More Live Recordings of Interest
- Stunning sound throughout for this original pressing with each side earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades and playing about as quietly as any copy ever will, Chess vinyl being what it is
- These vintage sides are rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical with a lovely musical quality that we found was missing from many of the copies we played
- “This 1972 release is Chuck Berry’s bestselling album in nearly 50 years of hot-wax work. Buoyed by the playfully lewd No. 1 hit single “My Ding-A-Ling,” one of three live recordings here, the success of these sessions marked a comeback for the mercurial Rock and Roll Hall of Fame immortal…” – Alan Greenberg
This vintage Chess pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What amazing sides such as these have to offer is not hard to hear:
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1972
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
What We Listen For on The London Chuck Berry Sessions
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Let’s Boogie
Mean Old World
I Will Not Let You Go
London Berry Blues
I Love You
Side Two
Reelin’ And Rockin’
My Ding-A-Ling
Johnny B. Goode (& Closing)
Review
“This 1972 Chess release is Chuck Berry’s bestselling album in nearly 50 years of hot-wax work. Buoyed by the playfully lewd No. 1 hit single “My Ding-A-Ling,” one of three live recordings here, the success of these sessions marked a comeback for the mercurial Rock and Roll Hall of Fame immortal, whose R&B preeminence had been supplanted in the mid-1960s by Chicago-based blues bosses Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf in the mainstream rock world. The first five tracks, all Berry compositions except for Little Walter’s powerful “Mean Old World,” were recorded in London’s Pye Studios with the Faces’ Kenny Jones and Ian McLagen on drums and piano, and each track crackles with the master’s creative fire. Check out the rollicking “Let’s Boogie” and the hard-charging “London Berry Blues” among the studio gems, then kick back to the live funfest in Coven-try, England, where Chuck reinvents “Reelin’ & Rockin'” and “Johnny B. Goode.” — Alan Greenberg