Sunday, May 11. 2014
I usually don't quote from press releases, but this is good enough to make an exception:
The parameters of rock music were set one day in May 1955, when Chuck Berry recorded his debut single âMaybelleneâ. Chuck Berry was the rockânâroll pioneer who turned the electric guitar into the main instrument of rock music. Every riff and solo played by rock guitarists over the last 60 years contains DNA that can be traced right back to Chuck Berry. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and a million other groups began to learn their craft by playing Chuck Berry songs. Chuck Berry is also a superb songwriter. In the course of three minutes he conjures up an image of the everyday life and dreams of a teenager, often with the focus on cars. Chuck Berry, born in 1926, was the first to drive up onto the highway and announce that we are born to run. These are the reasons why Chuck berry is going to be honored with the Polar Music Prize 2014 on August 26th by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden in Stockholm.
Besides being honored with a great ceremony and given a prize money of 1,000,000 Swedish Kroner (appr. $150,000), which Berry will appreciate more, this prize puts Berry in one line not only with other renowned popular artists, but with exceptional composers and performers of classical music as well.
The Polar Music Prize is a legacy from Stig Anderson (1931-1997), one of the most famous figures in the Swedish music industry. A songwriter himself with an output of around 3,000 published titles, many of them chart hits, Anderson managed some of the biggest Swedish artists of the 1960s and then in the early 1970s became manager, co-writer, and producer of Sweden's most important pop group, ABBA. Anderson's record company Polar Music released all the original ABBA albums.
[Since 1992] the Polar Music Prize is an international music prize, which is awarded to individuals, groups or institutions in recognition of exceptional achievements in the creation and advancement of music. The Polar Music Prize awards two Laureates in order to celebrate music in all its various forms and to emphasize the original intention of the Polar Music Prize: To break down musical boundaries by bringing together people from all the different worlds of music. To learn more about the prize, visit their website at polarmusicprize.org. The site also contains videos of the ceremonies, so expect to see Berry there as well. Along with their press release, the Prize Committee published a nice and almost correct brief biography of Berry at http://polarmusicprize.org/announcement/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/PMP_biografi_CB.pdf
Monday, April 21. 2014
CBID is the Chuck Berry International Directory, a 2.200 page pile of Chuck Berry records information published in four volumes between 2008 and 2013. For details see the bibliography section of this site.CBID is never complete as new records and CDs appear and some old rarities are discovered. This section presents interesting additions and corrections to CBID. Today: Four additional cover versions, three of them quite recent, to be added to the chapter on Chuck Berry covers in Volume 3. Correction over post dated March 5th, 2014: Biographical details about Kelly Clarkson
KELLY CLARKSON (USA) Kelly Brianne Clarkson, born 1982 in Fort Worth, Texas. Sheâs an American singer-songwriter who in 2002 won the first season of American Idol. Her debut single âA Moment Like Thisâ topped the Billboard Hot 100, and her album âThankfulâ in 2003 was certified double platinum. Her manager is Narvel Blackstock who is the husband of Reba McEntire, and Kelly is married to Brandon Blackstock, son of Narvel. Itâs all the family (!) Run Rudolph Run (2:27) 2013 CD: Wrapped In Red [RCA 77623-2] ? USA, 2013 Not my favourite version, far from it actually. It does not rock and roll, itâs too staccato in the rhythm which leaves us at the stamp of rock music without a beat.
NEW DANGERS (Italy) Beat quintet. Maybellene [âPiantalaâ] ( : ) 1966 45: Robinson Records RR-17 ? Italy, 1966 (picture sleeve)
WILD ANGELS (UK) See Volume 3, page 1603 for biographical info. Little Queenie ( : ) 2013 CD: The Wild Angels Ride Again [Foot Tapping FT-141] ? UK, 2013 The guy who started the band back in 1967, Mitch Mitchell, has gathered some former members and relaunching the band: Keith Read, Rusty Lupton and Wild Bob Burgos.
