Chuck Berry: After School Session [CHESS]

Why you'll love it

This edition is remastered in mono and pressed on 180g vinyl. "School Day" topped the R&B chart and reached No. 3 on the Hot 100, and "Too Much Monkey Business" and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" both made the R&B top five.

This edition

• Remastered
• Mono
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket

About the album

Before the LP was the main event, rock and roll came two songs at a time, and Chuck Berry had been stacking up gems on 45 since 1955. After School Session gathered most of them in May 1957, the second long-player Chess Records ever issued (catalogue number LP 1426), and added two new pieces in "Roly Poly" and "Berry Pickin'."

The songs come from his first five sessions for Leonard and Phil Chess in Chicago, with Johnnie Johnson on piano, Willie Dixon on bass, Fred Below on drums and Otis Spann sitting in. "Wee Wee Hours" first turned up as the flip side of his debut hit Maybellene, "Havana Moon" sways to a Latin lilt, "No Money Down" is a car-lot comedy, and "Deep Feeling" puts Berry on steel guitar. Johnson's piano and Dixon's bass give the whole record its rolling Chicago swing.

It's the sound of rock and roll being written in real time, and it holds up beautifully in mono. Seventy years on, the bell in "School Day" still has a better attendance record than anyone on our staff.

Also at Kops: more Chuck Berry on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Chess (cat# LP 1426), a reissue of the 1957 album.