Customer Rating: 
Summary: Still great music, and rocks harder than a lot of "hip, edgier" bands do today...
Comment: There are a ton of Chuck Berry greatest hits recordings, so I can't really say whether this is the best one. However, it does have 30 tracks on it, it's a single disc edition, and the music is extraordinary. Berry is one of the creators of rock and roll, and listening to this stuff 40 years later, it's still rocks, and rocks really hard. The music here sounds more vital, fresh, and edgy (yes, edgy) than most rock and roll acts do today. Berry wrote all 30 tracks in this collection, and they're all fantastic. This album has the classics (Johnny B. Goode, Maybellene, Rock and Roll Music), and it has some songs that I've heard covered by The Rolling Stones and REO Speedwagon (Carol and Little Queenie). It also contains the great, underrated You Never Can Tell (featured in Pulp Fiction, but I can listen to the song without thinking about that film now. Thank goodness, as I like the song a lot better than the film). I love the song Promised Land, an obscure one. Listen to the guitar solo and tell me you don't hear Lou Reed in it, specifically the soloing on the Velvet Underground's first album. Some have criticised the inclusion of My Ding-a-Ling, a novelty song that was Berry's last #1 hit. I like the song, and Berry liked it too, despite being very different that his other material. It was a big hit for Chuck, he wrote it himself, and I have to say I like it a lot, especially with the extremely enthusiastic crowd (recorded in the U.K.). Berry gives a great performance of it, and it becomes infectious. Overall, this is a great start for Berry novices.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Chuck Berry Is A Superlative Retro Grab
Comment: September 24, 2006
Back in 1956 as a young boy indicated by the New York City school system as having unusual intuitiveness for playing instruments and having an "ear". The only media we had in our apartment in Upper Manhattan on the West Side was a severely cracked but operable Zenith Am radio. In the many hours of listening to that archaic purveyor of listening pleasure,I was an irrefutable Chuck Berry fan. Although Chuck Berry is still performing the songs on this disc, Maybelline, Roll Over Beethoven,Johnny B. Goode, I knew then in the middle 1950's as played on WMCA, The Good Guys in that tiny room in the yet to be gentrified Upper West Side that this is a man who is not coming around again for centuries if ever. I remember how he used to shuffle across the stage while hitting his electric guitar. I saw a documentary once on the Philco TV my father brought home on our happiest day as kids where they depicted Chuck Berry as a simple man from St Louis who travelled alone from airport to airport with his luggage immaculately lashed to his back. The Stones, Beatles and many British Invasion groups often speak of his incredible and forceful influence on their own songwriting. Johnny Rivers. for me the finest Chuck berry cover artist ever, actually roamed the Brill Building promoting his talents when Carole King, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond and Wall of Sound producer Phil Spector spent their time writing the best music in a mystical place near the Flatiron building we remember, Tin Pan Alley. Two other rockers that are comparable to Chuck Berry are Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. These three are starting to explode on satelite, Ipod cherry pickers and oldies stations all over. Listeners are tired of being exposed to the ersatz amateur-grey line semi-pros that bad penny us all over the place. Chuck Berry is a major Retro Grab in 2008 meaning that we are all starting to look for exceptional quality in the past because that's where we now have to go to get it. Johnny Mathis and Astrud Gilberto walked into studios in that time with no prior musical training. When will we ever see that again?
Jay Adler, Music Critic
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Chuck Berry Anthology
Comment: As long as Chuck Berry as been around, you know that there will always be multiple greatest hits collections released, and people will always argue over which one is best. I haven't heard of these collections, so I can't or won't even try to venture as to which one is best or most complete, but I can say that this collection is 99% percent complete of the songs that the great Mr. Berry had as hit singles, with the exception of "Run, Run Rudolph," which should be included in any Berry anthology.
But "Johnny B. Goode" is here. And so is "Maybelline," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Rock and Roll Music," "No Particular Place To Go," "School Day," "Memphis, Tennessee," "Thirty Days," and yes, "My Ding-A-Ling," which should be included for completeness, even if it's far from being the favorite of most Berry fans.
This is a wonderful collection, and comparisons are fine to make, so please check out the others and make your case for which one is best. For this reviewer, this one is just fine.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Never too much Chuck Berry
Comment: Every song is wonderful on this CD. It has all of my favorites and much more. I love this CD.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lots of good music
Comment: Ordered this CD so I could put in on my IPOD Touch.
Lots of old good songs on it. Typical Chuck Berry
music.
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