WHITNEY WOLANIN (USA) Sheâs a pop singer/songwriter, born 1990 in Albany, New York, growing up in Florida. Released her debut album âFunkology XIIIâ in 2005. Run Rudolph Run (3:01) 2013 CD EP: Run, Run Rudolph [Top Notch Records, unk. cat no] ? USA, 2013 5 song EP. Now this a better version which has some rock & roll feeling and beat to it. On this special EP it comes in three different mixes, Up-Tech, Sing Along and Country. The song reached #2 on the US Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, December 2013. Whitney and her sister Victoria operate the Top Notch Record label.
Thursday, April 17. 2014
CBID is the Chuck Berry International Directory, a 2.200 page pile of Chuck Berry records information published in four volumes between 2008 and 2013. For details see the bibliography section of this site.CBID is never complete as new records and CDs appear and some old rarities are discovered. This section presents interesting additions and corrections to CBID. Today: Two additional entries to the country-specific discographies published in Volume 1:
SPAIN ROCKINâ AT THE HOPS Zafiro [Charly] 301 12367 ? 1988 Same cover and contents as the reissue UK Charly (Green Line) LP GCH-8041 (1986).
BELGIUM I think we can now assume that all the Rock Revival singles with picture sleeves which came out in France in 1968/69 also were released in Belgium, prefix BE (same pictures but different colours), although so far I have only seen two: the one listed here on February 24, 2014 and the one below. ROCK REVIVAL (VOLUME 6) Nadine / Carol Chess BE-169528 ? 1969 Picture sleeve. This sleeve is red compared to the French one on page 294 (in CBID Vol. 1) which is orange.
Tuesday, April 15. 2014
CBID is the Chuck Berry International Directory, a 2.200 page pile of Chuck Berry records information published in four volumes between 2008 and 2013. For details see the bibliography section of this site.CBID is never complete as new records and CDs appear and some old rarities are discovered. This section presents interesting additions and corrections to CBID. Today: Hereâs a 78 from South Africa. Finally we have a record by Chuck from this country released in the â50s.
SOUTH AFRICA Sweet Little Sixteen / Reelinâ And Rockinâ London PD. 8182 ? 1958 (78 rpm) Black label,with silver print. It says on the label: âŚby arrangement with the Decca Record Co. Ltd. England.
Saturday, April 12. 2014
CBID is the Chuck Berry International Directory, a 2.200 page pile of Chuck Berry records information published in four volumes between 2008 and 2013. For details see the bibliography section of this site.CBID is never complete as new records and CDs appear and some old rarities are discovered. This section presents interesting additions and corrections to CBID. Today: a new cover version which is quite interesting in the way of the name of the band in the first place:
STUCK HERRY (Netherlands) Rockânâroll quartet led by Peter de Haan (guitar-vocals), Ep Oosting (vocals-guitar), Martin Tuinte (bass), Theo Dijkstra (drums-vocals). Their influences are Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran and the Kinks. However, no doubt about it that they got their name from Chuck Berryâs. Back In The USA (1:39) 2013 EP: Rock And Roll E.P. Volume 1 [Primrose Prod. EKS-0290] ? Netherlands, 2013 They are pictured on the cover with acoustic instruments, but the Berry track has an el. guitar solo. I had to look at my stop-watch twice to check if the time was right. It was! The music is ok but I donât fancy the vocals, especially not the oh yeahs. They also cover Cochran/John D. Loudermilkâs âSittinâ In The Balconyâ (not good) and Cochranâs âJeannie, Jeannie, Jeannieâ (better), plus âJustineâ from Don & Dewey.
Friday, April 11. 2014
CBID is the Chuck Berry International Directory, a 2.200 page pile of Chuck Berry records information published in four volumes between 2008 and 2013. For details see the bibliography section of this site.CBID is never complete as new records and CDs appear and some old rarities are discovered. This section presents interesting additions and corrections to CBID. Today: Two 2013 CDs. which you can easily do without:
Netherlands LET IT ROCK â Just About As Good As It Gets [2 CD] Smith & Co. SCCD-2492 ? 2013 CD 1: Let It Rock / Johnny B. Goode / Thirty Days / Maybellene / Sweet Little Rock And Roller / Rock And Roll Music / Carol / Sweet Little Sixteen (original speed) /You Canât Catch Me /Little Queenie /Back In The USA / Rock At The Philarmonic (instr) / Almost Grown / Roll Over Beethoven / I Got To Find My Baby+ / Around And Around /No Money Down / House Of Blue Lights+ / Do You Love Me / Mad Lad (instr) / Too Much Monkey Business / Donât You Lie To Me+ / Come On / Childhood Sweetheart / Too Pooped To Pop+ / Oh Baby Doll / Rock And Roll Music (demo) /County Line / Wee Wee Hours / Rip It Up+.
