How's this for weird? Chuck Berry's only Number One pop single was not "Maybellene" or "Johnny B. Goode." It was the naughty 1972 cheeseball "My Ding-A-Ling." That freak smash, recorded live at a show in England, unfairly defined Berry's last years at Chess, during which he made solid cruising-rhythm records with electric-country overtones such as 1971's San Francisco Dues and 1973's Bio. This four-CD collection opens with Berry's last great original song, the 1970 gallop "Tulane." His observations on the hippie youth explosion ("San Francisco Dues") lack the wit and malt-shop argot of his Fifties hits. But amid the covers and live remakes of his classics, Berry plays a lot of masterful guitar. The studio instrumental "London Berry Blues" is six prime minutes of choked riffs and fluid blues lines with that unmistakable tart treble — recorded two days after "My Ding-A-Ling."

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.