As I was motivatin' over the hill I saw Maybellene in a Coupé de Ville

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

27/10/63 : Chuck Berry On Stage - Chuck Berry


Somewhat surprisingly, this is only our second visit with Mr Berry, with the previous one being a best-of on Rolling Stone's list which I would otherwise have rejected - and this one is a live album which wouldn't normally be included either. But he deserves the visit more than one I have unusually rejected from this year - we certainly don't need another Sinatra compilation, do we?

Hmmm - this is both good and not so good. The songs are, for the most part, pretty decent (particularly when you consider a load of them are from the mid 50s) and there's some very fine guitar playing on them - easily the best we've heard this year. But the sound quality isn't great - we've already met plenty of live albums from earlier years which have a much better tone to them. But overall, I'm pleased I got to visit the lad.

We're at #8 in the chart this week on his sixth week of an eleven week run with it having peaked at #6 in his fifth and eighth weeks. The rest of the top five were The Beatles, The Searchers, Frank Ifield, The Shadows and Gerry & The Pacemakers, with the highest new entry being Del Shannon (#19).

Wikipedia surprises me by describing it as his first "live" album - with the quotes being there because this isn't a live album at all. It is instead just studio tracks (most of which had previously been released) with live audience sounds dubbed over them - I'm feeling a bit cheated now, I can tell you. And that's pretty much all I have to tell you - it wasn't received well commercially (possibly they felt cheated too) but it did get to #29 in the US.

And discogs.com seems to agree it's not one of his essential recordings, with various copies being available from £3-£27. This era Chuck Berry is certainly worth a listen, but I'm not convinced this is going to be the best example of such things.

20/10/63 - A most curious album
03/11/63 - This could have been worse

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