Various Artists - The TAMI Show, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA, 10-29-1964

When I recently posted the 1964 NME Poll Winners' Concert, I got a request to post another stellar 1964, known as "The TAMI Show." Like the NME concerts, this has to be one of the greatest collection of musical talent on one stage in the 1960s. The TAMI Show was made for a movie, which was released at the end of 1964. But I haven't seen just the audio available. So I converted a video of the movie into audio and chopped it into mp3s.

There's so much to say about the TAMI Show. I'm going to try to be relatively brief. It seems some clever people decided that rock music was all the rage in 1964, so if they could get enough big stars together for a concert, it would make a profitable movie. They did, and it did. The result was a classic, regularly cited as one of the best music movies of all time. In 2006, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

The key about the concert is that all the songs were performed live, at a time when lip-syncing was standard for TV appearances. Jan and Dean emceed the concert. They also performed its theme song, "Here They Come (From All Over the World)", written by songwriters P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. The concert brought together some British Invasion bands (Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, and the Rolling Stones) with Motown acts (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes), plus some other big names, like the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, and Lesley Gore.

The concert is probably best known for the performance by James Brown, and for good reason. The whole thing is worth watching, but especially his part. The Police even immortalized it in their song "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around," with the lyric:  

Turn on my V.C.R. 
Same one I've had for years
James Brown on the T.A.M.I. Show
Same tape I've had for years

In other words, Sting (who wrote that song) has a video of the TAMI Show, and is fascinated by James Brown's performance, watching it over and over. It's easy to see why. Brown's dancing is so extraordinary, it almost defies the laws of physics. He was moonwalking, and more, back when Michael Jackson was just a little baby. The lyrics are also interesting in that the TAMI Show was very hard to find for decades, generally only being available as a bootleg video, so that probably was an especially prized possession for Sting. It was finally remastered and rereleased as a DVD in 2010.

I worked from the DVD version, converted it to audio, and chopped it into mp3s. The sound quality isn't great, but it's as good as you could hope for from a 1964 concert. The lead vocals were rather low in the mix, so I used the UVR5 program to boost them relative to the instruments.

There was some controversy at the time whether James Brown or the Rolling Stones should be the final act in the show. At the time, the Stones had barely toured the U.S. at all. In fact, this would be only the third stop on their first big U.S. tour. But they were rapidly rising stars, enough for them to be chosen as the final act. However, James Brown wasn't pleased about that, and made sure to steal the show.

Mick Jagger, lead singers for the Stones, later said, "James Brown was probably the best thing about our trip. He is a fantastic artist. When you've seen him, you've seen the act to end all acts. We appeared with him on the TAMI Show and we had to follow him. It was a disaster in a way because nobody can follow James Brown, it’s impossible." Despite the competition, it was a friendly rivalry, and they were on good terms with him when they crossed his path at various times in later years.

By the way, the "TAMI Show" stood for either "Teenage Awards Music International" and "Teen Age Music International" - the producers were inconsistent about the meaning. The fact that they were inconsistent shows it didn't really matter much. Apparently, they just wanted an interesting sounding acronym. 

Here's a good article about the concert, written in 2025, if you want to know more:

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/teenagers-world-unite-2/

And here's the Wikipedia article:

T.A.M.I. Show - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and 52 minutes long. 

