Chuck Berry: pick only one.

In Wim Wenders's Alice in the Cities there is an indulgent but lovely moment where the lead character momentarily leaves the little girl he is shepherding around Germany to see Chuck Berry at an outdoor festival. There is about 10 seconds of performance footage (obviously cribbed from another source) and Chuck is smokin.

Best Chuck Berry song is "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," though, yep, toughest pick ever. "Memphis" is a runner-up for the reasons Matos suggests (so different from most of his great stuff and so touching)as well as:
"Maybelline" ("motorvating"!!!)
"You Never Can Tell" ("coolerator"!!!)
"Promised Land" (where he bypasses Rock Creek)
"Sweet Little Sixteen" ("sweet little sixteen/she's got the grown-up blues" -- best juxtaposition evah!)
"Nadine" ("coffee-colored Cadillac"!!! "campaign shoutin' like a Southern diplomat"!!!)
"Let it Rock" (rhymes "Alabama" and "steel-driving hammer")

I was just making a knee-jerk comment because one of the frustrations of being a Chuck Berry fanatic in Memphis is that he basically gets ignored except for "Memphis" which is regularly appropriated (though often in the Johnny Rivers version -- gag) by city boosters as some kind of "come to Memphis and get drunk on Beale Street" tourist anthem when obviously the appeal of the song doesn't have much to do with Memphis itself (though "her home was on the south side, high upon the ridge, just a half a mile from the Mississippi bridge" gets me)and isn't a good-time celebration kind of song. But that isn't the King's fault.

Best cover version: the Rolling Stones' "Carol" (1st lp, NOT Ya-Yas).

I pick "Come On".

Anyway, these runners-up deserve mention too. I love how bits of "You Can't Catch Me" found their way into "Come Together" (and the Stooges' "1970"!) years later. Love how his guitar duplicates his vocal precisely in "School Days". "Havana Moon" may have inspired "Louie Louie", "Too Much Monkey Business" definitely inspired "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and maybe even Mark E. Smith! (For clarification, read "The Artist Formerly Known As Mr. Diamond"'s remarks upthread.) And, yeah, "Memphis" and its sad little twist ending gets me everytime.

(I have to disqualify "Back in the USA" because the last time I heard it, I got very emotionally affected, and I realize I'm starting to say this about every other song around, which probably means I should stop smoking so much weed, but anyway, when I heard it I wasn't even IN the USA, also I'm not even from there, which means I'm doubtless missing layers of 'true' meaning in this unbelievably great song [those b. vox!!], so that's why I didn't pick that one)

Runnerup "Promised Land." And "You Never Can Tell."

Christgau's written a lot about Chuck Berry over the years--he's why I sought out the Motorvatin' compilation years ago, even though I had most of what was on there already--so his second recommendation here seems worth noting:

http://social.entertainment.msn.com/music/blogs/expert-witness-blogpost.aspx?post=afa691a5-619c-4909-8019-c531d23cdb86

(For the thread: "Come On.")

Sounds like a damn nice comp. Really hard to say that The Great Twenty-Eight needs much improving, but "You Never Can Tell" would be nice, it's true.

JOHHNY B. POLLED: chuck berry's great twenty-eight

I was lucky enough to find Golden Decade Vol. 2 as a cutout once, which has "Come On," "You Never Can Tell" (not really a favourite, though of course great in Pulp Fiction), "The Promised Land," and "Let It Rock." So I've got all three Golden Decades--can't remember a thing about the third--plus Motorvatin'. The Great Twenty-Eight showed up afterwards.

Volume three has one track that would also end up on Great Twenty-Eight ("Beautiful Delilah") a whole lot of the blues-oriented material, and a couple of really oddball rockers. Nice stab at "The House of Blue Lights," but the ones to cherry-pick IIRC are "Downbound Train" and the curious "Broken Arrow." It's definitely not essential, but it's always fun to open up the non-28 material for me, cause I know that stuff so deep down it's always a pleasant surprise to go, wait, dude had other songs!

It's gotta be 'Rock'n'Roll Music'...

I picked up Bear Family's "Chuck Rocks", with all uptempo songs, and it's perfect.

Brown Eyed Handsome Man

Havana Moon

these days for me it's "Club Nitty Gritty". Never fails to destroy to dancefloor when I dj out

Wow, don't think I've heard this one before.

No Particular Place to Go. The fills!

Never fail to be amused by the possessor of the Venus referred to in “Brown Eyed Handsome Man.” Sounds to me like Chuck sang “Marlowe’s Venus,” which I imagine as referring to Christopher Marlowe, whose Venus was a poxy quean for all I know, if not a non-being a la Wittgenstein’s Mistress. Sometimes it sounds like people, such as Carl Perkins, to name one, are singing about “Marvell’s Venus” in a nod to Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress and her problematic relationship to time’s winged Coupe de Ville.

It's "Milo de Venus," right? Or maybe "Marla de Venus" or something like that?

Online lyrics say Milo Venus but that’s not quite what I hear him singing. I am sure he meant to sing about the same Venus as Tom Verlaine, but something got a little mutated by a cosmic ray along the way.

I always heard “Milo’s Venus” which is a good translation tbh

It’s probably that but the vowel sounds still seem different.

I mean of course he meant Venus de Milo aka Aphrodite de Milos, it’s that he changed it to “Milo’s Venus” as if Milo was a person not a place, and then when someone else sings it sometimes the vowels widen and it seems like it’s a different person from the original “Milo.” Listen to Carl Perkins here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZRwhbOeBgE

See also that one song about “Pete’s Leaning Tower.”

Drifting Heart