CD 2: Down The Road A Piece+ (faded) / Reelinâ And Rockinâ / School Day / Go Go Go / 21 Blues (Vacation Time) / Iâm Talking About You / Memphis, Tennessee / Bye Bye Johnny (stereo) / Guitar Boogie (instr) / Jaguar And The Thunderbird / Run Rudolph Run+ / Confessinâ My Blues+ / Betty Jean / Johnny B. Goode (alt. take) / In-Go (instr) / Brown Eyed Handsoime Man / Run Around / Come On (alt. take stereo) / Route 66+ (alt. take stereo) / Beautiful Delilah / Say Youâll Be Mine+ -The Equadors / Worried Life Blues+ / One OâClock Jump+ (instr) / Let Me Sleep Woman+ -The Equadors / Merry Christmas Baby+ / Sweet Little Sixteen (alt. take) / Reelinâ And Rockinâ (alt, take) / Down Bound Train / Sweet Sixteen+ / Down The Road A Piece (stereo).
Donât know what it is, but I donât approve of this CD release. The sound is not good enough as of todays standard. And why include both âCounty Lineâ and âJaguar And The Thunderbirdâ as they are almost the same songs. And both versions of âCome Onâ? And âDown The Road A Pieceâ twice? âRip It Upâ? Give me a break. The text says âVacation Timeâ but it is â21 Bluesâ. There is enough material to choose from his â50s and early â60s stuff so this 2 CD set is a waste of money. The liner notes in the booklet written by Dave Travis are straight forward and quite okay. Available at amazon.com: Click here CD plus free MP3s available from amazon.de: Click here
USA SAN FRANCISCO DUES Geffen [Chess] GET-54058-CD ? 2013 This digipack is the same as original US album Chess (GRT) CH-50008 from 1971. No extra tracks, BUT they (who?) have used the slow version of âLonely Schooldaysâ instead of the rockin version thatâs on the original album. Always something! Available at amazon.com including free MP3s: Click here
Wednesday, March 26. 2014
CBID is the Chuck Berry International Directory, a 2.200 page pile of Chuck Berry records information published in four volumes between 2008 and 2013. For details see the bibliography section of this site.CBID is never complete as new records and CDs appear and some old rarities are discovered. This section presents interesting additions and corrections to CBID. Today: The missing Dutch - For some reason, this 45 from 1975 missed to make it into Volume 1. So here it is:
NETHERLANDS Shake Rattle And Roll / Baby What You Want Me To Do Chess CH-2169 ? 1975 (picture sleeve)
Tuesday, March 11. 2014
Here's a question to all the Stones fans out there:
Do you know anything about the record shown?
As you see there is nothing mentioned on the label who this is. It sounds like the Rolling Stones, but itâs probably not. Same song on both sides. Morten bought this 45 on eBay from Canada in early 2012.
The Stones did actually play in Toronto 4-5 March 1977 in a small club but according to their set list they didnât perform âLittle Queenieâ (though they did âAround And Aroundâ).
Itâs live all right, and although the singer tries his best to sound like Mick Jagger, towards the end the guitarist plays riffs that are very different from Keith or Ronnie.
So, is this a bootleg of some sort pretending to be the Stones or is it a Stones cover band trying to fool us, or what? Can anyone help out there?
Monday, March 10. 2014
Regular readers of the Chuck Bery Collectors Blog will have noticed that during the last weeks a new signature appeared below some of the posts: Morten Reff's.
Who is this guy, you may ask.
If you are collecting Chuck Berry records, you will not even think to ask this question. But for the one newbie reading these pages, let me briefly introduce Morten.
Morten Reff is a (or probably the) world expert on Chuck Berry records. He's the one who knows everything about when a specific record was released in a specific country, what the cover looked like and what's special about its contents.
