One Dozen Berrys is the second studio album of Chuck Berry, released in March 1958 on Chess Records, catalogue LP 1432. With the exception of five tracks, "Rockin' at the Philharmonic," "Guitar Boogie," "In-Go," "How You've Changed," and "It Don't Take but a Few Minutes," all selections had been previously released on 45 rpm singles. It was also released in the United Kingdom. In 2012, Hoodoo reissued the album with Chuck Berry Is on Top on the same CD. Sheldon Recording Studio, where all of the recordings were made, was located at 2120 South Michigan Ave. in Chicago and eventually became Chess Studios.
Chuck Berry's second album is ever so slightly more sophisticated than its predecessor. Although One Dozen Berrys is hooked around a pair of hit singles, "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Rock & Roll Music," most of what's here doesn't really sound too much like either of those songs -- rather, the other ten tracks each constitute a close-up look at some individual component of the types of music that goes into brewing up the Chuck Berry sound. Thus, the slow instrumental "Blue Feeling" is a look at the blues sound that Berry initially proposed to bring to Chess Records; "How You've Changed" presents him in a slow ballad, singing in a manner closer to Nat "King" Cole than to any rock & roller of the era; and "Lajaunda" shows off his love of Latin music. "Rocking at the Philharmonic" is a rippling guitar/piano workout, a compendium of the sounds that lay beneath those hit singles, and a killer showcase not only for Berry, but also for Lafayette Leake at the ivories, and also a decent showcase for Willie Dixon's bass playing. "Oh Baby Doll" is a return to the beat of "Maybellene," this time carrying a lyric that's more sensual (in a bluesy sense) than rollicking fun, though it comes out that way amid the pounding beat and Berry's crunchy, angular guitar solo. "Guitar Boogie" is yet another guitar instrumental, one of four on this album, leading one to wonder if he was running short of first-rate lyrics in mid-1957, amid his frantic pace of recording and touring -- no matter, for the piece is a killer track, a pumping, soaring working out for Berry's guitar that had some of the most impressive pyrotechnics that one was likely to hear in 1957; what's more, the track was good enough to form the template for Jeff Beck's more ornate adaptation, "Jeff's Boogie," from the 1966 album Roger the Engineer (aka The Yardbirds aka Over Under Sideways Down). The best of the album's tracks is easily "Reelin' & Rockin'," which is also just about the dirtiest song that Berry released in all of the 1950s (and for many years after that), essentially a blues-boogie recasting, on a more overt level, of the extended feats of sexual intercourse alluded to in Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock." The one totally weird track here is "Low Feeling," which is nothing but "Blue Feeling" doctored in the studio by Leonard and Phil Chess, slowed down to half speed and edited to create a 12th track -- doing that to the original was bad enough, but sticking it on the same LP with the original was downright bizarre. And the album's closer, "It Don't Take But a Few Minutes," is a reminder of just how much Berry owed to country music for his sound, and explains, to anyone coming in late, how he could have been mistaken for a white hillbilly in those early days, based on the sound of this song and "Maybelline."
All tracks written by Chuck Berry.
Side one
"Sweet Little Sixteen" – 3:03
"Blue Feeling (Instrumental)" – 3:04
"La Juanda (Espanola)" – 3:14
"Rockin' at the Philharmonic (Instrumental)" – 3:23
"Oh Baby Doll" – 2:37
"Guitar Boogie (Instrumental)" – 2:21
Side two
"Reelin' and Rockin'" – 3:18
"In-Go (Instrumental)" – 2:29
"Rock and Roll Music" – 2:34
"How You've Changed" – 2:49
"Low Feeling" – 3:09 same recording as "Blue Feeling", but with the tape playback slowed
"It Don't Take but a Few Minutes" – 2:31
Personnel
Chuck Berry – vocals, guitars
Hubert Sumlin – electric guitar
Johnnie Johnson, Lafayette Leake – piano
Willie Dixon – bass
Fred Below, Ebbie Hardy – drums
Enjoy.
"I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free"
Ty To Original Sharer.
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