLLI POLLI
3. WORRIED LIFE BLUES
4. HEY PEDRO
5. IT DON'T TAKE BUT A FEW MINUTES
6. BLUE FEELING
7. SWEET SIXTEEN

Side B

1. OUR LITTLE RENDEZVOUS
2. DEEP FEELING
3. MERRY CHRISTMAS BABY
4. INGO
5. HOW YOU'VE CHANGED
6. BERRY PICKIN'
7. BLUES FOR HAWAIIANS

As you can see from the track listing, these are not the usual bootleg recordings. Instead of unreleased studio stuff or obscure live recordings, this album contains nothing more than previously released Chess material, though some of the lesser known. But definitely not 'rare'. All of these recordings could have been found in used-record shops even in the 1970's. No later than with the release of Chuck Berry's Golden Decade Volume 3 in 1974 almost all of these tracks were commercially available even on new records. Therefore I would date the release of Rare Berries to 1972 or 1973.

There are at least two different variants of this bootleg differing by the record label print. This points to at least two production runs.

Variant 1 has green labels. The text is written with a typewriter, the label name is written using a lettering guide. The labels must have been created in haste as they even did not re-type the B side label after mistyping £ for a 5 in the record number. And on Side A they weren't even sure of the (probably conceived) label name: Where the front sheet and Side B spell KOZMIK with a Z, the label of Side A has KOSMIK with an S.

Variant 2 has a much more professional looking multi-colored label. Besides the consequent spelling of KOZMIK it also tells 'Mono', '33 1/3 RPM', 'Jewel Music' as the song publisher, and the standard saying that 'copying of this record is prohibited'. If one wouldn't know better (and would miss the cover), this could be mistaken for a legitimate release. Interesting is the hint to Jewel Music Publishing, Inc. which was Chuck Berry's publisher in the UK at that time. This could point to the origin of this record.

Both variants seem to have been produced using the same master disk. The etching in the dead wax reads 'KZ 501 A/B' on both records.

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

• The Chuck Berry Vinyl Bootlegs, Vol. 2: Six Two Five
• The Chuck Berry Vinyl Bootlegs, Vol. 3: America's Hottest Wax
• The Chuck Berry Vinyl Bootlegs, Vol. 4: Telecasts

I don't know the people behind Crying Steel Records, but they must be regular readers of this site.

Their first release 'Deliver Me From The Days Of Old' (Crying Steel Records CSR001, 2007) contained all of Berry's Records which I had described as being released on CD or Vinyl before but concurrently being extremely hard to find on CD. This included the Newport 1958 concert which was back then only available in Sweden or the two Japanese concerts which were at that time only available on Vinyl.

While it is doubtful that CSR001 was a legal release, it not only looked like one. It also came with a professional booklet containing many great photos and useful discographical information.

Crying Steel's second release 'Live At Winterland, San Francisco '67' (Crying Steel Records CSR02, 2014) gave us a CD copy of the three 1960s concerts which had been found in the archives of promoter Bill Graham. These had been made available for online listening through the commercial site Wolfgang's Vault, now Concert Vault. I reported on these concert in blog entries here on January 12, 2008 and on October 23, 2009.

Again it is doubtful whether Crying Steel had the rights to publish Graham's recordings of Berry's performances. But it is also not clear whether Concert Vault has the right to broadcast thise in the first place. See this recent article from Billboard.



Now I received Crying Steel's third strike: a CD called 'Long Live Rock 'n' Roll - 60th Birthday Celebration' (Crying Steel Records CSR03, 2015). Source for this CD is another concert recording available for listening at concertvault.com

I had reported on the availability of this recording in October last year in this site's chapter on Berry's 60th Birthday Celebrations. This concert was recorded on October 17, 1986 and is the second show from the Fox Theatre, St. Louis used for the preparation of Taylor Hackford's documentary called 'Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll' (released 1987). For all the details on this show read the corresponding chapter of the main site.

The Concert Vault recording of the show is about 85 minutes long. It contains most of the concert including various stage banter and impromptu jamming. To make it fit on a single CD, Crying Steel Records excluded most of the in-between talks/waits as well as some of the instrumental jams. Instead they added one more recording from this show: 'School Day' was the big finale of the show as it can be seen in the movie. It was missing from Concert Vault, though.

