Buy and Sell Berrys

We often get the same kind of questions:

I have this and this Chuck Berry record or a whole collection of Chuck Berry records. How much is it worth?

Most askers are disappointed with our reply. There are a very few records which value a significant amount. For all others the main problem is not the value but to find a collector interested who doesn't already own it.
Less and less collectors exist and for records which you paid $100 some years ago you're lucky if someone pays $10 today.
A good example is last month's auction of records and memorabilia from the collection of BBC's famous DJ "Dr. Rock". The auction company was wise enough not to offer each record on its own. Instead they created a lot of all the Berry albums.
So they offered a

Collection of 36 Chuck Berry LP records including Chuck Berry The Chess Box Set, The Latest and The Greatest, I Am A Rocker, New Jukebox Hits, One Dozen Berries, Greatest Hits, After School Session, Rockit, Chuck Berry at the Fillmore Auditorium, The London Chuck Berry Sessions x 2, The Greatest Hits Spot Records, Golden Decade Volume 3, Concerto in B Goode, You Never Can Tell, Golden Decade Volume 2, San Francisco Dues, You Never Can Tell Diploma For Two Marble Arch Records, Back in the USA Live Everest Records, Bio, Hail Hail Rock & Roll, Greatest Hits Marble Arch Records including Roll Over Beethoven, Rock & Roll Rarities from the Golden Era of Chess Records, Back Home, Chuck Berry's Golden Decade, The Blues Volume 1, Chuck Berry in Memphis, Fresh Berries, Hail Hail Rock & Roll MCA6217, Rock & Roll Rarities, Jukebox Hits, In London and Chuck Berry Americas Hottest Wax, many with copies of photographic prints of Chas White and Chuck Berry

This is an almost complete collection of Berry's UK albums from the 1960's onwards, mostly unplayed. See here.
The estimated value was 80 to 120 UK Pounds, i.e. $100 to $150. It sold for 85 UK Pounds, i.e. approximately $110 or $3/record. Go figure.

You have been asking about the so-called photobook offered by Dualtone in combination with the CHUCK album.

There was absolutely no information about this book available from Dualtone except for the black cover. No Contents, no page numbers, nothing. So I finally bit the bullet and ordered one. (Note that Dualtone constantly changes the descriptions on their site. Since I ordered they included a small video of a hand browsing through the book.)

Here's my review for you to decide by yourself if you want one of not.

It is awfully expensive to get this photobook. In contrast to the early offers they at least allow ordering from outside the U.S. now. Dualtone's list price is $35 plus shipping. The cheapest shipping they offer is $23.38 to Europe. It took ten days to get me the package. Faster shipping is available at even higher costs. Shipping to your location might vary. A European buyer should thus expect at least $60 payment to Dualtone plus customs fees and taxes if they apply.

What you get is the size of an LP and has 40 sheets of paper, i.e. 80 pages. Most pages have a single image or document reproduction.

The images are often taken from Berry's own photo collection. But there are also lots of well-known images from PR shots or concerts. The quality of the photos vary a lot. While this is no surprise for seventy years old wedding photos, also newer photos have been scanned poorly or reprinted from magazines.

The selection and quality of the scanned documents vary even more. We'll see excerpts from Berry's correspondence files, some internal accounting, telegrams (wired messages) but also copies of newspaper articles or even sheet music. Many of this is damaged and seems to be taken from the burnt scrapbook Berry shows to Robbie Robertson on the Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll! DVD (four DVD set only, Image Entertainment ID3156THDVD, 2006).

Again there are some documents which we have seen before, but there's also some I haven't seen before. And this includes interesting stuff such as a 1957 inquiry by Elvis Presley Music, Inc. asking for Chuck to write material for Elvis.

The creators of this book were very keen to point out Berry's honors. So you'll see letters regarding Grammy and BMI awards, messages from Dick Clark, Carl Sagan, and Etta James. And you'll see thank-you letters from President Carter, from President Reagan, from Hillary and from Bill Clinton, and another from Bill, and another from the White House's Social Secretary, and ... You'll get the picture.

All in all you'll get a couple of interesting photos and documents, you'll get a lot you already know or which you don't care about. And what you don't get at all is any information on image source or contents.

Except for a few sentences in a non-signed foreword there is absolutely no text in this book. It would have been extremely helpful if not necessary to tell where a certain photo has been taken, or when, or who is shown next to Berry. Nothing. And where every book, magazine or CD booklet tries to give correct credit to the owner of a photo, here all is "from the Berry Family Archives". This is disappointing.

