You’re going to want this one in vinyl.

After I graduated from college and returned to my childhood home for the we-love you-but-please-get-your-ass-out-of-the-house-dear-daughter ritual, my dad, feeling sentimental as he watched me rip my Iggy Pop poster from the bedroom wall, made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He told me I could help myself to any five LP’s from his vast vinyl collection.

“Only five?” I cried.

“I’ll leave the rest to you in my will,” he said, shaking his head at what a greedy little bitch of a daughter he had raised.

I dropped what I was doing and headed for the living room, where he kept his treasure on every available piece of shelf space. He had over 1,000 LP’s and I’d listened to each and every one during my formative years. Sighing at the sheer difficulty at the task ahead but somewhat inclined to take a trip down memory lane, I started with the A’s (The Allman Brothers) and worked my way to the Z’s (Frank Zappa).

I literally spent all day and night fingering through the collection, pulling out possibilities and playing emotional tug of war with myriad possibilities. Should I go for Super Session or East-West? Do I dare break up his Beatles’ collection? (I didn’t, but I am looking forward to the day he croaks so I can become a proud owner of the original Yesterday and Today cover.) Ogden’s Nut-Gone Flake? Face to Face? Wheels of Fire? Pleasures of the Harbor? Stand Back!? Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music? Sketches of Spain? The experience turned out to be harrowing, but finally, drenched with sweat, sentimentality and angst, I called him into the living room to announce my selections.

“The good news is I’m letting you keep Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge and The Grand Funk Railroad,” I smirked.

“No surprise there,” he laughed. “Show me what you got so I can get started on the grieving process.”

I pulled them out one by one. Having a Rave-Up with The Yardbirds elicited a groan. Surrealistic Pillow yielded a tender smile. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band earned a comment, “Thank God it’s not East-West.” The fourth, Judy Collins’ In My Life, caused him to tear up a bit. However, my fifth selection sparked a change in his visage from nostalgic to stern and led to an irresolvable dispute.

“Nope, not that one.”

“What? You said any five!”

“Not that one. It’s out of print. Pick something else.”

“You prick!” I replied.

“I can live with that. Now pick something else.”

I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell of winning this argument, so I grabbed Live at Leeds and was gratified to elicit another groan. “Serves you right, you welcher,” I taunted.

The album in dispute was, of course, The Great Twenty-Eight by Chuck Berry. I knew that Chuck Berry: The Anthology had been released a few years before, but I wanted good old-fashioned vinyl, not a CD. There were other compilations, but I also didn’t want anything that had that fucking “My Ding-a-Ling” song on it. I wanted The Great Twenty-Eight in blessed analog format because I wanted to continually experience what John Lennon had heard as a kid while listening to a crackly radio in his room on Menlove Avenue. I wanted to feel the same kind of inspiration that you won’t find in the sound quality, but in the rhythm, in the singing style, in the simple guitar licks and in the devil-may-care energy of early rock.

It took me a couple of years to find a relatively pristine copy (it took so long because I had also devoted a large part of that period of my life to sharpening my bisexual fucking skills), but my patience was rewarded. I’ve also forgiven my father for being an asshole about the whole thing, mainly because if I had been in his place, I would have done the same thing.

I have empathy, people!

Much has been written about Chuck Berry’s contribution to rock ‘n’ roll, and there’s general consensus that he’s pretty much the Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll, for no other early composer made the blessed, ironic synergy between black blues and white hillbilly music work so seamlessly. The two great movers in the second wave of rock, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, both covered several of his compositions; and before Brian Wilson became a musical genius, he was at least perceptive enough to use “Sweet Little Sixteen” as the musical base for “Surfin’ U. S. A.” (even if it did lead to a lawsuit). Only Buddy Holly and Little Richard can approach Chuck Berry’s contributions during the early years of rock.