As no good quality first-hand recording of this final track was available, the people at Crying Steel copied it from the movie, probably from one of the commercially available DVDs. While doing so, they concurrently also extracted four other live recordings from the movie: 'No Money Down', 'Nadine', 'Almost Grown', and 'No Particular Place To Go'. These had been included in the film, but were recorded during the other of the two shows. Just like the remaining songs from the first show which were used in the film or on the soundtrack album, these audio tracks have been post-produced in Los Angeles. During this post-production some vocal parts were overdubbed. I have not yet had the time to compare the post-produced versions to the original recordings where available.

Together with the original soundtrack album, the Crying Steel CD presents a nice overview of the two Fox Theatre shows. They even added two of the Cosmopolitan Club performances also seen in the movie.

As the broadcast on Concert Vault splits the concert into individual tracks, Crying Steel made some effort to glue these parts back together. In most cases this worked quite well. Sometimes volume or cuts do not match correctly, though. They also did not notice that the introduction for Eric Clapton was included twice by error. Finally I found it irritating that at least during the Etta James segment they re-ordered the sequence of the recordings.

Again this professionally looking CD comes with a nice six-page booklet containing photos taken during the Fox Theatre shows. I really don't like the outlook of the track listing and the liner notes, though. Like with last year's release they took a strange, almost unreadable font. And the type size is so small you need a magnifying glass to read it. So, Crying Steel Records, if you read these comments, please return to the CSR001 style!

And I really wish these recordings would be released in a way that the artists, composers, and producers would get their share from the income. I'd be glad to pay.

When Fred Rothwell a few weeks ago reported here on his new findings regarding the 'who-played-on-what' questions of Chuck Berry's discography, one of the most interesting changes to the Chuck Berry sessionography was made to the personnel which created Johnny B. Goode.
The session's recording contract encountered by Tim McFarlin during his studies of the Berry vs. Johnson suit of 2000-2002 lists Johnnie Johnson as piano player for the recording session dated January 6, 1958. According to what is listed in the discographies, this is the session in which Johnny B. Goode was recorded. Formerly, Fred and other experts had listed Lafayette Leake on piano.
Fred‘s sessionography change first got various comments posted here on the blog and then resulted in almost two months of (sometimes heated) discussions in email to which Berry experts from the U.S., from the Netherlands, from England, France, Norway, and Germany contributed.
In the end we had to agree that we do not agree on a common opinion. However, as this topic is of interest to most Berry collectors I will try to sum up the facts and the most important opinions.

Speaking of facts we found that we have astonishing few 'hard facts' to base any discussion or result on.

This starts with the date of the session which generated Johnny B. Goode. Depending on which source you consult the reported recording date for this song is February 28, 1958 (Michel Ruppli, The Chess Files) or December 29, 1957 (Mike Leadbitter/Neil Slaven, Blues Records). Berry's Autography has the date listed as February 28, 1958 as well. Who is correct? We have some hints:

