Hail! Hail! Chuck Berry Greatest Hits Album Gets Greater

Berry’s The Great Twenty-Eight, Rock ‘n’ Roll’s All-Time Greatest Greatest-Hits Album, Gets Super-Deluxe Limited Edition Release As Part of ‘Chess Blue’ Vinyl Box Set, December 15

Standard Black Vinyl Edition to Follow January 26

09 NOVEMBER 2017 (Toronto, ON) – In the firmament of rock ‘n’ roll’s first-generation creators, no artist looms larger than Chuck Berry. In a consistently innovative recording career that spanned more than 60 years, the iconic singer-songwriter-guitarist, who passed away on March 18, 2017, laid much of the groundwork for modern rock ‘n’ roll, while creating some of rock’s most distinctive and enduring anthems, from Johnny B. Goode to Roll Over Beethoven, Rock and Roll Music to Reelin and Rockin’, and many more.
Geffen/UMe will pay tribute to the immortal spirit of Chuck Berry, who would have turned 91 last month, with the ultimate vinyl version of his landmark greatest hits compilation, The Great Twenty-Eight, as it celebrates its 35th anniversary, with The Great Twenty-Eight: Super Deluxe Edition. On December 15, the album will be released as a limited edition five-disc box set on ‘Chess Blue’ vinyl, limited to only 500 copies worldwide and available exclusively via UDiscoverMusic.com. A wide release standard black vinyl edition will be available next year on January 26 via Universal Music Canada, the country’s leading music company.
Housed in a textured box, the Super Deluxe Edition will complement the original two-LP, 28-song compilation with an additional LP, More Great Chuck Berry, containing 14 more hits, rarities and B-sides missing from the original, as well as a rare live album, Oh Yeah! Live in Detroit, available on vinyl for the first time. The collection will also include a newly created bonus ten-inch EP Berry Christmas, featuring four holiday-themed classics on “Rudolph-Red” vinyl, with one song on vinyl for the first time as well.

Pre-order The Great Twenty-Eight: Super Deluxe Edition

Berry’s classic recordings for Chicago’s seminal Chess label have been extensively anthologized in the CD era. But for many Berry devotees, the two-LP vinyl collection The Great Twenty-Eight remains both a sentimental favorite and a definitive document of Berry’s musical genius. It’s no wonder that The Great Twenty-Eight was ranked number 21 on Rolling Stone‘s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” the highest-ranking hits compilation on that list. For those interested in the original 28-track edition of The Great Twenty-Eight, it is now back in print in its original two-LP format for the first time since its initial release in 1982.

Order The Great Twenty-Eight here

The Great Twenty-Eight: Super Deluxe Edition also includes a handsome 12″ x 12″ book featuring a special introductory essay by Keith Richards, a new essay by best-selling author and SiriusXM host Alan Light, complementing Michael Lydon’s liner notes from the original version of The Great Twenty-Eight, and reminiscences from DJ Lee Alan, plus complete U.S. single, album and EP discographies. The text is enhanced by reproductions of Berry’s original LP cover art and rarely-seen photographs.

As Light writes, “When The Great Twenty-Eight was released in 1982, it was immediately recognized as one of the essential albums in rock ‘n’ roll history… Enter this edition of The Great Twenty-Eight, with thirty more Chuck Berry recordings—the Great Fifty-Eight, as it were—fleshing out the story of rock ‘n’ roll’s poet laureate while also demonstrating, through the addition of a riveting live album from 1963, his power as a stage performer… The opportunity to spotlight additional facets of his music is the greatest contribution to his history that this collection offers.”

A survey of Berry’s first decade of recording on Chess, the original The Great Twenty-Eight contains 21 singles along with six of their b-sides and one album track from Chuck Berry in London. Of those singles, eleven were top ten hits on the Billboard R&B singles chart and ten were Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. During his Chess years, Berry created a massive—and massively influential—body of work that includes countless beloved classics, from Maybellene to Roll Over Beethoven to Johnny B. Goode to Memphis, Tennessee and beyond. Indeed, Berry’s music is so deeply ingrained into our culture that NASA launched Johnny B. Goode into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft as a representation of the sounds of the human race for the benefit of our cosmic neighbors. All of these songs are included on The Great Twenty-Eight, which also includes the ubiquitous hits Rock and Roll Music, Sweet Little Sixteen and No Particular Place To Go and many others that have become part of the collective consciousness.