There are many aspects of his work that made Chuck Berry unique, but one of his strengths that is often is ignored is that he wrote exceptionally strong lyrics. Most early rock music consists pretty much variations of “I love you, baby,” “You made a fool out of me,” or songs about dancing. Chuck Berry’s songs contained vivid descriptions of life in concrete language and great stories full of humor and narrative tension. He also wrote about the traditional subjects of love and sexual attraction from perspectives other than the malt shop, often adding discreet social commentary in the process. Consider the opening verse of “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man”:

Arrested on charges of unemployment,
He was sitting in the witness stand
The judge’s wife called up the district attorney
She said, “Free that brown eyed man.
If you want your job you better free that brown eyed man.”

Yes, whether we like it or not, you’re certainly treated like a criminal when you’re out of a job, and as a man who had served years in prison (and would continue to add to that total throughout his career), he has a unique perspective on what really drives the legal process. Berry also perceived that a rotten system was not the only enemy of the free spirit, for in the 1950′s, conformity was as much of a threat to liberty as communism. He addresses this in “Too Much Monkey Business,” shaking his head in disgust with a growled “aah” after describing each link in the conformity chain (wage slavery, consumerism, marriage, education, bureaucracy, militarism and the job):

Blonde haired, good lookin’ – tryin’ to get me hooked.
Want me to marry – settle down – get a home – write a book!
Too much monkey business. Too much monkey business.
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!

Same thing every day – gettin’ up, goin’ to school.
No need for me complainin’ – my objection’s overruled, ahh!
Too much monkey business. Too much monkey business.
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!

Then there’s the music itself. Based primarily on the three-chord blues pattern, Chuck Berry’s music isn’t going to dazzle you with unexpected chord changes and thematic texture. The music serves primarily as the foundation for the vocal and lead guitar performances. In his Chess days, the foundation was much stronger because he could rely on some of the best blues players in Chicago to support his efforts. Even in these old, creaky recordings, Willie Dixon’s standup bass really thumps and Johnnie Johnson glides like a magician up and down the 88′s. Berry could sometimes be an impatient lead guitar player; he lacks the precision of someone like Clapton, but nearly always compensates for it with enthusiasm, feel and the willingness to move his fingers out of scale and rhythm to mix things up. Listen to his between-the-line touches and solo on “Carol” and you’ll hear a man who knows how to attack, soothe and wheedle the sounds he’s looking for from that fretboard. You couldn’t have asked for a better guitar player to serve as the mentor for the millions of amateurs and pros who followed him, for his message was simple: get to know your instrument and have a ball with it.

As a vocalist, he’s a master of narrative expression, an engaging storyteller. Berry doesn’t have the range or sheer vocal power of Little Richard, but he gets the job done. John Lennon does a much better job with “Rock and Roll Music,” but Berry’s vocals are more than adequate for the kinds of songs he writes.

His life story is one of resilience, with jail stretches, expensive lawsuits and problems with the IRS that would have caused most people to collapse into misery and victimization. I think his modus operandi for life is to push the limits as much as could and hope he can get away with it. His greatest comeback period had to be the early 60′s after he’d served time for transporting a 14-year old chick across state lines and doing the dirty deed with her. It was during this phase that he came out with the catchy “You Never Can Tell” and my personal favorite, “Nadine,” with its sexy saxophone backing. He also toured the U. K. and found himself a hero to a new generation of musicians.

When you listen to the The Great Twenty-Eight, the first sounds you hear are the lo-fi guitar coming out of a tube amp shoved back against the wall of the studio, all warm, fuzzy and sexy as Berry glides into “Maybelline,” delivering a spirited vocal with exquisite enunciation at just the right points. As the song proceeds through that primitive but so exciting lead solo in the middle, imagine yourself a scruffy kid in far off England in the late 1950′s, stuck at the lower layers of the social strata with nothing but a dreary sameness to look forward to, your life path determined in advance . . . and what you will hear in Chuck Berry is more than fantastic, kick-ass rock ‘n’ roll.

You’ll hear the way out.