We know that Chess Records assigned the matrix number 8633 to the final recording and mix of Johnny B. Goode. We also believe that Chess assigned matrix numbers in the sequence the master tapes were finished. The matrix numbers directly following Johnny B. Goode were assigned to different artists: The Pastels (8634/35), The Lewis Sisters (8636-40), Harvey & The Moonglows (8641-43), and so on. The next numbers assigned to Chuck Berry records are 8656/57 (A and B sides of EP 5121 Sweet Little 16), 8689/90 (side 1 and 2 of LP 1432 One Dozen Berrys). The next Berry recording Around And Around is sixty numbers after Johnny B. Goode and got the matrix number 8693. This points to at least a couple of weeks between the mastering of Johnny B. Goode and that of Around And Around. And if we assume that mastering in the 1950s was done either concurrently with the recording or soon thereafter, this also points to a couple of weeks between the recordings of the two. As a sidenote: From later sessions we know that songs recorded the same day got master numbers a dozen or so numbers off, probably because the mastering of the later songs was delayed.
Of more interest are the master numbers preceding Johnny B. Goode. They all are assigned to Chuck Berry recordings: Sweet Little Sixteen (8627), Rock At The Philharmonic (8628), Guitar Boogie (8629), Night Beat (8630), Time Was (8631), and Reelin' And Rockin' (8632). This means that all these songs including Johnny B. Goode have been mastered/recorded in one session or a set of consecutive sessions, in any case so close to each other that no other masters were made in between.
This is the reason why both Michel Ruppli and Leadbitter/Slaven had all seven songs listed as a single session. If this would be true, Ruppli's session date of February 1958 cannot be correct because Sweet Little Sixteen was already in the stores by January. Chuck Berry's list of recording sessions as published in his book places the six early songs (masters 8627 to 8632) in a session dated January 6, 1958 while he puts Johnny B. Goode (8633) along with Around And Around (8693) and five other songs (masters 8694 to 8696) to February 28.
When compiling his sessionographies, Fred Rothwell took the most probable route. He placed the recording of the consecutive masters 8627 to 8633 close together, i.e. put Johnny B. Goode close to Reelin' And Rockin'. However, because we know that the released version of Sweet Little Sixteen was take 14 and the released version of Reelin' And Rockin' was take 10, Fred had strong doubts that all these were recorded the same day. It would have been an awful long session. Therefore he used the December date from Blues Records for Sweet Little Sixteen and Chuck Berry's January date for Johnny B. Goode. These recording dates are so close together that consecutive master numbers are probable.

The session contract encountered by Tim McFarlin during his research of the legal papers filed for the 2002 lawsuit lists a date and personnel, but in contrast to later contracts it unfortunately does not give us a list of songs recorded. Thus if we believe the recording contract — and we should as the other contracts make perfect sense —, we know that a session took place on January 6th, 1958 (the date from Berry's book) and that personnel included Johnnie Johnson on piano.

Is this a proof? No, because you can argue that we don't know of a contract for a December session (yet?), that there is no list of songs, that there may be other sessions between January and March 1958 (when Johnny B. Goode hit the stores). But placing the recording of Johnny B. Goode (and maybe the others) with the January session sounds reasonable given the information we have.

Other information we have is an audio protocol of what happened at the session which generated Johnny B. Goode. The recording tapes of this session have survived and have been released to the public. So they form some additional 'hard facts' we may base our discussion on.

From the tapes we know of three tries to record the song during this session. To judge the audio recordings one has to take into account that the released versions are not labeled correctly.

The correct sequence of the recordings has been discussed here in a blog post dated July 26, 2011:

Johnny B. Goode - take 1: was first released in 1986 on CHESS CH2-92521 "Rock 'n Roll Rarities" as the second part of a track named "Johnny B. Goode — previously unreleased version".

Johnny B. Goode - take 2: is a very brief take which starts correctly but is then interrupted. This second take has been released twice: Complete with the announcement "Johnny B. Goode Take Two" on Hip-O Select's "Johnny B. Goode - His complete 1950s recordings" and without this announcement but with a false start as the first part of the previously unreleased version on "Rock 'n Roll Rarities". Note that the sequence of the two takes is reversed on the 1986 release. Also note that the Hip-O set misses take 1 completely. It is only on the 1986 double album.

Johnny B. Goode - take 3: exists in two variants. The original recording of this take without any overdubs was first released on the Hip-O Select set in 2008.

Johnny B. Goode - take 3 including guitar overdub: This is the 1958 hit version. Like on many other recordings, Berry on take 3 played just the first part of the lead guitar intro but then continued playing the rhythm guitar. The remaining parts of the guitar intro as well as further guitar solos were recorded and overdubbed later, probably during the same session.

Again this provides us with some more facts, but how much of this can be considered as 'hard facts'? The takes are introduced as takes one, two and three. Take 3 is the basis of the final released record. So we can assume that there were no other takes. The final master (8633) however is a modified version of take 3. The most obvious modification is the addition of further lead guitar segments.

Another possible modification is a manipulation of the playback speed. It is known that Chess Records modified the playback speed of Sweet Little Sixteen to make Berry's voice sound younger. When a sound recording is played faster, the pitch becomes higher with the voices sounding lighter.

