Rockin' At The Hops + 4 Bonus Tracks

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The two classic cuts that bookend this album should be enough to attract the uninitiated -- Berry at his best wrote danceable little vest-pocket screenplays dealing with teen life, of which Bye Bye Johnny and Let It Rock were two of his best; but because they've been so heavily anthologized, those two cuts don't have the pulling power here that they would have had 40-some years back. So get this record for everything else that's on it -- Rockin' at the Hops not only has no filler, but it's chock full of records that show off a bluesy side of Berry's output that was never fully appreciated at the time. His version of Big Maceo's Worried Life Blues shows how good a bluesman Berry might've been had he been more the Muddy Waters-type player and singer that Chess had been looking for; Down the Road a Piece, a song written by Don Raye (of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy fame), is a lost Berry single that could've rated right up there with Roll Over Beethoven, except that its roadhouse ambience and story line were more mature than a lot of kids might've embraced in 1959; and Walter Brown's Confessin' the Blues and Driftin' Blues fit into the same category, Berry the adult bluesman rather than the teen-oriented teaser. Childhood Sweetheart is a sequel to Wee Wee Hours, Berry's very first blues side, lifting a fragment or two from Elmore James' Dust My Broom for its guitar break. Too Pooped to Pop and Betty Jean, by contrast, are a pair of enjoyably upbeat rock & roll numbers, each featuring uncharacteristic elements, a sax solo on the former, and a male chorus on the latter; in between them is Mad Lad, an instrumental that presents Berry drifting into what would later be defined as a surf guitar mode.