Chuck Berry - Have Mercy: His Complete Chess Masters 1969-1974

I often think of what a world without Chuck Berry would be like. Then I stop, because it’s really impossible to imagine such a thing.  The sound of Chuck’s wailing Gibson guitar (always with a great opening riff) is the epitome of rock ’n’ roll music to me. It takes about 3 seconds to recognise one of his songs and no more than that to become lost in them. Years before Bob Dylan became the poet laureate of rock ‘n’ roll, Chuck was writing lyrical masterpieces like they were going out of style. Rock ‘n’ Roll has many legends, but Chuck is perhaps first amongst equals.  Put short, there’s a reason why everyone and their granny has covered the man – his songs endure and thrive. There’s a re-release of the Back To The Future film this October, and I’m willing to bet a new generation will discover Johnny B Goode through that.

I have chosen to make this first post about Chuck not only because it seems fitting, but because I’ve just finished listening to a boxed set I recently purchased called “Have Mercy – His Complete Chess Recordings 969-1974. This is the third volume in the series, and I thoroughly recommend the first two volumes (Johnny B Goode and You Never Can Tell) which collect the earlier Chess classics.  Chuck left Chess in 1966 for an ill-fated spell with Mercury Records and was told by Leonard Chess that he’d “see him in three years. Chess was right – Berry was welcomed back as the prodigal son in 1969 and set about making the music which comprises this four disc set.

Hip-O select put this box out and it’s obviously been a labour of love. To call the set comprehensive is to undersell it – there is literally NOTHING missed out here from the released masters. The albums that are presented here are Back Home (1970), San Francisco Dues (1971), The London Sessions (1972), Bio (1973) and Chuck Berry (1975). All of the singles and b-sides of the era are included as well. The track listing does not however present the albums as they were originally sequenced, but rather as they were recorded. This is perhaps what the connoisseur wants – to hear Chuck’s music exactly as he recorded it, but personally I’d prefer to hear it as he saw fit to release it – in the form of the original albums. Of these albums, by the way, only the London sessions have been released on CD, so this set will be manna from heaven for the deprived Chuckaholic who has been waiting for 25 for re-mastered sound on these latter recordings.

What then of this little heard era of Chuck Berry music? Well. There is of course much to commend in this set, but I feel it has to be acknowledged that the most famous track on this set, and indeed Chuck’s only #1 record, is My Ding A Ling. How tragic that a career so full of classic after classic should have this novelty fluff as his towering achievement. I suspect the royalty cheques eased the discomfort, but who knows. This set features three versions of My Ding A Ling – the single version, the live cut (11, yes ELEVEN, minutes long) and an unreleased studio take. He still plays it, as far as I know.   

If there’s any great service that this box provides to the music fan then it is this – it serves as a marker that though these songs are not household titles as the earlier classics had been, Chuck was still more than capable of cutting top notch records.  This set shows Chuck’s blusier sides more than either of the other two box sets. Perhaps in the late 60s and early 70s Chuck felt that he finally had an audience willing to listening to him playing cuts by the likes of Little Walter (My Babe), T-Bone Walker (Mean Old World) and Tampa Red (It Hurts Me Too). Bands like the Butterfield Blues Band helped blues music kick down doors in America and hip audiences like those in the Fillmore embraced artists like Chuck anew. There’s a song in this set called Festival where Chuck sings about a ficitional even and lists the peers he plays  such festivals with and there’s an oddness to hearing Chuck Berry singing about Creedence Clearwater Revival  and Vanilla Fudge, as well as namechecking the departed Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.  He was a decade or two older than most of these acts, but he was one of them. You may expect then that a lot of this music is Chuck trying to make music that would appeal to his more youthful fanbase.  Well....no. Credit though must be given as he does nothing as brash as Muddy or the Wolf who resorted to attempting psychedelically re-recording their hits chasing the younger fanbase. Chuck plays it exactly the same as he always does – the familiar riff, the fantastically tongue in cheek lyrics and the familiar guitar-piano interplay. There is some extra instrumentation that was missing from earlier cuts – the likes of an organ or harmonica, but these are never intrusive.

There was a moment in the Taylor Hackford film “Hail Hail Rock ‘N’ Roll” where away from the spotlight Chuck plays solo acoustic and it’s one of the most enduring images of the man I have. There is a song in hear reminiscent of that scene. It’s an unreleased track of Chuck reciting a poem he wrote called My Pad. It’s a piece where he tells of his ideal life, and what that involves. I suggest that with this, and with the bluesier tracks on the album, we see more closely the real Chuck Berry than ever before.  There is not one single track here that will ever displace this classic 50’s cuts in the popular culture, but for anyone with a strong interest in the man, it’s hard to imagine anything better than adding this, and indeed the earlier two volumes of his Chess material to their collection. They are all limited to 6000 copies, so they might not be around forever. Snap them up while you can.


http://www.amazon.com/Have-Mercy-Complete-Recordings-1969-1974/dp/B00373DB62/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1283462665&sr=1-1-spell

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Ahhh, the first post.

You know the score. You've got piles and piles of CDs, and for every cherished gem, there are 5 you honestly couldn't hum a note from. You plan to listen to them, you may even pay quite a pretty penny for them, but you just somehow don't get round to listening to them.

Well then, I've set myself a challenge - to listen to each and every one of these neglected albums. This proect sprung from my plan to have a clearout of my CDs which was foiled at every juncture by my inner fanboy saying "You can't sell that - you've not listened to it - it might be GREAT!".

I hope you'll enjoy some of my thoughts on the albums, and that you too will let me know about some of your negelcted gems.