With Johnny B. Goode such a modification is not as obvious as with Sweet Little Sixteen. The running times of the undubbed take 3 and of the final master are almost identical. Whereas we have to keep in mind that we have access to the final master only in the form of 45 rpm records and digital copies like the one on the Hip-O Select box.

Just for academic purposes (and without any other use anyway) I have created myself an audio file in which one can hear the beginning of both variants of take 3 of Johnny B. Goode. The left stereo channel is the un-modified take 3, the right stereo channel contains the released master. One notices the overdubbed guitar which is now to be heard on the right channel only. And one can notice that there is a tiny difference in speed. It sounds as if the released master indeed has a slightly higher pitch and runs a little bit faster.
[I have asked Universal Music for permission to provide readers with a download link to this audio file. I have not received any permission nor any response at all, though (yet).]

What does this tell us about the recording session itself? Very little. We have no information when the guitar overdub was recorded and how. In the late 1950s there was no multi-track tape recording at Chess. Thus it is probable that the original take was played back into the studio where Berry then added the missing guitar lines. This is also where the speed difference may come from: The tape played back on a different machine and then re-recorded along with the solo guitar.

All we can tell for sure is that the mastering of the overdubbed take happened in temporal proximity to the mastering of Sweet Little Sixteen which in turn obviously happened before that song's release in January 1958.

In regard to the discussion on who was the pianist on Johnny B. Goode the differences between the three takes are relevant. Comparing the takes, it is obvious that Berry pretty much knew how he wanted the guitar to sound like. The main difference between the complete takes 1 and 3 is the piano playing. And how important this piano playing was becomes audible from the discussions taking place during take 2.

Take 2 starts just normal with the famous guitar intro. Then, when the piano comes in, someone shouts "hold it" and a dialog starts which I interpret as follows. To better understand the different sentences, I created another sound file in which I tried to level the loudness of those said through a microphone and those said without.
[Again I wanted to provide a download link to this sound-enhanced excerpt just for academic purposes but did not hear from Universal Music as the owner of this recording.]

I hear this dialog:

Voice 1 'Hold it, hold it, hold it!'
Voice 2 'What do you want, Jack?'
Voice 1 'You were making Roll Over Beethoven on piano that time, stay away from that!'
Voice 3 'Piano or guitar?'
Voice 2 'Keep playin' on the guitar during the solo.'
Voice 1 'Yeah, on the solo he was makin' Roll Over Beethoven. Stay away from that one!'
Voice 4 'Who is (he talking to)?' interrupted
Voice 1 'Johnny B. Goode, take three'

It is not clear which voice belongs to which person. In my opinion Voice 1, the main voice (on the microphone), is the voice of Jack Sheldon Wiener, engineer and from May 1957 to August 1958 co-owner of the recording studio at 2120 S. Michigan Av., Chicago. Jack is referenced and talked to in other segments from this session, e.g. in talks related to Sweet Little Sixteen and Reelin' And Rockin'. Voice 2, who instructs Berry to continue playing guitar during the piano solo, seems to be Leonard Chess. This fits to Berry's recollections of the session in his book where he writes: "Leonard Chess took an instant liking to this song and stayed in the studio coaching us the whole time we were cutting it." Voice 3 must be one of the musicians. Since he has no microphone I suspect this is the pianist asking. Voice 4 finally sounds like Chuck Berry to me.

Wiener obviously noticed that the piano solo on take 1 was too close to what they had released as Roll Over Beethoven. Berry himself did not care that much. He believed anyway that his songs differed in lyrics and solos alone. The rest was just standard. "Roll Over Beethoven, Johnny B. Goode, you name it, all of the songs could carry the same background or music that each other has." (Berry quoted by Tim McFarlin, see blog post of December 18, 2014)

I admit that both my interpretation of the studio dialog and my assignment of persons to voices is subject to discussions. The other Berry experts who listened to this studio talk had various different opinions. Some assigned Voice 1 to Leonard Chess, some even to Berry himself. Bob Lohr, who played piano behind Chuck Berry for the last decade, says:

The cat who stated "You were playing 'Roll Over Beethoven' ... stay away from that", and "he was playing 'Roll Over Beethoven' on piano" ... is clearly Chuck, not the engineer ... he's using the in-studio high quality vocal microphone and I'm 1000% sure it's Chuck ... after 18 years, I know his speaking voice like the back of my hand ... furthermore, the way Chuck pronounces "Beethoven" is pretty unique ... trust me, on my life I'm telling that was Chuck speaking, end of story!!! The engineer and LC [Leonard Chess] are speaking through the low quality studio talkback microphone.

