So many grit-jive geniuses—Elvis, Little Richard, and Bo Diddley—have turned stiff in their old age. That's why it's a double delight to find Berry, the original poet and scribe of rock and roll, who in many life-worshipping ways exceeded his Minnesota son-in-law [Bob Dylan], as fresh and as effortlessly committed [in his new album, Concerto in B Goode] as he ever was.

The first side of this album includes four of his recent compositions. You won't get tired of them. They don't relate to Sixties dope-balling, or the feel of police truncheons crunching into skullbone but they do ring true, and two of them exude the marvelous old Berry wit, something a great many of today's owl-faced artrockers would do well to pick up on. Rock is an ailing form without its sense of humor, and Chuck Berry defined a whole comic sensibility. He has not...