In summary you have to be a very enthusiastic Berry fan to enjoy the segments of the book which you don't already know. Take your time and wait until it gets cheaper - or at least sold in your country for less shipping.

Readers keep asking us about the multiple variations the new album CHUCK which is now offered by both Dualtone and Decca (and maybe other labels). We can‘t really tell, simply because we don‘t know either.

Where in the past companies targeting the Chuck Berry collector such as Bear Family and Universal/HIP-O Select have been extremely helpful by providing us with lots of information prior to the release of their CD sets and with samples as soon as available, both Dualtone and Decca seem to not target the Chuck Berry collector at all, but to concentrate on the traditional new records markets such as stores, radio, TV, and streaming business.

Though we cannot directly blame Dualtone and Decca for ignoring bloggers as multiplicators since both have outsourced their public relations to specialized companies. In the US this is a company called Shore Fire Media, in the UK a company called Big Mouth Publicity.

We had an email contact with Shore Fire Media when they took over the promotion for the CHUCK album. At that time we asked them to keep us informed and they confirmed. Since then: nada. Shore Fire never sent us a press release or whatever. Only a private contact to Dualtone allowed us to tell you a bit about the release which you couldn't read everywhere else. But even there was a strange "America first" attitude. Or better said "America only". No, they won't ship anything to Europe. And they're not responsible for Europe anyway. Strange, given that while the authors of this site are located in Europe, you, our readers, are located all over the world (and mostly in the US if I look at the emails I receive). And even more strange, the likes of amazon and ebay allow buyers from all over the world to buy American. Looks like it's not only this funny president who's trying to move a whole country to another planet or universe.

About Big Mouth Publicity we cannot say anything at all as only last week we learned that they are supposed to 'promote' Chuck Berry. "In addition to our UK media services, Big Mouth also offers online campaigns targeting key US sites and international blogs." (quote from their site) Interesting. They hadn't found our blog, though. OK, we're only "the best Chuck Berry website in existence" (quoted Now Dig This magazine). Who expects them to find out such when a record label pays a PR agency.

Thus we can only tell you what we have seen on the Dualtone website and elsewhere so far. Last week the Dualtone store had about 10 variations of the CHUCK album which differ in media (CD, Vinyl, or none at all) and packaging (with or without poster, shirt, or book). And no, we cannot tell what's inside the "Photo Book" as we haven't seen one yet. Since last week the Dualtone shop notes that they indeed ship worldwide, but just the shipping of the book doubles its already high price. And, as said, you cannot see what's inside unless you order it.

In addition the Dualtone-labeled Vinyl album is available in different colors. Right now the Dualtone shop offers a "limited edition" red wax variant. Another "limited edition" on white wax is sold through the Barnes & Noble bookstores. A "regular" black wax edition had been in the Dualtone shop but is currently gone. Maybe that was even more limited.

For Decca there's less information available, yes, even less. It seems that there's only a regular black Vinyl album and the usual CD. Decca Japan offers the album as an SHM-CD (this is a different sort of plastic).

Decca UK has distributed promotional copies of at least the CD album. These are labeled to be watermarked and traceable. (If you don't know what this means, read e.g. http://www.idolator.com/298040/watermarked-cds-cause-paranoia-to-be-added-to-long-list-of-music-critics-problems. So no passing of unwanted CDs to friends. Basically you can't even dump such a CD into the next PVC recycling bin as somebody might find it there and make you guilty of unauthorized distribution. Ensure you break the CD first.)

We haven't seen a promotional CD from Dualtone yet, so we don't know if they used the same watermarking. We have seen and shown here a promotional CD single of Big Boys by Dualtone.

Which one of the multiple variants do you need to have? Depends on your budget. Right now we suggest you get the cheapest one to listen to it. Which is what counts.

Many thanks to Thierry for researching most of this article's contents.

If you intend to buy the album or any other item from Dualtone's shop, use this link to get a $5 discount: https://dualtone-music.myshopify.com/?redeem=596498870d7ea20044c4aa18

When German Rock'n'Roll Musikmagazin celebrated their 40th anniversary two weeks ago, I sought some appropriate clothing for the party and concert.

Browsing eBay I found this nice T-shirt. Interestingly most visitors at the celebration did not get the message, but readers of this site should have no need for explanation. Enjoy!

If you like this as much as I did, here's the link to the corresponding eBay offer: eBay item 230919634545. They ship world-wide. Select your favorite color during checkout.