I perfectly accept that Bob can identify Berry's voice as it sounds today. We should not forget that we are talking about a recording made when Berry was in his early thirties. Voices change and to me the instructing voice and the voice singing sound differently.

The main question the discussions about Johnny B. Goode circle around is the question "Who is the pianist instructed to stay away from playing Roll Over Beethoven". Some Berry experts point to Ellis "Lafayette" Leake, others favor Johnnie Johnson. Early discographies had listed Leake on piano, the ultimate discographical authority Fred Rothwell now lists Johnson as pianist — following the January 6 recording contract. It is unknown how the early discographies came to listing Leake. Fred writes in a recent article for "Now Dig This" magazine:

Session information about musicians has grown organically over the years and much of it has been based on anecdotal, word-of-mouth remembrances. In the '60s, blues fans would ask artists about old sessions and I'm sure guys like Willie Dixon, for instance, would try to placate them by giving info that was not always correct. Lafayette Leake was a big friend of Willie's and, I suspect, he got named as pianist for wont of someone else at times. Johnnie Johnson was not part of the Chess studio clique (he never recorded in his own name at Chess) and I think he may have been overlooked.

Those who favor Leake also say that both Berry and Johnson have denied many times over the years that Johnson was among the staff recording Johnny B. Goode. However, I was not able to find a single source for this claim. The only source to this effect is from Travis Fitzpatrick's biography of Johnson where he cites Johnnie saying "The only recordin' I didn't play on was 'Johnny B. Goode'. Chuck did that as a surprise for me."

Asked about this quote by Tim McFarlin and me, Travis said that when using Johnnie's quotes one should always keep in mind that Johnnie's interpretations and those of the reader might not necessarily match. The whole lawsuit between Berry and Johnson was based on the fact that to Johnson "writing music" was something completely different than what a copyright lawyer would understand thereunder.
Likewise, Johnson's saying that he did not play on Johnny B. Goode may not necessary mean "play piano", but more to the effect of "play a role" meaning "I did not contribute to Johnny B. Goode which I didn't know about before we went into the studio.".
In an 1999 interview with Ken Burke for the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (see http://www.rockabillyhall.com/DrIJJohnson.html) Johnson became more specific:

That's how we worked out all the tunes that's he's [Chuck Berry's] got practically, except "Johnnie B. Goode." I had nothing to do with that, that was sort of a tribute to me, I understand.

This is from Travis:

Since he is no longer around to clear it up, I can only guess what Johnnie meant with his original statement about not playing on "Johnny B. Goode." I probably should have questioned him more about it before he passed away. Remember, this is the man who said, "I didn’t write the music with Chuck, I was just in the room sometimes when he was writing" before describing the process he and Chuck used to write their music! It was years before we understood the reason why he said this. Johnnie believed writing music meant writing down lyrics or transcribing notes onto a lead sheet. Johnnie called what he and Chuck did "making up music" because it wasn’t written down. If you ever saw the movie Forrest Gump, that was very much how Johnnie viewed the world. As a consequence, more misunderstandings are coming to light. For example, Johnnie didn’t think he played on the early Mercury sessions because he thought the re-recording of all their Chess hits was due to a fire at Berry Park destroying the originals. He thought Chuck arranged to re-record the old songs on his own! That was Johnnie in a nutshell.

Whether or not Johnson or Leake played piano during the Johnny B. Goode session is still open to discussion. One would think that people who know Johnson's playing well can simply hear whether it's him playing. In the same 1999 interview Ken Burke asked Travis Fitzpatrick: "Even as low in the mix as some of Johnnie's piano work is, would you know his playing when you heard it?"
Travis replied:

Sure. I can always tell his playing. [...] I can listen to a lot of those songs and tell it's him. When I listen to some of those original Berry records I can say "That's Johnnie for sure!" I can tell that Lafayette Leake came in on some stuff, especially "Johnnie B. Goode." I can tell that's not Johnnie. Then, like he was saying, there's this whole thing where Leonard Chess would come in during his solo and run his hand up and down the keys, which Johnnie never does. So, that kind of made it more difficult, plus Lafayette Leake was a very good mimic. [...] But I'm 100% sure that was Lafayette Leake on "Johnnie B. Goode."

