Track Listing

1. No Particular Place To Go
2. School Day (Ring, Ring Goes The Bell)
3. Sweet Little Sixteen
4. Let It Rock
5. Memphis Tennessee
6. Nadine (Is It You)
7. You Never Can Tell
8. Promised Land
9. Reelin' And Rockin'
10. My Ding-A-Ling
11. Maybelline
12. Roll Over Beethoven
13. Johnny B. Goode
14. Carol
15. Almost Grown
16. Back In The USA
17. Little Queenie
18. Brown Eyed Handsome Man
19. Sweet Little Rock And Roller
20. Rock & Roll Music

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4040 in Music
• Released on: 2000-07-17
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds
• Running time: 52 minutes

Customer Reviews

Classic but not fantastic
Chuck Berry is of course the grandaddy of rock'n'roll, feted by any pop musician worth their salt. Tracks like 'Rock & Roll Music' and 'Johnny B. Goode' have been covered by dozens of artists - so much so that many music fans may be unaware of the originals. This Best Of is a straightfoward introduction to where these famous songs came from, and includes all the regular suspects plus some the casual fan might not know.

Worth getting? Sound quality's good [I suspect, although the liner notes don't say, that it's all been digitally remastered] and any one of these tracks is a two and a half minute slice of classic pop perfection. The problem came, for me, when I played all twenty of them on this album back to back - I was very surprised to hear how similar many of them sounded. Three or four songs have exactly the same opening riff, and melody lines and chord sequences are repeated all over the place. I can only suppose that this was standard for early rock'n'roll music, but to my modern sensibilities it does sound repetitive and, after a while, even a little dull. Chuck Berry's vocal delivery is so stylish that it lifts the songs, but not quite enough to make them really engaging.

The album remains fun, but one to dip into rather than to play frequently - although as party music that everyone'll like, if that's what you're buying, it's definitely a great album.

Chuck Berry-tastic
If you are to young to remember Berry the first time around, and want to experience the work of a true rock and roll great, this is the album for you. The greats are all there, opening with the sublime "No particular place to go" to the glorious ending of "Rock 'n' roll music". Just buy it and bask in it's glory.

It's all Berry similar!
I brought this as an addition to my rock n' roll collection, but I am sure that this is the worst. Among my collection I have Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and the great Eddie Cochran. Unlike Chuck Berry, Eddie was actually living the teenage angst lifestyle and was practicing what he preached. Chuck Berry was merely looking back at memories and pretending he was there, and the result is clearly unrelative to an Eddie Cochran fan.
Another problem with his songs is that nearly all of them sound the same. There's 3 or 4 songs in a row in the latter part of the album that have the same intro! Yes, Chuck Berry was important to popular music at the time and he has some good songs. These are; Johnny B Goode, my fav Berry song, Roll over Beethoven, Sweet little sixteen, which the beach boys elaborated on with Surfin' USA - their best song, Brown eyed handsome man - which Buudy Holly covered, but wasn't as good and Rock & roll music - which the beach boys covered. I think the beach boys version is just as good as Berry's, if not better.
One song that really surprsied me was the very silly My dong-a-ling. I read in the booklet that this topped the charts in both the US and the UK. That's hard to believe. The track that's included is a live song, where the audience are sing 'I want you to play with my ding-a-ling!', which is really silly (but funny!). It's funny when he tells the ones who 'will not sing' to 'stop playing with your ding-a-ling-a-ling!!'.

Moreover, I thought the album was quite plain. As a Best of, I was expecting a great sound and as this is the best that he has done, he doesn't deserve to lick the kicks of Eddie, let alone look at Elvis! I know that he wrote all his material and some of it is catchy, but I don't think that this album is even worth buying!Maybe you could chuck it on as background music, but it's definitely not worth sitting down to listen to. So do yourselves a favour and buy some Buddy Holly or certainly the best of from Eddie Cochran - now that's rock n roll!! I gave this album 3 stars a while ago, but it actually deserves 2.