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/15275562/ChuckBer_1972_SoundsforSaturdayBBTelevisionTheatre__3-29-1972_atse.zip.html

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.