More Great Chuck Berry comprises 14 classic Berry tunes not included on The Great Twenty-Eight, including the sultry, simmering number Wee Wee Hours, the original flip side of Maybellene; My Ding-A-Ling, Berry’s only No. 1 pop single; Too Pooped To Pop (Casey), the top 20 R&B A-side of Let It Rock; the Top 10 R&B hit No Money Down; the celebratory Promised Land; and the rollicking You Never Can Tell, which earned cinematic immortality as the accompaniment to John Travolta and Uma Thurman’s twist in the film Pulp Fiction.

Oh Yeah!: Live In Detroit is a thrilling, rare concert performance from October 1963, celebrating Berry’s return to the stage after a break from performing. With support from local DJ and TV host Lee Alan, Berry, backed by Motown’s Funk Brothers rhythm section and horn players, recorded the live album during a series of performances at Detroit’s Walled Lake Casino.

Returning to the spotlight after a year-and-a-half brought out an energy and intensity in Berry that can be heard clearly in this historic 12-song set, which launches with Guitar Boogie and includes Let It Rock, Too Much Monkey Business (available for the first time in the U.S.), Johnny B. Goode, Sweet Little Sixteen and a lengthy, edge-of-chaos medley, as Berry feeds off an audience that sings along with nearly every track. Throughout the show, Berry tells jokes that slyly address racial tensions. But the record was scrapped at the time and has been previously only available as part of a limited-edition CD set; this marks its first time on vinyl, and as any kind of standalone release.

Just in time for the holidays, the bonus EP Berry Christmas collects together four Christmas classics on “Rudolph-Red” vinyl. The 10-inch disc features Berry’s chestnuts, Run Rudolph Run and Merry Christmas Baby along with Christmas and Spending Christmas, the latter making its vinyl debut as it was previously available only in a limited-edition CD box set.

Bob Dylan once called Berry “the Shakespeare of rock ‘n’ roll.” John Lennon stated, “If you tried to give rock ‘n’ roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.'” As Keith Richards writes in the booklet intro, “Chuck Berry is the gentleman who started it all.”

And if those testimonials aren’t convincing enough, one listen to The Great Twenty-Eight: Super Deluxe Edition will make the case for Chuck Berry’s singular, timeless rock ‘n’ roll brilliance.

LP 1 & 2: The Great Twenty-Eight
The original classic 2-LP compilation

Side 1
1. Maybellene
2. Thirty Days (To Come Back Home)
3. You Can’t Catch Me
4. Too Much Monkey Business
5. Brown-Eyed Handsome Man
6. Roll Over Beethoven
7. Havana Moon

Side 2
1. School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes The Bell)
2. Rock And Roll Music
3. Oh Baby Doll
4. Reelin’ And Rockin’
5. Sweet Little Sixteen
6. Johnny B. Goode
7. Around And Around

Side 3
1. Carol
2. Beautiful Delilah
3. Memphis, Tennessee
4. Sweet Little Rock And Roller
5. Little Queenie
6. Almost Grown
7. Back In The U.S.A.

Side 4
1. Let It Rock
2. Bye Bye Johnny
3. I’m Talking About You
4. Come On
5. Nadine (Is It You?)
6. No Particular Place To Go
7. I Want To Be Your Driver

LP 3: More Great Chuck Berry

Side 1
1. Wee Wee Hours
2. No Money Down
3. Drifting Heart
4. La Jaunda (Español)
5. Blue Feeling
6. Vacation Time
7. Joe Joe Gun

Side 2
1. Too Pooped To Pop “Casey”
2. Our Little Rendezvous
3. You Never Can Tell
4. Promised Land
5. Little Marie
6. Dear Dad
7. My Ding-A-Ling (live single version)

LP 4: Oh Yeah! Live In Detroit
Recorded at the Walled Lake Casino, October 25 & 26, 1963
First time on vinyl
*First U.S. release

Side 1
1. Guitar Boogie
2. Let It Rock
3. Almost Grown
4. Chuck Berry Dialogue 1
5. Too Much Monkey Business*
6. Johnny B. Goode
7. Introduction / Instrumental
8. Sweet Little Sixteen

Side 2
1. Wee Wee Hours
2. Chuck Berry Dialogue 2
3. Maybellene
4. Medley: Goodnite Sweetheart Goodnite/Johnny B. Goode/Let It Rock/School Day

Bonus: Berry Christmas EP

Side 1
1. Run Rudolph Run
2. Merry Christmas Baby

Side 2
1. Spending Christmas (first time on vinyl)
2. Christmas