Following Chuck Berry's passing in March, every music-related magazine had one or more articles describing Berry's life or work. And almost every magazine not dedicated to music as well.
Depending on the quality of the magazine and depending on how the editors valued Berry's importance on their readership, the articles were quite nice or they were so-and-so. Rolling Stone magazine for instance in issue 1285 dedicated almost 20 pages to Berry. And they place lot of text onto each page. Good reading!

Vintage Rock magazine of England even created a special issue called "Chuck Berry - A Celebration". This consists of a full 132 pages! Besides many, many photos, often full-page, the issue also has a lot of text. Randy Fox, Julie Burns, David Burke, Michael Leonard, and John Howard each provide in-depth descriptions of Berry's life and work, divided into common topics such as his Mercury releases, the Birthday movie, or Berry's guitar playing. In addition there are commented lists of Berry's most important and most unknown songs, stories about his influences, and multi-page reviews of his best-known albums. And there's an interview with this site's contributor and author Fred Rothwell.

All in all this special issue is highly recommended. You can order directly from the publisher at http://www.vintagerockmag.com/2017/04/chuck-berry-celebration-sale-now/. They ship world-wide.

As with every review, you should not forget some things to criticize, so here it is: Even though this site here is mentioned in the magazine, it's obvious the authors did not fully read the blog or main text. There's some outdated or even completely wrong information contained. Also they missed to mention of the most important books on Chuck Berry's work, Morten Reff's "Chuck Berry International Directory". And I would have wished the editors would have eliminated the various repetitions which happen when multiple authors write about the same subject.

This site contains a full bibliography about Chuck Berry, i.e. a commented list of books about his recordings, his records, and his life. So when I accidentally found a book titled "The Life of Chuck Berry" at amazon, I bought it without thinking, especially as the price was very low (about $6 including shipping here in Germany).
At this price I wasn't too disappointed when it arrived here the next day. You probably won't call it a book at all. It's a leaflet of less than 25 sheets of paper. This certainly is not enough for a paper book. But it is a custom size for a Kindle eBook. And that's what you get: the printout of a Kindle eBook. And it's just a sequential printout without any layout whatsoever. No page numbers. Ten-line pages because the following image is too big to fit. And so on.
What puzzled me the most was that this book doesn't have an author. It doesn't even have a copyright note. Charles River Editors is a company which publishes eBooks about almost every topic you can imagine, hundreds of which are sold by amazon, apple and the likes.
Typically this kind of "books" consists of nothing more than wikipedia articles pasted. This is not the case with "The Life of Chuck Berry", though.
This booklet contains original text. It's well structured, not bad written and good reading. It covers Berry's personal life and career up to 2012 and it does so quite completely.
The book even has two pages listing a bibliography of sources. When writing a book about the life of Chuck Berry, sources should include Bruce Pegg's book, Berry's own autobiography, maybe the books by Howard DeWitt and John Collins, definitely Fred Rothwell's book. None, none of these important books is listed as a source! Instead the whole list of sources consists just of websites (and some magazine articles available on websites).
The unnamed author(s) obviously did not read any of the main sources. All they did was google'ing Berry's name and re-word their findings. So you won't find a quote from Berry's autobiography in this book. But you will find several quotes from reviewers who quoted from Berry's autobiography. That's odd! Why not read the original?
Therefore you will not find any first-hand information in this book. You will not find second-hand information either. All this is third-hand information.
Due to this, while most of the text is correct, there's an obvious error now and then. That happens when you copy and paste from sources who didn't know better.
This book is good for someone who wants to get a first impression about Chuck Berry's career. You won't need more than half an hour to read it. And you have seen the photos before. For readers of this site, it's not recommended at all.

[UPDATE: All records listed here have found new homes at fellow collectors. Enjoy!]

Dear Chuck Berry collectors!

A friend of mine and fellow collector asked me to offer a selection of his Chuck Berry Vinyl records to the readers of this site. He says that he ran out of space and decided to stick with digital copies of these. So here is a stack of records most of us had only dreamed of a couple of years ago. These are some of the most sought-after records in every Chuck Berry collection. And here is a unique chance to get those you are missing.

All records below are very rare. They are in extremely nice condition, some even look unplayed. If you are interested in one or more of these, contact me at cbguide@crlf.de. The records are at my location, so I may be able to answer all your remaining questions. Shipping is from Germany to wherever you live. Records are sold for any reasonable amount as the seller asked me to find collectors by heart first before the remainder of the stack will show up on eBay during the upcoming months. If you need one of these, hurry up!

