Live at the Star Club, Hamburg

Lewis, Jerry Lee

Killers from the Killer

When he stepped onto the stage at the Star Club in April 1964, Jerry Lee Lewis was essentially washed up in the U.S. The self-described "old country boy, mean as hell," was several years past the golden moment in 1957 when he shot to stardom with his second single, a barnburner called "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." The song introduced the high-energy Lewis, who along with Elvis Presley and others helped make the Sun Records roster the most potent in rock and roll. Then in December of that year, things changed when Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin. After riding high, he was suddenly as cold as ice, shunned by radio. Over the next few years, nothing Lewis tried brought back the love.

So the Hamburg show should be just another night in the long and seemingly futile comeback campaign of an early rock also-ran. It sure doesn't sound that way. The pianist and singer, a rebel among the rebels at Sun, plays like a house afire, barreling through his ornery rockabilly—he knows that lesser acts are succeeding with tepid reworkings of his 1957 hits, and, of course, can't help but feel the Beatles breathing down his neck. Lewis throws himself into the show as though he's still a huge star, and, incredibly, he's treated that way: The devoted audience can be heard chanting "Jerry!" between songs and roaring approval when he roars.

Lewis pounds the piano as though intent on punishing it, and sings with rip-snorting intensity here. He's one of the few rock pioneers who, on any given night, can re-create the electrical charge of the moment when rock and roll was exploding for the first time, and he brings the patrons of the Star Club into that excitement. Virtually everything levitates—his hits and covers of others ("Hound Dog," "Good Golly Miss Molly") are bawdy and raucous. The band's wound as tight as a Swiss watch, but the old Lewis swagger, that droll and flip irreverence, keeps everything loose, and makes this one of the very best live albums in rock history.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1964, Philips (Reissued 1994, Bear Family)
Key Tracks: "Mean Woman Blues," "What I'd Say," "Hound Dog," "Long Tall Sally."
Buyer Beware: Lewis rerecorded his hits for the 1989 movie Great Balls of Fire, which starred Dennis Quaid; these versions are considerably less powerful than the originals.
Catalog Choice: Eighteen Original Sun Greatest Hits
Next Stop: The Million Dollar Quartet (Lewis, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash): The Million Dollar Quartet
After That: Chuck Berry: The Great Twenty-eight.
Book Page: 448

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