Like me, Morten is a second-hand Berry fan. When Berry had his first hits, Morten was only recently born, and I wasn't even that. So we were never touched by the original hype.
Morten started collecting Berry records when his hits were re-released during the early British Beat craze. He bought his first single on PYE Let it Rock b/w Memphis, Tennessee. I encountered Berry during the early 1970s, when his greatest hits were already marketed as "Golden Oldies".
Both of us then started to collect more and more Berry recordings and records, trying to find even less known or more strange songs. While I was happy to get some cheap French reprint of a Chess mono album, Morten ordered the old U.S. albums and got the then modern "enhanced stereo" versions. In any case we tried to get more and more, especially after having noticed that versions differed on some albums or singles.
Though not formally trained as a music historian, in this specific field Morten worked like one. His research became a huge stack of publishing data. Consequently when Howard DeWitt in 1981 published the first English-language book about Chuck Berry, Morten directly wrote to the author about how faulty the included discography was. Due to this the 1985 printing of DeWitt's book came with a much better and much longer discography - written by Morten Reff.
During the last few years, Morten has published the essence of his 40+ year research on Berry recordings and Berry-related recordings in a series of books called The Chuck Berry International Directory (CBID).
Morten and I got into contact 18 years ago when an early print version of this blog was distributed to Berry collectors all over Europe by help of a British record seller, Hugh McCallum. Since then we continue to exchange news and findings on Berry rarities. We share a lot: We both like Berry's music, but don't care for his personal life stories. We're from Europe, and we both hate to accept that My Ding-A-Ling became Berry's greatest hit. And finally we are convinced that a true collector must also be an extensive researcher. We both encourage other collectors to join in and share their knowledge with us.
With the print version of his over 2.000 pages of Berry's musical legacy finished, Morten agreed to post further findings (new records, new covers) in blog articles here. If you own the books, you might therefore bookmark this blog and print out the CBID additions.
If you want Morten (or me) to write about a specific Berry-related subject, feel free to send an email to cbguide@crlf.de. We promise to at least think about it.
Friday, March 7. 2014
CBID is the Chuck Berry International Directory, a 2.200 page pile of Chuck Berry records information published in four volumes between 2008 and 2013. For details see the bibliography section of this site.CBID is never complete as new records and CDs appear and some old rarities are discovered. This section presents interesting additions and corrections to CBID. Today: We found a Spanish album not listed in Volume 1 - and then we didn't:
Spain CHUCK BERRY : ĂXITOS Movie Play S-26.103 ? Spain, 1972 This one (listed on page 451) has a fold-out cover which was not mentioned. The cover also has the following printed on the back: Fabricado distribuido por discos movieplay, S.A. Bajo licencia de GRT â Chess Records, USA. Which differs from the book-club issue below.
CHUCK BERRY : ĂXITOS Movie Play S-26.103 ? Spain, 1972 (Book-club issue) Same as US LP Chess 1485 âGreatest Hitsâ. Different cover. However, the album title, label and cat no are exactly the same as the one mentioned on page 451 in Vol.1 (see above) but different cover, front and back. And itâs a single cover, and not fold-out as the one on page 451. Has the following printed on the back cover: Produccion especial para Discolibro 7525. Which points to that this issue is an album released by a book club ('Discolibro') and therefore pressed for their members with a new cover. Both albums have the same liner notes in Spanish.
Monday, February 24. 2014
CBID is the Chuck Berry International Directory, a 2.200 page pile of Chuck Berry records information published in four volumes between 2008 and 2013. For details see the bibliography section of this site.CBID is never complete as new records and CDs appear and some old rarities are discovered. This section presents interesting additions and corrections to CBID. Today: Two additional entries to the country-specific discographies published in Volume 1:
USA Johnny B. Goode / Rock And Roll Music Mercury âCelebrity Seriesâ C-30146 ? 1972 This has a special yellow and red color cardboard cover (one-sided). It has the number 3260 which should indicate more issues, however, I have never seen any others. Dark blue label color.
