Chuck Berry and Koko Taylor Join the Chess Acoustic Sounds Series

Two further titles have been added to the Chess Acoustic Sounds Series: Chuck Berry’s debut album After School Session and Koko Taylor’s self-titled 1969 record, both pressed on 180-gram vinyl as part of the ongoing programme marking the label’s 75th anniversary.

For Berry, this represents a third entry into the series. For Taylor, it is her first, and the inclusion of her 1969 record sits well alongside the company it keeps.

After School Session: Chess’s Second LP, Berry’s First

The history embedded in After School Session is easy to underestimate. Released in May 1957 and issued as catalogue number LP 1426, it was only the second long-player Chess Records ever put out. By that point Berry had already scored with “Maybellene” and “Roll Over Beethoven” in 1955 and 1956 respectively, yet the album proper had to wait. Its twelve tracks were drawn from sessions at Chicago’s Universal Recording Corporation with Leonard and Phil Chess, spanning a May 1955 date that produced “Wee Wee Hours” through to a January 1957 session that yielded “School Days.”

Almost every track had already appeared as a single, which tells you something about how Chess operated in those years: the album was almost an afterthought, a gathering of proven commodity. But the collection holds up as a document of a performer finding his range at extraordinary speed. “School Day (Ring Ring Goes The Bell)” topped the R&B chart, while “Too Much Monkey Business” and “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” both reached the R&B Top Five. The album is not a curio; it is the foundation of a career that reshaped popular music.

Berry’s two other entries in the series, St. Louis to Liverpool and Berry Is on Top, are already available, and uDiscoverMusic has previously reported on St. Louis to Liverpool joining the collection alongside Etta James’s Tell Mama. That pairing alone speaks to the breadth Chess is drawing on for this anniversary run.

Koko Taylor’s Chess Acoustic Sounds Series Debut

The Taylor reissue carries its own weight. Born Cora Ann Walton and raised on a farm outside Memphis before relocating to Chicago in the early 1950s, Taylor was discovered singing in local blues clubs by bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon, who became her mentor and chief collaborator. Dixon handed her “Wang Dang Doodle,” which reached the R&B top five and sold over a million copies, becoming the song most closely associated with her name.

The 1969 album, released on MCA/Chess, draws heavily on Dixon’s compositional craft. “Twenty-Nine Ways” and “Yes, It’s Good for You” are both Dixon compositions, while Taylor herself contributed “Nitty Gritty.” The backing lineup included guitarists Buddy Guy and Johnny Shines. It is the kind of record where the session personnel alone could anchor a separate essay; that it arrived in 1969 and still sounds unglamourised and direct is part of its endurance.

Taylor’s entry into the Chess Acoustic Sounds Series places her alongside an imposing roster: Etta James, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Berry himself. The series did not begin with the newer additions, of course. Analog Planet reported that Howlin’ Wolf’s Moanin’ in the Moonlight and Muddy Waters’ The Best of Muddy Waters were among the LPs that launched the parent label’s audiophile vinyl reissue programme. That both records date from the late 1950s, and that they opened a series now stretching to encompass Berry’s debut and Taylor’s 1969 statement, maps the label’s own creative arc with some precision.

Mastering and Production

Each title in the Chess Acoustic Sounds Series is mastered directly from analogue tapes by Matthew Lewans and pressed at Quality Record Pressings on 180-gram wax. The commitment to the original tape sources rather than any intervening digital transfer is the point: these are records intended to return listeners to the room where the music was made, as closely as vinyl technology can manage. Whether one is coming to After School Session for the first time or returning to Taylor’s debut with fresh ears, the format is doing its best to stay out of the way.