01 [Here They Come] From All Over the World (Jan & Dean)
02 talk (emcee)
03 talk (Jan & Dean)
04 Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)
05 Maybellene (Chuck Berry & Gerry & the Pacemakers)
06 Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
07 It's Gonna Be Alright (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
08 Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
09 How Do You Do It (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
10 Nadine (Chuck Berry)
11 I Like It (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
12 That's What Love Is Made Of (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
13 You've Really Got a Hold on Me (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
14 Mickey's Monkey (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
15 Stubborn Kind of Fellow (Marvin Gaye)
16 Pride and Joy (Marvin Gaye)
17 Can I Get a Witness (Marvin Gaye)
18 Hitch Hike (Marvin Gaye)
19 talk (Jan & Dean)
20 Maybe I Know (Lesley Gore)
21 You Don't Own Me (Lesley Gore)
22 You Didn't Look Around (Lesley Gore)
23 Hey Now (Lesley Gore)
24 It's My Party - Judy's Turn to Cry (Lesley Gore)
25 The Little Old Lady from Pasadena (Jan & Dean)
26 Sidewalk Surfin' [Surfin' Safari] (Jan & Dean)
27 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys)
28 I Get Around (Beach Boys)
29 Surfer Girl (Beach Boys)
30 Dance, Dance, Dance (Beach Boys)
31 Little Children (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
32 Bad to Me (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
33 I'll Keep You Satisfied (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
34 From a Window (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
35 When the Lovelight Starts Shining through His Eyes (Supremes)
36 Run, Run, Run (Supremes)
37 Baby Love (Supremes)
38 Where Did Our Love Go (Supremes)
39 Hey Little Bird (Barbarians)
40 talk (Jan & Dean)
41 Out of Sight (James Brown)
42 Prisoner of Love (James Brown)
43 Please, Please, Please (James Brown)
44 Night Train (James Brown)
45 Around and Around (Rolling Stones)
46 Off the Hook (Rolling Stones)
47 Time Is on My Side (Rolling Stones)
48 It's All Over Now (Rolling Stones)
49 I'm Alright (Rolling Stones)
50 Let's Get Together (Rolling Stones & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vRghL7X4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/IlezlVz2skiZmQ5/file

Since James Brown had the most renowned performance in this concert, I decided it was fitting to have a photo of him on the cover. That photo is from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. All the other text and graphics comes from original promotional material for the concert. But I used Photoshop to do some repositioning and other editing.

The Bee Gees with Chuck Berry - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 10-12-1973

Here's yet another album from the Bee Gees on the "Midnight Special" TV show. They hosted the show four times in 1973 and one time in 1975, and I've made albums of each of those episodes. This is the last one I'm posting from them. What makes this one stand out is they performed with one of the show's guests, Chuck Berry.

By the early 1970s, it seemed Berry's hit-making years were over, he had tons of hits from 1955 to 1964, but none since. But then, in 1972, he had a novelty hit called "My Ding-a-Ling" that didn't just do a little well - it went all the way to Number One on the U.S. and British singles charts. That made it the biggest hit of his career. As a result, his career was revived for a while, leading to TV appearances like this one, as well as a one-hour long concert on BBC TV. Luckily, he didn't actually play "My Ding-a-Ling" - it's a long song that gets old fast. Instead, he played some of his classics. And for two of those, he sang with the Bee Gees. 

However, more of the songs were performed by the Bee Gees on their own. They played some rather unexpected songs. For instance, "Lay It on Me" appeared on a 1970 album, but it wasn't a hit. And "Bye Bye Blackbird" is a cover of a song from 1926 that they never officially released in any form. 

In case you're curious, these are the other guests on the episode they hosted: Lee Michaels, King Crimson, Apple & Appleberry, and Barbara Mason.

The music here is unreleased, and the song quality is excellent. As usual with Midnight Special shows, I did a lot of extra editing, for instance adding applause to smooth over transitions between songs. I cut out some talking from the talking bits, for instance when performers for future episodes were discusssed, which is why some of those have "[Edit]" in their names. 

This album is 32 minutes long. 

01 talk by Wolfman Jack [Edit] (Bee Gees)
02 Massachusetts (Bee Gees)
03 talk [Edit] (Bee Gees)
04 Maybellene (Chuck Berry)
05 Reelin' and Rockin' (Chuck Berry with the Bee Gees)
06 Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry with the Bee Gees)
07 talk (Bee Gees)
08 Lay It on Me (Bee Gees)
09 Alive (Bee Gees)
10 Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
11 Bye Bye Blackbird (Bee Gees)
12 talk [Edit] (Bee Gees)
13 Alone Again (Bee Gees) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/FnNCArhA

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/uzK6mlV3KT5U1Sh/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It's rather blurry, but at least it shows all the main figures from this concert. From left to right: Robin Gibb, Chuck Berry, Maurice Gibb, and Barry Gibb.

Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, Varsity Stadium, Toronto, Canada, 9-13-1969, Part 4: Chuck Berry

Here's the fourth album from the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival. This one stars one of the greatest of all the 1950s rock and roll legends, Chuck Berry.

Berry played a key role in a series of improbable events that led to this festival happening, though it was an inadvertent one. Johnny Brower and Kenny Walker were young Canadians who had some recent success booking acts for a club in Toronto. They wanted to branch out to rock festivals, since that seemed to be the happening thing in 1969. With the backing from high school friends who were heirs to the massive Eatons department store chain, they got the money to put on the Toronto Pop Festival in June 1969. Brower later recalled, "Sly and the Family Stone headlined and Steppenwolf played, but it was Chuck Berry who really stole that show. He had a crowd of like 25,000 people going insane doing the duck walk. That's when I got the crazy idea that if we brought all of the legendary rockers together for a 'rock and roll revival' we could add some contemporary bands to the bill and do a one day show in September."

Berry's career wasn't doing that well in 1969. He'd had many hit songs from 1955 to 1964. But then musical trends changed fast away from the 1950s style he was associated. From 1965 until the end of the 1960s, none of his singles would even make the Top 100 chart in the U.S. (Although that would drastically change in 1972 when he would have a Number One hit with "My Ding-A-Ling," which he already played in this concert.) But he was still an electrifying live performer, with his famous "duck walk" and other physical feats, and his songs were classics that remained well known. 

Berry was notorious for being a cheapskate. For pretty much his entire career, he was known for touring with no backing band. Instead, he would expect the promoter of each concert to find some local band familiar with his songs to back him for practically no money. and with no practicing together. That was even the case for this high-profile concert. A local Canadian band, Nucleus, had opened the festival, performing only three songs. I read an account from the lead guitarist of that band, who said he was watching the rest of the festival with his band mates that afternoon when his manager found him and told him that Chuck Berry was scrambling to find a backing band and would they be willing to play for him? They eagerly said yes, despite being told Berry's set would be starting in 15 minutes and there would be no practicing beforehand! 

For each song, the band members just had to guess what to do, and what key to play in, once the song began. But if you listen to the recording, you can't tell the lack of practice. Fortunately, nearly all Berry songs use the same basic structure. That's probably why he was able to get away without having his own band and not have it frequently lead to disaster.

By the time Berry's set began, the Doors had arrived at the venue and were keen to watch Berry perform. In the 2022 documentary movie about this festival, "REVIVAL69: The Concert That Rocked the World," an image is shown of Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, and Robby Krieger of the Doors standing at the side of the stage and smiling while they watched Berry do his duck walk. Krieger said in the documentary, "Chuck Berry, he was just on fire, man. That was, like, amazing. ... Besides the fact that he was duck walking all over the place, he was just really on that night. It was one of the best rock shows I've ever seen."

Geddy Lee would later become the lead singer for Rush, but at the time he was a teenager living in Toronto who attended the festival. He said, "Chuck Berry was awesome. We were kind of glued to him."

This is one of the rare sets from this festival that has been officially released in full. It came out in various forms over the years, but the best is a "record store day" release from 2021. However, in my opinion, this version sounds better. That's because the lead vocals were low in the mix (which was the case for nearly all of the recordings from this festival), and I fixed that with the use of the UVR5 audio editing program.

This album is an hour and six minutes long.

