Search - Jerry Lee Lewis :: Rockin the Blues

Jerry Lee's Blues

Patrick Wall | Waterford, Wateford Ireland | 02/17/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Coming up with the perfect Jerry Lee Lewis album is hard (he's recorded over 800 songs). Coming up with the perfect blues Jerry Lee album is also difficult (he draws most of his talent from blues sources). Although this album covers only the Sun period, it deserves 5 out of 5 because it really demonstrates that era of JLL's blues well (afterall, a complete review of the blues side of Jerry Lee Lewis 1954 to 1995 is at least a 5 CD box set).



Jerry Lee Lewis was born in 1935 in Ferriday Louisiana and blues was part of his life from day 1. He heard blues from African American sources such as Big Joe Turner, Johnny Temple and Piano Red and from country singers with blues-based styles such as Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican and Hank Williams Sr.



Many of the songs on this album come from such sources. "Drinkin' wine spodee odee" was a 1949 Sticks McGhee R&B hit and exactly the kind of song that links rock 'n' roll directly to the blues and R&B music of the years prior to "Rocking around the clock". "Big legged woman" was the b-side of Johnny Temple's big hit "Louise blues", and one that took guts to record. Ditto with "Keep your hands off of it", another 1930s blues of an even more obscure source.



"Deep Elem blues" was previously doing business as "What's the matter with Deep Elem" by the Shelton Brothers and a variant of it was doing business as "Triflin' woman blues" by Moon Mullican. Jerry Lee's version is definitive and - like his predecessors - mined the blues roots of country music well. "Deep Elem blues" is possibly the best recording of this nature Jerry Lee ever made.



"Sixty minute man", "Honey hush", "Rockin' with Red" and "Let the good times roll" are examples of the mastery Lewis had of the Jump blues style that was popular in the 1940s. Such songs were popular among all races, but not many whites attempted to record such material prior to the rock 'n' roll era. The few that did such as Zeb Turner or Moon Mullican were not kindly rewarded for doing so!



"Tomorrow night" is a much different type of song. This is the quintessential blues ballad and a 1938 blues hit for Lonnie Johnson. Jerry Lee treats it far bluesier than most, adding elements of gutbucket blues to the song as well as maintaining its ballad nature.



On a more original note, there are tracks like "All night long" and "Mean woman blues" in Jerry Lee's repertoire. Although the latter theme has been done in many formats from artists ranging from Jimmie Rodgers to Ernest Tubb, from Moon Mullican to Marty Robbins, and on to Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee's version is the most familiar and covered of the variants. Although, it borrowed the tag line "I got a woman as mean as she can be, sometimes I think she's almost mean as me" from Elvis' version, the rest is 100% Jerry Lee blues. "Hello hello baby" mixed original Jerry Lee ideas with some Jimmie Rodgers stanzas. The one made it to JLL's 2nd album "Jerry Lee's Greatest!". The song is one of JLL's greatest mid-tempo blues offerings and points the way forward to such post-Sun blues classics as "Milk cow blues", "No headstone on my grave", "Big boss man" and "Blues like midnight". Indeed, "Sick and tired" (a New Orleans blues classic also done by Chris Kenner, Fats Domino and Professor Longhair) follows a similar style.



"Match box blues" and "CC Rider" are among the oldest tracks here. "Matchbox" originated as an old Blind Lemon Jefferson song, but the verses Jerry Lee uses are in reality a hybrid of stanzas from Jefferson, Moon Mullican and Jimmie Rodgers. Many rockers had a go as "MBB" but JLL's is the definitive BLUES version. "CC Rider" is a track Jerry Lee would come back to time and time again. His Sun versions demonstrate that this song was with him from his roots.



Even on his hits, the blues side of Jerry Lee is to the fore. "Whole lotta shakin' " is very much a typical 12 bar blues song, and originated as an R&B hit. However, JLL rewrote (and improved) the song and made it his own. "What'd I say" was a Ray Charles original, and is one of the many songs of Ray's that Jerry Lee did. It was also a big hit for Jerry Lee as well as for Ray.



"Cool cool ways" perhaps was Lewis' natural successor to "Whole lotta shakin' ". The writer of the track, Hank Ballard, may sound familiar to many - he wrote "The twist", another suggestive blues, that would make rock 'n' roll headlines for Chubby Checker. Speaking of "The twist", Jerry Lee's own "I've been twisting" (a rewrite of a song better known as either "Boogie Chillun" (John Lee Hooker) or "I feel so good" (Junior Parker)) is a Delta blues answer to the 1960s craze. It should have done better than it did as it is surely a lot better than other twist follow-ups like "Let's twist again".



"My girl Josephine", or "Hello Josephine" as it is also known, is a rather obscure Fats Domino song. Domino, like Jerry Lee, is another rock 'n' roller who doubles as a bluesman. "High powered woman" is a track that mixes blues, jazz and rock 'n' roll at will. This is sort of like a 1930s Big Bill Broonzy number in many ways.



"Good rockin' tonight" is perhaps one of the most important of all rockin' blues. Although most famous as a Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley classic (fans of both will often assume this was a bona fide rock 'n' roll anthem written for that era!), this was a 1940s Roy Brown Jump blues also made famous by Wynonie Harris. Moon Mullican was the first white artist to cover Brown, with the song "Grandpa stole my baby". Brown's songs, as most fans who have heard his 2 most famous songs by Lewis, Mullican or Presley, often contain the term "Mighty mighty man"! And guess what? Brown even has a song of that title!



"Teenage letter" is more or less the opposite of "GRT" as it is a song written by an R&B artist (Joe Turner) in response to rock 'n' roll. Turner was an early hero of JLL's. Jerry Lee's version of "Teenage letter" veers towards soul, the dominant style of JLL's from 1964-1967 on Smash records. Of course, "Be bop a Lula" is another example of the thin line between blues and rock 'n' roll. "Be bop a Lula" was a 1956 hit by Gene Vincent, like Jerry Lee a blues-drenched white rock 'n' roller. The song, "Be bop a Lula", echoes both the theme for early rock 'n' roll and also pays homage to such R&B songs as Wynonie Harris' "Hey Be bop a Re bop".



The tracks here lay down the foundation of JLL's blues career. On Smash, there would be masterpieces "Got you on my mind", "Mathilda", "Big boss man" and others. On Mercury, there would be such country chart milestones as "No headstone on my grave", a hit version of "Drinkin' wine spodee odee", and "I'll find it where I can" which all based themselves on gutbucket blues. From then on, JLL could be heard belting out "Blues like midnight" live or jamming on "Milk cow blues" and "Raining in my heart" in studio. And the current rumours are out that JLL has recorded a blues album to follow up his 2005 "Pilgrim"."