Now here's the list of records for sale - a collector's dream:

1. Trade Mark Of Quality S-206 (single LP)
   John Lennon (featuring Yoko Ono & Chuck Berry) - Telecasts
   the very first Chuck Berry bootleg was initially produced in the early 1970s. The copy for sale is a later pressing using the original JL-517 matrix number. It has completely unrelated labels. [sold]


2. Driving Wheel LP 1001 (single LP)
   Six Two Five
   The legendary concert for the BBC is probably one of Berry's best live performances ever. This is the early version of this rare bootleg. [sold]


3. reelin' 001 (single LP)
   America's Hottest Wax
   probably the most interesting of all Berry bootlegs, this record had 14 studio recordings from the Chess vaults, most of which had not been released at the time this bootleg became known. For sale is the later version of this bootleg having the printed blue cover. [sold]


4. Radiola MR-1087 (single LP)
   Rock 'n' Roll Radio
   this was the earliest record which contained the 1956 live performance from the Camel Rock'n'Roll Dance Party. Read more about this concert and record here.


5. A&M Records AMLM 66500 (2-LP set)
   American Hot Wax
   Dutch Pressing with German-language promo print "Unverkäufliches Muster"
   This record contains Berry's rare 1977 live performance for the Paramount film about Alan Freed.


6. East World WTP-90072 (single LP)
   Chuck Berry Tokyo Session
   this Japan-only album contains a live concert from 1981 for which no official CD version exists. A true Chuck Berry rarity. [sold]


7. Barca London L28N-1005 (single LP)
   The Day Of R&B
   the second Japan-only album containing a Japanese live concert this time from 1982 and only in excerpts. In addition the record has Sam Moore of Sam & Dave as well as the Japanese band RC Succession. [sold]


8. Vinyl Gang Productions (2-LP set)
   Chuck Berry / Keith Richards / The Rolling Stones - Let It Rock!
   recorded in 1982 at the Ritz in New York, three of the four album sides contain a typical Berry show. During the last numbers Ron Wood (not Keith Richards) steps in to help. The fourth side has eight Berry covers sung by the Stones. This concert is available on this bootleg Vinyl only. [sold]


9. Papa Records DS011 / Diamond Sounds LC1187 (single LP)
   Keith Richards - Still On The Road
   one of a thousand Keith Richards bootlegs, but a special one for the Berry collector as it contains two lengthy tracks from the 1986 birthday concert which did not make it to the film and soundtrack album. In addition there are two tracks of Keith jamming with Eric Clapton, another two with Lonnie Mack and a demo recording. The bootleg is numbered and on multicolor Vinyl. [sold]


10. Driving Wheel C7788 (single LP)
    Chuck Berry's Rock 'n' Roll Party with The Flying Saucers
    I haven't seen this bootleg offered for years, but here is one! This show was recorded in 1977 in Hamburg, Germany and has never made it to a CD release. [sold]


11. Checkmate 1955 (single LP)
    Chuck Berry - Let It Rock
    another Vinyl bootleg full of Berry material. With twenty tracks in total this combines several of the unreleased versions from America's Hottest Wax with some other rare recordings which were hard to get at that time. Also included is the Dutch "My name is Carlos Berrino" interview. Also of interest is the eight-page booklet which came with this record. [sold]


12. Radio Station Record (single LP)
    Retro Rock - Chuck Berry
    Airdate: week of June 21, 1982
    This Clayton Webster production is one of the earliest Chuck Berry radio show records. The music, nine Berry titles in total, are taken from the Toronto concert.


13. Radio Station Record (single LP)
    Dick Bartley's Solid Gold Scrapbook: Profile: Chuck Berry!
    Airdate: October 17, 1986
    close to Berry's 60th birthday, Dick Bartley produced this Chuck Berry special in which he combined twelve Berry recordings, one of which is the rare Oh Yeah, with Berry covers recorded by the Beatles, Buddy Holly, the Stones, the Beach Boys, and Elvis.


14. Radio Station Record (single LP)
    Solid Gold Scrapbook: Profile: Chuck Berry!
    Airdate: October 19, 1987
    a year later, Dick Bartley created another Chuck Berry special containing again twelve Berry classics and covers recorded by the Beatles, the Stones, the Beach Boys, Johnny Rivers, and Elvis.


