BERRY, CHUCK - Just About As Good As It Gets!

If Charles Edward Anderson Berry hadn’t taken his pen to paper, his guitar to the studio and his showmanship to the stage, any concise history of rock ‘n’ roll would be a couple of chapters short of a best-seller and the repertoires of innumerable 60s R&B groups would have been bereft of beef. Chuck drew from eclectic influences. His first hit Maybellene was a supercharged rewrite of an old bit of country hokum, Ida Red, given broader exposure than might have been the case in those segregated times because many radio stations assumed Chuck was white. Thereafter he artfully created original songs that combined musically resonant reference to his roots with lyrically sharp attention to the newly emergent generation of white bobbysoxers; humour invariably a signature ingredient of his writing and stage/screen performances. This 60-track set features all of his 1955-62 rockin’ classics (including 17 consecutive hits!) together with reminders that Chuck was no slouch as a guitar-pickin’ instrumentalist and could deftly smooch a ballad, lay back on the blues or update a 40s familiar when limbering up in the studio. At the time of writing Chuck Berry survives as a living legend. These are the principal reasons why. Record Label: Smith & Co Style: Rock & Roll