BELGIUM ROCK REVIVAL (VOLUME 4) Roll Over Beethoven / School Day Chess BE-169515 ? 1969 Picture sleeve. This sleeve is green compared to the French one on page 293 (in CBID Vol. 1) which is red.
Friday, February 21. 2014
CBID is the Chuck Berry International Directory, a 2.200 page pile of Chuck Berry records information published in four volumes between 2008 and 2013. For details see the bibliography section of this site.CBID is never complete as new records and CDs appear and some old rarities are discovered. This section presents interesting additions and corrections to CBID. Today: Two additional cover versions, one new and one not so new, to be added to the chapter on Chuck Berry covers in Volume 3.
LA FEMME (FRANCE) Sextet (one girl, five guys), classified as a smooth, tropical, surf, cold wave band from Paris. They first recorded in 2010. Oh Baby Doll [âBaby Dollâ] (3:06) 2013 CD single: Disque Pointu, (no cat.no) ? France, 2013 Techno (as I would call it) version by a young modern popular French group. Interesting to notice the wish to cover an obscure Berry song, in 2013! This was also used as a TV ad for the Yves Saint Laurent Babydoll Mascara. Check it out on YouTube.
BRUCE CHANNEL (USA) Born in 1940 in Jacksonville, Texas. Famous for the hit version of âHey Babyâ in 1962, featuring Delbert McClinton on harmonica. Maybellene [Mabellene] (2:15) 1968 45: Charay C-33-A ? USA, 1968 Record label out of Fort Worth, Texas. This is in stereo and very white soul. Unusual. The B-side âOne Letter At A Timeâ is more country oriented. The Charay label had 2 other 45 issues using the cat.no. 33 but this one has the letter A to separate it from the others. Strange policy though.
Friday, January 31. 2014
The main reason why this part of the Chuck Bery Collectors website is a weblog (or blog) is to open it for your responses.
Several articles here have had great input by readers, sometimes even resulting in heated discussions.
For a good research, discussions and input are essential. This is why you'll find some options to add your personal comment to an article.
Unfortunately I had to stop allowing comments to December's article on Berry's Christmas song. This entry was abused by a huge group of blog spammers. To reduce my work in reading and deleting their garbage, I had to disable the comments function. Right now comments are still open for the 140 other articles here. If you want to add a note to the Christmas song article, please send me an email and I'll post it as a comment here.
It's sad that once again spammers destructed a useful Internet function. But it's interesting to see how the bloggers vs. blog spammers fight escalates more and more.
In the beginning we had no blog spammers. So bloggers wrote articles and readers used the comments form to add their thoughts. Comments were printed right below the main article for everyone to see - and to further comment.
Spammers recognized this as a nice opportunity to post their own texts on other people's websites. Why do they do this? One reason is to display advertising for a product all over the web. Another reason is to display links to their own offers - good for two purposes: readers of the blog might click on a link, and search engines will find lots of links to the spammer's site which in turn rises their position in result lists.
So spammers wrote little programs to search for comments forms and fill those with advertising and links automatically.
Website authors found their pages spammed with advertising or unwanted links, so a counterstrike followed.
The solution was called CAPTCHA, short for 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart'. The idea was to automatically find out whether a comment was written by a human reader or by a machine. There are various types of CAPTCHA. All of them work with something people can easily do and machines can't. Things such as reading a simple question and answering it or recognizing shapes in a distorted image. This is why there is a graphic with my comments form which you have to understand and describe. If you can do so, you're supposed to be human and you are allowed to post a comment.
So we excluded spammers who used computers. Next for the spammers was to change to use humans. Computers looked for comments forms, then humans such as cheaply paid students were hired to fill in the form with the spammers' ads or links. Typically the comment was nice enough to read with the advertising hidden, such as here:
Doe? your blog have a ??nta?t page? I'm having problems locating it but, I'd like to shoot you an e-mail.
Where's the advertising? In the user name and user homepage fields (not shown here). And while such a comment is nice to read, we do not want to publish their ads and links on our pages.
The next solution was algorithms to select useful comments from advertising. Comments were automatically checked against certain words and phrases. If a comment was seen as advertising, it's automatically rejected.