Another expert on Johnnie's piano playing is Bob Lohr. Bob is a pianist himself and has played with both Berry and Johnson. He likewise claims that he can identify Johnson's playing, too:

I'm extremely familiar with JJ's [Johnnie Johnson's] style. I have been called upon here in local studios over the years to 'clone' or mimic JJ's style on different projects as JJ's style is pretty much ingrained in my musical DNA. Based upon my familiarity with JJ's style, I would have to say that it was clearly LL [Lafayette Leake] instead of JJ on JBG [Johnny B. Goode] based upon style alone. The stylistic differences between LL and JJ makes me sure that LL was the man on the keys despite the union log of the date. They both played in a similar boogie/blues mode behind Chuck (and often on the same out-of-tune piano apparently!!!), but Leake ... with all due respect to JJ ... was a far more fluid and accomplished jazz player and generally threw in some nice fat jazz double-hand chording at the end of his solos ... something that JJ rarely if ever did. You'll hear Leake do this throughout Takes 2/3 and on the final take as well.

Interestingly, both experts did not know that take 1 of Johnny B. Goode existed which has a very different piano playing and was released only on the 1986 double album. When I asked them to re-check take 1, Bob Lohr found: "You are correct in that it sounds a lot like JJ's style, although I can still hear the stylistic difference."
Travis Fitzpatrick was even more astonished:

I must revise my opinion (an ultimately my book) concerning Johnnie Johnson’s playing on "Johnny B. Goode." Until Dietmar pointed it out, I did not realize that take one was misplaced as take three on Rock 'n Roll Rarities. Consequently, I never really listened to it. Well believe me ... I have now listened to it. I listened to that first take of "Johnny B. Goode" for hours last night. My immediate reaction was "Holy COW! The AFM contract was right! That is Johnnie Johnson!" Just to be sure, I jumped into my Johnnie recordings both issued and unissued and found examples of every lick. His phrasing and the way he resolves his licks is Johnnie’s fingerprint. It is him. The flashiest lick has been right under everyone’s nose. Watch the rehearsals for "Carol" in Hail Hail Rock and Roll or better yet, Johnnie’s backing behind the sax on "Almost Grown" in Hail Hail Rock and Roll. Those songs are in C and G respectively, but you can see that the lick is in his repertoire and in fact, he uses it quite a bit. Just not on most of the Chuck Berry recordings — which is why it hasn’t become recognized as a standard JJ lick.

Travis' remark on the song keys is significant because Johnny B. Goode is written in B flat (Bb). Bob Lohr again:

It's harder to play Chuck's style (or blues in general) in the flat keys ... E flat (Eb) or B flat (Bb). Johnnie was not too good at playing in those keys and would never use those keys when playing in his own band. LL on the other hand, was technically a much more accomplished classically-trained/jazz player who could play almost as well in Bb or Eb as JJ could play in G. JJ could certainly play in B flat or E flat, but nowhere near as well and as fluid as LL plays here in B flat. If in fact JJ played on JBG, he played in a completely different style which we have never heard before or since from JJ ... and better in B flat than he ever played before or since.

Bob's statements about Johnson's facility in playing jazz licks or playing in B flat at all had Travis to disagree:

