Rock 'n Roll Rarities

When this album first appeared in the '80s, many highly regarded old masters were finally having their catalogs overhauled in meaningful ways after years of neglect and haphazard availability. The Great Twenty-Eight went a long way toward giving Chuck Berry fans a solid collection of his best-known music. Rock ’n’ Roll Rarities went deeper for the serious fan. Producer Steve Hoffman searched the Chess Records vault and uncovered a variety of alternate versions and mixes that had never before been made available to fans. Some songs were inexplicably hard to find, while others were stereo remixes of songs previously only heard in mono. But others—the real draw here—were demos and alternate versions of songs that Berry fans had committed to memory. The chance to hear “new” versions of “Rock ’n’ Roll Music,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Little Queenie,” and “Sweet Little Sixteen” provides true excitement for those who thought they’d heard it all.