Worked - for some time. Next the spammers learned to mis-spell the keywords so the algorithms would no longer find them. So I received comments that read like this:
I have got you bolk marked too look at neww stuff you post
At some point the algorithms were no longer useful and we had to return to manual approvement. With blogs having few comments such as this one, this is still an option. This is the reason why you cannot post a comment and immediately see it on this site. With every comment posted, first I'll receive a message from the blog software in which I need to approve or reject the comment. Worked for some time.
But even this does not work any more now. For some reason, the Christmas song article was found by spammers to be a valuable target. (I suspect is has to do with a Facebook post about it.) Within a few days I received dozens of spam comments to reject. Sorry, folks, but this is too much work for me!
Another interesting fact is that many spammers nowadays seem to use people who cannot read English at all. Outsourced to China? Have a look at comments like this:
Keep up the {superb|terrific|very good|great|good|awesome|fantastic|excellent|amazing|wonderful} works guys I've {incorporated|added|included} you guys to {|my|our|my personal|my own} blogroll.|{Howdy|Hi there|Hey there|Hi|Hello|Hey} would you mind {stating|sharing} which blog platform you're {working with|using}?
You see? This is a template from which the spammer should have selected alternatives. If he had understood what to do.
Anyway. I have removed the comments function from certain blog posts. If you want to comment on a topic which does not have a comments form beneath, send me an email to (cbguide at crlf dot de) and I'll make sure your input will be seen by other Berry collectors.
Sunday, January 12. 2014
A very rare vinyl record containing a Chuck Berry recording only available there is currently for sale at eBay.
Look at item 230969781717.
This promotional record contains radio spots recorded to support the 1975 NAPRA Get Off anti-drug campaign. There are 51 radio spots on this record, one spoken by Chuck Berry. For more details read the chapter on Radio Show and Promotional Records of this site.
Wednesday, November 20. 2013
In the 1950s everything was simple: Singles had to run two minutes or 2:30 the max. Albums were just a collection of singles plus some tracks too bad for a single release.
In the 1960s albums became an artistic concept on their own. Singles were selected from the album tracks. And because album tracks often became longer and longer, record companies edited album tracks down to a running time reasonable for radio stations to play. That was something in the area of 3 to 4 minutes. By the way: According to The History of the 45 RPM Record, the longest 45 rpm track ever released was Bruce Springsteen's Incident on 57th Street (1987).
When collecting Chuck Berry records, you will find a couple of single edits. The most well-known is of course My Ding-A-Ling which was 11:52 on the original album and cut down to 4:16 for the famous #1 single. Ding-A-Ling has been re-issued on CD multiple times, so getting both the album version and the single edit is easy. However, some single edits are quite rare to find and you need indeed get yourself the original 45 rpm single to listen to the shortened version.
Here's a table of tracks which have been edited to fit on a hit single. Not included are the many album tracks which have varying lengths on CDs or LPs due to different fades or space restrictions. Year | Song | Original album track | Shortened single track |
1964 | Chuck's Beat | 10:36 on Two Great Guitars (Checker LPS-2991) | 2:55 on Checker 1089 |
1964 | Bo's Beat | 14:04 on Two Great Guitars (Checker LPS-2991) | 2:55 on Checker 1089 |
1969 | It's Too Dark in There | 3:53 on Concerto in B. Goode (Mercury SR-61223) | 2:58 on Mercury 72963 (promotional release only) |
1972 | My Ding-A-Ling (live) | 11:52 on The London Chuck Berry Sessions (Chess CH-60020) | 4:16 on Chess CH-2131 |
1972 | Johnny B. Goode (live) | 4:38 on The London Chuck Berry Sessions (Chess CH-60020) | 3:53 on Chess CH-2131 |
1972 | Reelin' and Rockin' (live) | 7:10 on The London Chuck Berry Sessions (Chess CH-60020) | 4:19 on Chess CH-2136 (US version) 4:30 on Chess 6145 020 (UK version) 2:42 on Durium LdA-7811 (Italian Jukebox version) 4:55 on Chess CH-25002 (French version, faded only, not edited) |
1973 | Bio | 4:21 on Bio (Chess CH-50043) | 3:45 on Chess CH-2140 (US version only) full length in all other countries |
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