01 talk by Kim Fowley (Chuck Berry)
02 talk (Chuck Berry)
03 Rock and Roll Music (Chuck Berry)
04 talk (Chuck Berry)
05 School Day [Long Live Rock and Roll] (Chuck Berry)
06 talk (Chuck Berry)
07 Johnny B. Goode - Carol - Promised Land (Chuck Berry)
08 Hoochie Coochie Man (Chuck Berry)
09 Maybellene (Chuck Berry)
10 Too Much Monkey Business (Chuck Berry)
11 Nadine (Chuck Berry)
12 Reelin' and Rockin' (Chuck Berry)
13 talk (Chuck Berry)
14 Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
15 Memphis, Tennessee (Chuck Berry)
16 My Ding-A-Ling (Chuck Berry)
17 talk (Chuck Berry)
18 [In The] Wee Wee Hours (Chuck Berry) (Chuck Berry)
19 Bonsoir Cherie (Chuck Berry)
20 Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BksNeg35

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/3cbwpyyBIo8NZ4E/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It was used as a cover photo for an album of this concert performance.

Chuck Berry - Sounds for Saturday, BBC Television Theatre, London, Britain, 3-29-1972

Here another album made from a BBC TV show, as I post a bunch of these from the early 1970s. This one features rock legend Chuck Berry. It's a bit different from most of the others I'm posting lately, in that those are from the TV show "In Concert" and generally ran a half an hour or so. This one comes from a show called "Sounds for Saturday," and is one minute short of being two hours long.

In addition to being a rock legend, Chuck Berry was a serious weird dude. If you look up his Wikipedia entry, you'll see he was accused of, and sometimes convicted of, some strange and troubling things. But he also was notorious for being cheap. One result of that was that he generally didn't keep a backing band whenever he went on tour. Instead, he assumed his songs were so famous and he was so well regarded that he'd use any local band that was willing, and pay them peanuts. As a result, his live performances were spotty, to say the least, especially because he usually didn't practice with these pick-up bands beforehand.

This concert is different, thankfully. All of Berry's hits were in the 1950s or early 1960s, or so it seemed. But in 1972 he had a fluke hit with the novelty song "My Ding-a-Ling." Released in July 1972, it went all the way to number one in the US charts, his only number one hit. (As an aside, what a sad commentary on the public's taste in music for this silly song to out-chart and out-sell all his other songs, including all-time classics like "Johnny B. Goode." Sigh!) Anyway, this concert took place months before that song was released, so the BBC must have booked him due to the high regard of his music career in general.

Anyway, my point is, Berry knew this concert would be shown on TV all over Britain, and maybe beyond, so this wasn't just another concert he could do with yet another pick-up band. Presumably, he put more effort into it than usual, and put on a good performance. There are a bunch of official live Chuck Berry albums, but most of them are short and/or lackluster. I would guess that if you want one definitive Berry live document, it's hard to top this one. (I don't count the "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll" soundtrack because that's a collaboration with lots of big name guest stars.)

Because of this concert's length, Berry played most all of his big hits while also throwing in some lesser known songs for a change of pace. One change of pace was "My Ding-a-Ling." Apparently, even though it hadn't been released as a single yet, he'd been playing it in concert for years already. It goes on for over eight minutes, which is way too long for my tastes, but I left it in to present the full concert accurately. 

01 Roll Over Beethoven (Chuck Berry)
02 talk (Chuck Berry)
03 School Day (Chuck Berry)
04 talk (Chuck Berry)
05 Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
06 talk (Chuck Berry)
07 Memphis, Tennessee (Chuck Berry)
08 Too Much Monkey Business (Chuck Berry)
09 talk (Chuck Berry)
10 South of the Border (Chuck Berry)
11 Beer Drinkin' Woman (Chuck Berry)
12 Let It Rock (Chuck Berry)
13 talk (Chuck Berry)
14 Mean Old World (Chuck Berry)
15 talk (Chuck Berry)
16 Carol (Chuck Berry)
17 talk (Chuck Berry)
18 Rock and Roll Music (Chuck Berry)
19 talk (Chuck Berry)
20 Liverpool Drive (Chuck Berry)
21 Promised Land (Chuck Berry)
22 Reelin' and Rockin' (Chuck Berry)
23 talk (Chuck Berry)
24 Nadine (Chuck Berry)
25 talk (Chuck Berry)
26 My Ding-a-Ling (Chuck Berry)
27 Bye Bye Johnny (Chuck Berry)
28 Bonsoir Cherie (Chuck Berry)
29 Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362440/CHUCKBRY1972SoundsforSaturdayBBTelevisionTheatre__3-29-1972_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Ebuij6yS

