51. Chuck Berry, "The Great Twenty-Eight"

 

What I found most amazing about listening to this album was how often I went "Hey! [Some other artist] stole this exact line/riff/entire song!"  I mean, everyone knows "Maybellene" and "Johnny B. Goode" and "Reelin' and Rockin';" they're not just part of rock DNA, they're part of the American cultural lexicon.  But then you listen to "Sweet Little Sixteen," a song on this compilation that I don't think I've ever heard before, and immediately you're like "This is Surfin' USA!" And guess what?  You're right, the Beach Boys copied it exactly for their song, and now Chuck Berry's publisher owns the rights to "Surfin' USA."

When you listen to "You Can't Catch Me" and hear the lyric "Here come old flat-top," you may think, hmmm that line sounds familiar.  Indeed, the Beatles copped it verbatim for a little ditty called "Come Together."  And Dylan has said that "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was inspired by Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business."

Berry also stole from himself!  "No Particular Place to Go" is basically just a reworking of "School Day."  But when you're cranking out songs like a short order cook at Denny's cranks out pancakes, you can be forgiven for borrowing from your own oeuvre.

Berry's influence in the early years of rock 'n roll is so immense and comprehensive that it cannot be overstated.  This collection of 28 songs (as the title suggests) recorded between 1955 and 1964 represents one of the foundational documents of the genre and there's no real way to overstate the importance.  And Chuck wrote all these songs himself!  It's like the Bible, if one guy wrote the whole Bible.  In a few years.

I don't have to talk much about what the songs sound like because if you're reading this you probably have listened to music before and therefore have probably heard a lot of them, but the typical pattern is Berry's Gibson ES-355 skittering along with Berry's staccato vocals punctuating a tale of typical teenage life.  There's also a lot about rock n' roll itself, and cars. 

Look, the songs are great, but I doubt a lot of people put this on just to relax with some tunes.  It sounds dated because, of course, it's dated.  It belongs here not because it's anyone's 51st favorite album but because of the massive influence the man had on the sound of rock.  Now we're in the 5th or 6th generation of rock music, and he still casts a shadow over all of it.  

Also, "Memphis, Tennessee" still slaps.

Is this album in my personal Top 100? No.