15. Radio Station Record (single LP)
    Solid Gold Scrapbook: A Chuck Berry Birthday Salute
    Airdate: October 18, 1988
    in 1988 Unistar added an interview to their annual Chuck Berry birthday shows. This is the first show which contains four interview segments plus 15 Berry hits.


16. Radio Station Record (4-LP set)
    Dick Clark's Rock Roll & Remember
    Show: 352, airdate: November 5-6, 1988
    a Chuck Berry special containing 16 Berry classics, several Berry-related songs plus 12 interview segments, eight of which are talk by Chuck Berry, the remaining contain talk from Frankie Avalon, Toni Tennille, Ray Charles, and James Taylor. The Berry interview snippets are from the Unistar interview. This is the show which contains most parts of this interview. [sold]


17. Radio Station Record (single LP)
    Solid Gold Scrapbook: A Chuck Berry Birthday Salute
    Airdate: October 18, 1990
    a full hour of Chuck Berry consisting of 16 Berry recordings plus three interview segments which are from the Unistar interview as well.


18. Radio Station Record (3-LP set)
    Cruisin' America with Cousin Brucie
    Airdate: April 22-24, 1988
    contains a ten-minute Chuck Berry In Concert segment edited from the On Stage and London Sessions albums


19. Reel 'n Rock JN 5705
    Go, Johnny Go!
    Australian reprint of the classic and ultra-rare promotional record containing the soundtrack of the Hal Roach film. There are two Berry songs and two by the Cadillacs, one each by Eddie Cochran, Jackie Wilson, Ritchie Valens, Harvey of the Moonglows, the Flamingoes, and Jo Ann Campbell plus various unreleased songs from the movie sung by Jimmy Clanton and Sandy Stewart.

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.

You'll certainly know that Amazon not only sells lots of Chuck Berry CDs and some vinyl, but also offers almost all Chuck Berry recordings as MP3 downloads. This site's Listen-to-it function makes use of these offers by presenting audio samples of most Berry recordings. Here's for example Amazon's selection for Wee Wee Hours. Amazon has roughly 14.000 MP3 tagged with Chuck Berry one way or the other.
MP3s at Amazon usually cost 99 cents per song. If you get them from other legal sources, prices are roughly the same. If we assume that Chuck Berry and his publishers get a share of this, that's not a bad deal.
The only other and cheaper way to legally get your favorite Berry recordings for use in MP3 players is to buy the corresponding record or CD and to convert the contents into digital MP3 files. This is done by a process called 'Ripping' and despite its name, this is perfectly legal as long as you keep the MP3 files for your private use.
But did you know that Amazon also provides you with all these MP3s for free? I didn't and was astonished to learn about it when I received an email from Amazon a few weeks ago.
The feature offered Amazon calls "AutoRip" and this is what they do: They automatically rip CDs into MP3 files. If you buy a CD tagged as "AutoRip" (and many Berry CDs are), they automatically and for free create MP3s of all songs contained. You can then import these MP3s into your Amazon Cloud Player (which every Amazon client has). From here you can listen to the songs or download them for use with your MP3 player Unless your cloud player contains more than 250 songs, this complete process is free of charge for you.
If you recently (i.e. within the last years) bought a CD which has now been AutoRip'ed, you will receive an email from Amazon announcing that these songs have been imported into your cloud player automatically. In my case this was the "In the 50s" 3-CD set I wrote about in March. The price for this set is now 40 cents higher than in March, but it includes MP3s of all 70 songs. No need to rip them any more.

Reader Brian just posted a note to an eBay offer of the famous "America's Hottest Wax" bootleg (Reelin' 001). For sale is the second version with the blue cover. Bidding starts very cheap at UKP 2.99. Here's the link: Item 261275338851. Thanks, Brian!

This site's bibliography section lists and comments all the relevant books about Chuck Berry and his work.
One of the books discussed is Rich Cohen's history of Chess Records called Machers and Rockers. As you can see, I found this book hard to read and full of errors. My recommendation was not to spend any money on it.
I recently learned that Cohen wrote a second book on the same topic. The title is "The Record Men: The Chess Brothers and the Birth of Rock & Roll". It have not been able to find out when it was released but I hoped he had taken the opportunity to correct all the flaws in his first book.
So I recently ordered this second book only to find that I became victim of a rip-off, unfortunately common among book publishers nowadays.
"The Record Men" is NOT a second Rich Cohen book! It is just the paperback edition of "Machers and Rockers" retitled. They have not changed a single word other than the page headers. Nowhere it tells that it's a reprint except for the Library of Congress Catalog entry. They even falsified the Larry King quote on the cover (unless King praised both books with the same words).
I did not recommend the hardcover edition, but I strongly discourage you to even look at this rip-off reprint.