The video of this concert is available on YouTube. So for the cover photo, I took a screenshot from the video. I also took a screenshot of the very start of the video when Berry's name was on screen, and used that for his name at the top.

Various Artists - Covered: Chuck Berry, Alternates: 1963-1999

Here's something that's a fun extra. I highly doubt I'm going to do this for any other artist in my "Covered" series, but it somehow seems fitting here.

In putting together my three albums of songs written by Chuck Berry, I searched the Internet and found a surprising number of "best Chuck Berry covers of all time" lists, and I used those to point me to the best versions. The only problem is, there are simply too many excellent versions of the same songs. In my cases, it was a flip of a coin type thing to decide which version to use. Over time, I developed a folder of "almosts." When I was all done, I took another look at that folder, and realized those songs would make for a very good album all by itself. So here it is.

Even with this album, I tried to stick to my general rule of not including more than one song by the same artist. Most of these artists had a song on the other three Berry albums, but in this case I mean not putting more than one song by the same artist on this album. I was able to stick to that for every artist except one: the Rolling Stones.

Some artists are so heavily influenced by Berry that you could put together an entire album just of that one band doing covers of his songs. The Stones are one such band. I think they've done about 15 of his songs, if you include unreleased live performances and the like. There's a similar number for the Beatles. Pretty much all the Stones and Beatles versions are great, as you'd expect by such great bands. So my apologies for not including more by both bands.

Oh, one last point I forgot to mention on my posts for any of the other albums. A few songs people closely associate with Berry weren't actually written by him. Probably the most obvious case of this is "Run Rudolph Run." Berry was the first to record it, but it wasn't written by him, so it doesn't fit into this series. There are a couple other cases like that, such as "Don't You Lie to Me" and "My Ding-a-Ling."

By the way, the Georgia Satellites and Tom Petty versions here are officially unreleased, I believe, but their sound quality is still high.

If you know of any really great Berry covers that I missed, please let me know. If they're really great, I could always update the song list, at least for this album.

01 Come On (Rolling Stones)
02 Roll Over Beethoven (Beatles)
03 Around and Around (Animals)
04 Too Much Monkey Business (Elvis Presley)
05 You Can't Catch Me (Love Sculpture)
06 Little Queenie (Rolling Stones)
07 Carol (Doors)
08 Johnny B. Goode (Johnny Winter)
09 Promised Land (Grateful Dead)
10 Maybelline (Ted Nugent & the Amboy Dukes)
11 You Never Can Tell (Ronnie Lane)
12 Sweet Little Sixteen (John Lennon)
13 Nadine [Is It You] (Stan Ridgway)
14 School Day [Ring Ring Goes the Bell] (Georgia Satellites)
15 Bye Bye Johnny (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
16 Brown Eyed Handsome Man (Paul McCartney)
17 Hellbound Train [Downbound Train] (George Thorogood)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175876/COVERDCHUCKBRRY1963-1999Altrntes_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TTX1DF9a

The cover art photo comes from 1989. Berry is doing his classic "duck walk."

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo by reducing the background to just the light blue.

Various Artists - Covered: Chuck Berry, Volume 3: 1977-2017

This is the third and last of my "Covered" albums highlighting the songwriting of Chuck Berry.

I've said pretty much all I wanted to say with my post for the first album. I'll just add some comments relevant to this album.

