I recieved the Bear Family box set "Chuck Berry: Rock and Roll Music, Any old way you chose it" last week after finding it on Amazon for cheap. I've been wading through the 16 cd's and in short: Wow!
The box set covers Berry's entire output from 1954 through 1979. In between we get the great (the Chess recordings from the 1950's), the good (most of the 60's), the bad (some of the Mercury stuff, like Concerto in B Goode) and the Ugly (the late 70's stuff). However, there are alot of hidden gems on this set including rarely heard stuff. Despite popular belief, Chuck's Mercury material isn't as bad as I had been led to believe, although its certainly not up to par with the 50's Chess (but then what is?) or even the early 60's Chess. Chuck's return to Chess in the 70's isn't bad, but isnt great either with Berry losing the spark he had even at Mercury. The material is more bluesy, and even a bit funk/soul and provides some interesting listening.
But the real meat of the set, for me at least, is the live material. Disc 1 of the live material includes the only known live recordings from the 1950's, Chucks appearence on a TV or radio show from 1956 with screaming fans, and the set from Newport Jazz festival in 1958 that is a bit uneven, but interesting as it has a New Orlean's-jazz sound to it. Despite the raggedness, the 1963 concerts at the Walled Lake Casino in Detroit are really cool. It is presumed that Chuck's backing band is the Funk Brothers from Motown (e.g the Motown house band). Unlike the Hip-o-select set, we get the four complete concerts here. I haven't listened to the 1967-1969-1972 live stuff yet, but it looks to pretty cool.
The accompanying books are well done. The first book is a year by year account of Chuck's career filled with numerous pictures, advertisements etc. It also has a detailed recording session info by Fred Rothwell (an update of Rothwell's book "Long Distance Information"). Finally a discography showing releases from around the world is included. Overall as a good a book on Chuck berry as a stand-a-lone release.
The second book is a picture book filled with images from the 1950's and a (very) brief introduction from Paul McCartney. Nice, but not essential.
Overall this is a great set to buy, even if you have the Hip-o-Select sets.
Anyone else have this, and what are your thoughts?

As soon as I saw your post, I thought, "Oooh". As cool a set as this seems to be, I'm going to have to wait for either the price to come down further or my disposable cash to increase. Not quite cheap enough for my budget. I did add it to my Amazon wish list though so I could track it.

Thanks for the thorough review... If and/or when I get the set added to my collection, I'll post on what my ears hear. Until then, I'll just be jealous of what your ears are getting to hear!

Peace,
Mr DJA

Chuck Berry???

The best one for ages is this.



Flat transfer. No signal processing.

Do not need another compilation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-03-03 19:18 by ironbelly.