Regarding Johnnie’s proficiency in B-flat and as a jazz musician: Johnnie Johnson was playing jazz professionally in Detroit at age seventeen. As a nineteen-year-old Marine, he was handpicked by Bobby Troup to play piano in the Barracudas, a USO service band featuring members of Glenn Miller’s, Tommy Dorsey’s, and Count Basie’s orchestras. After WWII he returned to Detroit where big band jazz and swing had gone out of style and he had to learn bebop like Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell to get jobs. Johnnie could play "How High the Moon" in every key; I saw it with my own eyes when he was giving me lessons. His trio in Chicago, with Milton Rector on bass, was a jazz combo. The Johnnie Johnson (or Sir John’s) Trio was a jazz combo when they started at the Cosmopolitan Club — remember, Chuck replaced a saxophone player. If you asked Johnnie to list his piano heroes, they were all jazz greats, no blues and certainly no rock pianists. His idol was Oscar Peterson. Johnnie knew jazz very, very well. Defining the limits of Johnnie’s jazz ability based on what he played with Chuck Berry and on his blues albums is like determining someone’s knowledge of chess by how he plays checkers. Johnnie’s favorite keys were G, C, B-flat, F, D and E-flat. He did not like the way A sounded (thought it was too bright), he played E grudgingly, and he absolutely hated C sharp/D-flat and B. So yes, if you just turned him loose on a blues or rock song, he would do what he enjoyed and what came easiest to him. I have a recording of Johnnie playing "Johnny B. Goode" at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It is in the original B-flat, and he nails it. We even had the rest of the band pull out so he could show what it sounded like on piano. I can think of at least one great live blues off the top of my head that he does in B-flat as well. And he used to do this gospel style breakdown playing "Maybellene" live with Chuck that was really cool. The point being, Johnnie was very good in B-flat.

At this point we have moved far away from the 'hard facts' issue we started this article with. We're now down to rely on expert opinions — the same way a judge would have to rely on expert testimonials. Like a judge you will have to come to your own conclusions.

One thing both of our experts have not taken into account enough is — at least in my personal opinion — that during the change from take one to take three Jack Wiener (or whoever) clearly instructs the pianist to play in a completely different style. This can be a good reason why Johnnie Johnson does not sound like Johnnie Johnson on the final recording.

All in all I finally agree with Fred Rothwell's sessionography change. Whether you do depends on how you judge the various facts and opinions by yourself. This lengthy article should give you everything to come down to your own decision.

[Many thanks to all the Berry experts who provided useful information during the creation of this article, most notably Fred Rothwell, Morten Reff, Josep Rulló, Bob Lohr, Tim McFarlin, Travis Fitzpatrick, Michel Ruppli, and Arne Wolfswinkel.]

In 1981 Chuck Berry toured Japan for the very first time. EMI / EASTWORLD of Japan recorded at least two of the shows and released the highlights as an LP called Chuck Berry Tokyo Session.

Because this album was distributed in Japan only, it is one of the rarer official Chuck Berry LPs.
A couple of weeks ago and within a few hours two readers of this site informed me about a video on YouTube which is related to this album - and which changes some data we thought to know about the album.
Here are a few pages from the 1981 tour promotional book courtesy of Claude Schlouch collection:
  
If you cannot read Japanese (such as I), here's a translation of the most important facts, i.e. the venues and dates:

Date	Time	Town	Concert Hall
Thursday, April 23, 1981	6:30 PM	Nagoya	Aichi Kinro-Kaikan
Fridayday, April 24, 1981	6:30 PM	Osaka	Osaka Festival Hall
Monday, April 27, 1981	6:30 PM	Tokyo	Shinjuku Kosei-Nenkin Hall
Tuesday, April 28, 1981	6:30 PM	Tokyo	Shinjuku Kosei-Nenkin Hall
Wednesday, April 29, 1981	1:00 PM	Tokyo	Shibuya Kokaido