One problem with Berry's own recordings is that there isn't a lot of variety from song to song. He had a successful formula and he stuck with it. It was rare when he would vary things up with a slow blues or a country song or the like. But one nice thing about listening to covers of his songs is that you naturally get more variety.

That's especially true on this album. It seems that as the years passed and straight rock and roll fractured into more sub-varieties, covers of Berry songs became less common, but also more adventurous.

Perhaps the best song to exemplify this is Peter Tosh's reggae version of "Johnny B. Goode." This is one of my favorite cover versions of all time. It takes the song to a totally different place, yet remains true to the spirit of the original. I said in a previous post that the only song I included two versions of was "Johnny B. Goode," mostly because this version is so very different. (I also included Jimi Hendrix's version on the second album.)

By the way, the Joe Jackson and Larkin Poe versions are officially unreleased. But in terms of sound quality, I think they sound as good as the rest.

01 [You Can Never Tell] C'Est La Vie (Emmylou Harris)
02 Tulane (Steve Gibbons Band)
03 It's My Own Business (Dave Edmunds)
04 Back in the U.S.A. (Linda Ronstadt)
05 Come On (Joe Jackson)
06 Oh What a Thrill (Rockpile)
07 Johnny B. Goode (Peter Tosh)
08 Havana Moon (Santana)
09 Wee Wee Hours (Eric Clapton)
10 13 Question Method (Ry Cooder)
11 Move It (George Thorogood)
12 Little Queenie (Bruce Springsteen)
13 No Particular Place to Go (Larkin Poe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15833380/CoveredChuckB_1977-2017_Volum3_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo dates to 1984.

Various Artists - Covered: Chuck Berry, Volume 2: 1970-1976

Here's the second of three albums in the "Covered" series celebrating the songwriting of Chuck Berry.

I said most of what I wanted to say in my last post, for the first album of the three. I'll only add what's particular to this album.

Berry started having lots of hits in 1955, the year rock and roll went mainstream. But his songs didn't get covered that much until about 1963 and 1964, which was the start of the British Invasion. I think it's safe to say the number of Berry covers peaked in the first half of the 1970s, as the rockers who grew up on Berry's music were their most popular, and before disco and punk shifted musical directions later in the 1970s.

Thus, I had way too many songs to choose from to make this particular album. I tried to include at least one song from each artist who were heavily influenced by Berry. For instance, I'm not much of a Status Quo fan, but they covered Berry as much or more than anybody, so I included a song by them.

Other versions were included many to make sure I had a cover for each of Berry's thirty of song best known and most frequently covered songs. For example, I'm not a big fan of AC/DC's version of "School Day," but the song was too important not to include, and I liked that version better than any other I could find.

Stephen Stills' version of "You Can't Catch Me" comes from his 1975 live album. It actually is part of a medley with the song "Crossroads." But I edited it out of the medley so the focus would remain on nothing but Berry songs.

01 Johnny B. Goode (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Memphis (Faces)
03 Around and Around (David Bowie)
04 I'm Talking about You (Rick Nelson)
05 Let It Rock (Bob Seger)
06 Roll Over Beethoven (Electric Light Orchestra)
07 Promised Land (Elvis Presley)
08 Back to Memphis (Band)
09 Sweet Little Rock and Roller (Rod Stewart)
10 You Can't Catch Me (Stephen Stills)
11 Bye Bye Johnny (Status Quo)
12 School Day [Ring Ring Goes the Bell] (AC-DC)
13 Jaguar and Thunderbird (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181028/COVRDChckBrry1970-1976Volum2_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2i2jRzmY

I don't know where or when the photo I chose for the cover art comes from exactly. But the source where I found it claims it's from some time in the 1970s.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Chuck Berry, Volume 1: 1959-1969

Here's the next in my "Covered" series, focusing on the most successful songwriters of all time. This time, I'm looking at Chuck Berry.