Again, Christmas time is near. So here is another set of eBay items a Chuck Berry collector may want. As said in the last blog post here, these are some true rarities, not offered often.
You can click on the items to go directly to the corresponding eBay page. In case you bid: Good Luck!

• this is the complete 1980 Dick Clark radio show as broadcast by NBC. It contains many segments of a Berry interview nowhere available on CD.
• like the NBC show above also this item is described in this site's section on rare promotional and radio records: the promotional album for the movie Go Johnny Go! The seller asks for $800 but you may get it a bit cheaper as he thries to sell it for months.
• Likewise the asking price for this copy of Chess EP 5121 Sweet Little Sixteen is much too high. $250 where the disc itself is less than VG.
• Do you have a Laserdisc player? That was some early variant of a DVD. Here's a Laserdisc called Sweet Home Chicago containing a Berry performance.
• If your budget is small, you may have a look on this offer. This seems to be a re-issue of the Soundtrack to Jazz on a Summer's Day containing the Berry live performance of Sweet Little Sixteen you may not have in your collection.
• And finally, here's the complete set of the 16 Japanese Mini LPs, which are a must have for Berry collectors in any case.

In case you have kept a wish for Christmas, you may have a look on these eBay items. These are some true rarities, not offered often.
You can click on the items to go directly to the corresponding eBay page. In case you bid: Good Luck!

• the rare radio record from Westwood One containing a Chuck Berry live concert never released anywhere else. This is definitely a must-have for every Berry collector!
• here's a promotional copy of Chess 1691 Johnny B. Goode
• Chess EP 5118 with the Head over Heels (or better vice versa) cover
• Here's the rare CD re-issue of Concerto in B. Goode
• Checker 1089 is rare in any case as the shortened single versions of Chuck's Beat and Bo's Beat are hard to find. In addition, this is a DJ Copy!

Yesterday I got two emails about a certain Chuck Berry 45rpm single which would not be in my discography and therefore would be ultra-rare.
Doug pointed me to an eBay auction which sells this telling "only two known to exist". See here: eBay item 200525623767
And concurrently reader Peter asks "I have a single I can't find any mention of in the discographies I've looked at." Go figure ...

One comment first: I do have a huge collection of Berry records and I count myself as one of the experts on Chuck Berry recordings, but the one and only expert on Chuck Berry RECORDS is Morten Reff. So if you ever need to know something about a strange record you find, go and look at Morten's "Chuck Berry International Directory" available in a book shop near you.

The record in question is a 45rpm single having the blue CHESS label of the original 1950's records. It's A side is 'Rock and Roll Music', but in contrast to the original CHESS 1671 which has 'Blue Feeling' on side B, this record contains 'House of Blue Lights'. That songs was unissued in the 1950's and first surfaced on "Chuck Berry's Golden Decade Vol. 3" in 1973. So is this a rare misprint with only two known to exist? And having a complete original CHESS label printed? No way!

Thus you open Morten's "Chuck Berry International Directory, Volume 2" and there it is, right on the first page. This variant of CHESS 1671 is part of a series of bootleg records which came out in the early 1970s, certainly after 1973. It looks like a real CHESS release, but it isn't. It's from some doubtful source we don't know about.

The record IS rare. We don't know how many were pressed, but definitely more than two. Count for yourself: Peter has one, I do, Morten does, and the eBay seller does as well. So that's at least four

If you are collecting Berry records and if you don't have this one, you might consider buying it. The initial price asked seems to be a bit high, but that's up to you.

Those who are interested in this bootleg 45rpm single should also notice the only other interesting single from this bootleg series. CHESS 1700 'Carol' containing 'County Line' on the flip side instead of 'Hey Pedro'. This record is for sale on eBay for months and did not find a buyer yet. Look here: eBay item 290216887081

Reader John Gilmartin asked me to inform you about his recent offer:

Wish to give Berry fans first choice to obtain the following LPs:
Chuck Berry Tokyo Sessions.Jap. East World WTP-90072 includes Jap Text,lyric insert snd title obi-strip.
RockSmuk NQCS-1 Sun/Chess Label.
Offers Please

If interested, please contact John directly at johnnygil{at}hotmail.co.uk