According to the information printed on the album cover, the LP's ten or eleven songs (Carol as usual blends into Little Queenie to form a medley) were recorded during the third and fifth show of this tour. The album cover does not tell which song was recorded where. Fred Rothwell therefore had listed the album's first side with the April 27 concert and the second side with the April 29 concert, though saying that this is just a pure guess.
Now back to YouTube. Using the link https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R6a6H8Cmrcc you'll find a video called Chuck Berry - Tokyo Session (1981) uploaded April 2014. It's not a video at all, just an audio recording played to a fixed image of the tourbook and a ticket. Both the ticket and the YouTube explanation say that the audio was recorded on April 29, 1981 at Shibuya Koukaidou. This means that this is from the same show also the LP was cut from.
This however is NOT - as one would asume on YouTube - a bootleg copy of the LP album. Instead it is a live recording which has no duplicates with the album - songs which are on the album and in the video are different.
If we assume that the date and location of the Youtube audio track are correct and if we consider the high quality of the Youtube recording, my theory is that the unknown poster had access to the concert recording segments which were not used for the LP.
The YouTube show starts with an MC introduction and ends with Berry's typical closing routine. However, this is not a complete show. If you listen closely you will find that it consists of two parts glued together. There is a break right after Let It Rock and before the Carol medley. And if we assume that Berry played his usual set of 60 minutes (according to one collector, Japanese concerts typically last only 45 minutes) there is a segment missing in the middle of the YouTube video.
In my opinion we have here the beginning and the end of the Shibuya Kokaido concert, while its missing middle part has been used for the album. If it is, we can listen to the album and see if we can find out which songs might fit into the middle of this 29th concert - and which songs are definitely not, thus have to be from the 27th. I just did. This is my list of comments. Please check for yourself.

LP side A:
- School Day - might be a separate track since Roll Over Beethoven starts pretty surprisingly
- Roll Over Beethoven and Wee Wee Hours flow into each other pretty continuously (which could be a post-processing trick, though)
- Wee Wee Hours starts with the Blues explanation. Since that is on Sweet Sixteen on the YouTube recording, it's probable that this track is from a different concert, i.e. from the 27th.
- My Ding-A-Ling is separated from Wee Wee Hours. It includes Ingrid's introduction, though, and as such must also be from the 27th.
- Memphis follows My Ding-A-Ling smoothly and since the Youtube recording has no space to put another Ingrid track in, this has to be from the 27th as well.
LP side B:
- Sweet Little Sixteen blends smoothly into Rock and Roll Music
- Rock and Roll Music is in the YouTube video and different, thus has to be from the 27th.
- Carol/Little Queenie as well
- Bio has no audible gap to the Carol/Little Queenie medley before and to Johnny B. Goode following.
- Johnny B. Goode again can be found in a different version as part of the YouTube video.

Thus of all LP tracks only School Day fits into the middle of the YouTube recording. The most probable sequence of the songs therefore is:

April 27th:
- Roll Over Beethoven (LP)
- Wee Wee Hours (LP)
- Sweet Little Sixteen (LP)
- Rock And Roll Music (LP)
- Carol / Little Queenie (LP)
- Bio (LP)
- Johnny B. Goode (LP)
- My Ding-A-Ling (LP)
- Memphis (LP)
- (probably) Reelin' And Rockin' or some other closing routine (unreleased)

April 29th:
- Roll Over Beethoven (YouTube)
- Rock & Roll Music (YouTube)
- Sweet Sixteen (YouTube)
- Let It Rock (YouTube)
- School Day (LP)
- Carol / Little Queenie (YouTube)
- Johnny B Goode (YouTube)
- My Ding A Ling (YouTube)
- Reelin' And Rockin' (YouTube)

Fred agreed to use this sequence in further editions of his discography - until we get more data.

[Many thanks to Claude Schlouch, Thierry Chanu, and Naoki Suzuki for help with this article.]

Thanks for all the good laughs!

Since the release of Bear Family's Chuck Berry: Rock And Roll Music – Any Old Way You Choose It (Bear Family BCD 17273 PL) Fred Rothwell and I received several inquiries regarding Fred's discography as printed in the Bear Family book.

Several readers asked whether this discography would be available as a PDF file because they'd love to add some handwritten notes without damaging the great book. Others asked for a list where they could highlight the recordings they already have or those they still miss.

Due to this Fred prepared a simpler version of the discography. It contains all the information from the Bear Family book plus a few corrections. It omits the fancy layout and the colorful images, though. And like in the Bear Family book it contains just the period between 1954 and 1979 and only the musical recordings, thus omitting the interviews and the later (live) recordings. All this additional stuff as well as lots of background information, stories and session details can still be found by getting Fred's book Long Distance Information: Chuck Berry's Recorded Legacy (Music Mentor Books, 2001 ).

You can download Fred's 32-page document from this link:

Fred Rothwell: The Chuck Berry Discography 1954 - 1979

Many thanks to Fred for providing us with this document!