Berry's influence can't be overstated. Here's a couple of telling quotes. John Lennon once said, "If you had to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry.'" And Stevie Wonder said, "There's only one true king of rock and roll. His name is Chuck Berry."

Berry had a long successful career as a performer, scoring many hits on his own. But his role as a songwriter was arguably more important. Starting in 1955, the same year rock and roll broke big, he specialized in wordy, literate, and clever lyrics. He raised the bar for rock and roll songwriting,  and served a model as one of the few major stars of the time who wrote their own songs.

If you want to know more about Berry and his life, here's his Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Berry

Not a lot of other artists had big hits with Berry's songs, relatively speaking, probably because Berry almost always had his own hits with them. But it seems that any musician who ever got into rock and roll covered Berry's songs. So my challenge this time around wasn't to compile lots of hit versions (as I did some other artists in the "Covered" series) so much as it was to compile the best and most interesting versions out of hundreds and hundreds of covers by well known artists. I've found enough material to make three albums.

As usual with this "Covered" series, I've forced myself to only include one version of each song. However, I've made an exception this time by including two very different versions of "Johnny B. Goode," as you'll see with later albums.

I've also tried hard to limit each artist to only one song, to spread the musical wealth around. But, I made two exceptions, both on this album: the Beatles and the Yardbirds. For the Beatles, I considered it a must to include their version of "Rock and Roll Music," which they nailed. But I also included their version of "I Got to Find My Baby," since they're pretty much the only artist to ever cover that rare but good Berry song. With the Yardbirds, their version of "Too Much Monkey Business" is widely seen as a classic, and it's my favorite for that song. But I felt I couldn't miss "Jeff's Boogie" as well. This later instrumental is supposedly a Yardbirds original, but in fact it's a note for note copy of a song by Berry called "Guitar Boogie."So I've added "Guitar Boogie" to the song subtitle.

Speaking of stealing songwriting credits, the first song here, "Forty Days" by Ronnie Hawkins, needs some explanation. This very clearly is a version of Berry's song "Thirty Days," with only the title changed. So why 40 days instead of 30?! It seems that Hawkins thought he could claim the songwriting credit simply by changing the title. But that didn't work and he ended up having to pay royalties to Berry. I've put "Thirty Days" in as a subtitle to make clear what the song title really should have been.

But that's not the last songwriting credit controversy here. I've included the Beach Boys' "Surfin' U.S.A." That may seem strange to you unless you know that song is just Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" with new lyrics. At first, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys tried to take full credit for writing the song, but a deal was made to give half the credit to Berry. Wilson later freely admitted that he just rewrote the Berry song.

I listened to a ton of Berry covers in putting these albums together. That enabled me to select some obscure covers, as well as choosing some obscure Berry songs. For this album in particular, some garage bands did some lively, punky versions that deserve more attention.

By the way, each of the three Berry albums I've put together are about 50 minutes long.

01 Forty Days [Thirty Days] (Ronnie Hawkins)
02 Sweet Little Sixteen (Jerry Lee Lewis)
03 I Got to Find My Baby (Beatles)
04 Brown Eyed Handsome Man (Buddy Holly)
05 Downbound Train (Hoyt Axton)
06 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys)
07 Too Much Monkey Business (Yardbirds)
08 Maybellene (Johnny Rivers)
09 Beautiful Delilah (Kinks)
10 Carol (Rolling Stones)
11 Rock and Roll Music (Beatles)
12 Oh Baby Doll (Pretty Things)
13 How You've Changed (Animals)
14 Reelin' and Rockin' (Dave Clark Five)
15 I Want to Be Your Driver (Blues Project)
16 Almost Grown (Lovin' Spoonful)
17 Jeff's Boogie [Guitar Boogie] (Yardbirds)
18 Nadine [Is That You] (Smokestack Lightnin')
19 No Money Down (Duane Allman)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687917/COVRDChuckB_1959-1969_Volum1_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I went with a photo of Berry from 1964.