From St. Louie to Frisco

AMG Review of From St. Louie to Frisco

Bruce Eder
All Music Guide

Chuck Berry's next-to-last of five LPs released during his stay at Mercury Records is only partly successful, with a handful of genuinely good songs -- the rocking "Misery," the rollicking "Mum's the Word," and the ravishing "Song of My Love" (maybe the prettiest Spanish, or in this case, Mexican-style number that Berry ever cut) -- interspersed with some far-less-well thought out and executed pieces, such as "The Love I Lost." The album also bore a funny pop culture footnote for years after its release, for containing Berry's first official release of "My Tambourine," a dirty New Orleans-spawned song about what used to be politely called "self-indulgence" that had been in his concert repertory for at least 12 years, which he eventually redid and released, as part of a live concert recording, as "My Ding-A-Ling." The latter accounts for the fact that this album, alone among these late Mercury releases of his, got a fresh reissue with a new catalog number in 1972. (Note: Ironically, Berry had also done the song on his earlier live album from the Fillmore West, but it was left off of the original LP release and only turned up as a bonus track when that album was issued on CD in 1990).