After School Session... also a well-timed RIP

Chuck Berry - "After School Session" (1957) - Chess Records

Editors Note: We were spinning this record on Saturday evening just a couple of hours before we heard the news that Chuck Berry had died!  No shit! Hope we had nothing to do with it! 

Hello Friends,

John Lennon once famously said, "If you tried to give rock n roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry!"  Sounds silly, but we really couldn't agree more.  Chuck Berry is and always will be the George Washington-Christopher Columbus-Neil Armstrong of rock & roll. 

Which means that rock & roll pretty much starts with this here record, friends.  After School Session is Chuck Berry's first LP, the second release on the fledgling Chess Records, and effectively the shot heard round the world!

Produced by the Chess brothers (Leonard & Phil), the album features all original material by rock n roll's original guitar god.

Things get kicked off with the epic, "School Days", with Berry triumphantly proclaiming in the song's fifth and final verse, "Hail, hail Rock & Roll / Deliver me from the days of old!" Geez, if that's not a call to arms, we're not sure what is!

And that guitar playing!!  

Can you imagine how many pimply-faced, awkward kids had their collective minds blown hearing this for the first time?  How many teenage boys saved up to buy some crappy guitar from their local Woolworth's that summer?

Legend has it that a young Keith Richards struck up a conversation with a young Mick Jagger at the Dartford Train Station in East London because the latter was holding two records, one by Muddy Waters and "Rockin' at Hops" by Chuck Berry.

The rest of the album is great as well.  Featuring some good ol' fashioned blue-collar rockabilly ("Too Much Monkey Business", "Brown Eyed Handsome Man", "Downbound Train"), some overly-descriptive talking blues ("No Money Down"), some Louis Jordan-inspired R&B ballads ("Wee Wee Hours", "Together", "Drifting Heart"), a sparse calypso-meets-Buddy Holly-sounding tune ("Havana Moon") and some blistering guitar-driven instrumentals ("Deep Feeling", "Roly Poly", "Berry Pickin'").

Not bad for a debut record!

RIP Chuck Berry... your career speaks for itself!  A legend, an inventor, an explorer, a tortured soul and our very first guitar god.

Our favorite Chuck Berry-related quote comes from Jerry Lee Lewis's mother who famously said to her son: "You and Elvis are good, son-- but you're no Chuck Berry.  Chuck Berry is rock 'n' roll from his head to his toes!"

Amen!

RATING: 5 teachers teaching the golden rule out of 5