Live at the Star Club, Hamburg | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Live album by Jerry Lee Lewis, backed by the Nashville Teens | ||||
Released | Summer 1964 | |||
Recorded | April 5, 1964 | |||
Venue | Star-Club, Hamburg | |||
Genre | Rock and roll | |||
Length | 37:02 | |||
Label | German Philips | |||
Producer | Siggi Loch | |||
Jerry Lee Lewis chronology | ||||
|
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [1] |
MSN Music (Expert Witness) | (A) [2] |
Rolling Stone | [3] |
Stylus Magazine | (favorable) [4] |
Live at the Star Club is a 1964 live album by rock and roll pianist and singer Jerry Lee Lewis, accompanied by the Nashville Teens. The album was recorded at the Star-Club in Hamburg, West Germany on April 5, 1964. It is regarded by many music journalists as one of the greatest rock and roll albums ever, noted for its hard-hitting energy and Lewis' wild stage presence. [1] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Live at the Star Club was produced by Siggi Loch, who was head of the jazz department at Philips Records. In Joe Bonomo's book Lost and Found, Loch states that "...I realized that there were all of these young, mainly British, bands who were playing Chuck Berry and other white American rock & rollers, their big heroes...And I went to the owner and made a proposal to start recording bands at the Star-Club, which I did." According to Loch the recording setup was uncomplicated, with microphones placed as close to the instruments as possible with a stereo mike placed in the audience to capture the ambience. The results were sonically astonishing, with Bonomo observing that "Detractors complain of the album's crashing noisiness, the lack of subtlety with which Jerry Lee revisits the songs, the fact that the piano is mixed too loudly, but what is certain is that Siggi Loch on this spring evening captured something brutally honest about the Killer, about the primal and timeless center of the very best rock & roll..."
Sixteen songs were recorded over two sets, the first set comprising "Down The Line," "You Win Again," "High School Confidential," "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Great Balls of Fire," "What'd I Say (Parts 1 & 2) and "Mean Woman Blues." The second set featured "Good Golly Miss Molly," "Matchbox," "Money," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," "Lewis Boogie," "Hound Dog," "Long Tall Sally" and "I'm On Fire." [9] "Down The Line," which was omitted on the original LP due to a sound fault at the beginning, was released on the French Mercury single Les Rois du Rock, Vol. 8 : Jerry Lee Lewis and included on later CD and LP releases from Bear Family Records. The tapes for "You Win Again" and his current single "I'm On Fire" are believed to have been lost.
For decades the album was available only in Europe due to legal constraints. In 2014, Lewis told biographer Rick Bragg "Oh, man, that was a big monster record" but that the record company "never paid me a penny." Speaking to Patrick Doyle of Rolling Stone in 2014, Lewis remained proud that he "stuck with rock & roll when the rest of them didn't, I kept the ball rollin' with that."
Live at the Star Club, Hamburg is generally regarded as one of the greatest live rock and roll albums ever made. Recorded during his "wilderness years" following the fallout surrounding his 1958 marriage to his thirteen-year-old first cousin once removed Myra, the album showcases Lewis's phenomenal skills as a pianist and singer, which had been honed by relentless touring. He had played at Deutschlandhalle in Berlin the night before. In a 5-out-of-5 stars review, Milo Miles raved in Rolling Stone that "Live At The Star Club, Hamburg is not an album, it's a crime scene: Jerry Lee Lewis slaughters his rivals in a thirteen-song set that feels like one long convulsion. Recorded April 5th, 1964, this is the earliest and most feral of Lewis' concert releases from his wilderness years ...". [6] Q Magazine commented "This might be the most exciting performance ever recorded...". [7] The album was included in Mojo's "The 67 Lost Albums You Must Own!" - "[A]n unbelievably seismic document of rock 'n' roll so demonic and primal it can barely keep its stage suit on.... It's up there with James Brown's great live albums." [8]
AllMusic said of the album: "Words cannot describe — cannot contain — the performance captured on Live at the Star Club, Hamburg, an album that contains the very essence of rock & roll...Live at the Star Club is extraordinary - the purest, hardest rock & roll ever committed to record...He sounds possessed, hitting the keys so hard it sounds like they'll break, and rocking harder than anybody had before or since. Compared to this, thrash metal sounds tame, the Stooges sound constrained, hardcore punk seems neutered, and the Sex Pistols sound like wimps. Rock & roll is about the fire in the performance, and nothing sounds as fiery as this; nothing hits as hard or sounds as loud, either. It is no stretch to call this the greatest live album ever, nor is it a stretch to call it the greatest rock & roll album ever recorded. Even so, words can't describe the music here — it truly has to be heard to be believed." [1]
Joe Bonomo calls "Mean Woman Blues", the opening number on the album, as "nothing short of a concert in itself". Author Colin Escott describes Lewis's performance of the Hank Williams classic "Your Cheatin' Heart" as a one-man tour-de-force, "a stunning fusion of everything that was Jerry Lee Lewis. The bluesy piano licks thrown into the middle of the stone hillbilly classic and a vocal of scorching intensity." " [9] In the 2014 book Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story Rick Bragg marvels that on Live at the Star Club, Hamburg, the piano "sounds like its breaking at times, like he is playing more with a tack hammer than flesh and blood" and deems it "one of the grittiest, most spectacular pieces of recorded music ever made."
In 1998, Mojo included Live at the Star Club on their list of the best 20 live albums of all time. In 2003, the Digital Dream Door included the album at number 4 on their list of the greatest live albums of all time. [10] In 2011, Goldmine included Live at the Star Club on their list of the best 13 live albums of all time. [11] In 2015, NME included the album at number 34 on their list of the greatest live albums of all time. [12] Also in 2015, Rolling Stone included the album at number 16 on their list. [13] In 2020, The Telegraph included it at number 2 on their list of the best live albums of all time. [14] Also in 2020, The Independent included it at number 4 on their list of the greatest live albums of all time. [15]
Chord company praised the sound quality, saying the drums were well recorded. [16]
Side A
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Mean Woman Blues" | Claude Demetrius | 4:01 |
2. | "High School Confidential" |
| 2:25 |
3. | "Money (That's What I Want)" | 4:35 | |
4. | "Matchbox" | Carl Perkins | 2:46 |
5. | "What'd I Say, Part 1" | Ray Charles | 2:18 |
6. | "What'd I Say, Part 2" | Ray Charles | 3:08 |
Total length: | 19:13 |
Side B
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
7. | "Great Balls of Fire" | 1:48 | |
8. | "Good Golly, Miss Molly" | 2:19 | |
9. | "Lewis Boogie" | Jerry Lee Lewis | 1:55 |
10. | "Your Cheatin' Heart" | Hank Williams | 3:03 |
11. | "Hound Dog" | 2:28 | |
12. | "Long Tall Sally" |
| 1:52 |
13. | "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" |
| 4:24 |
Total length: | 17:49 37:02 |
1989 Re-issue
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
14. | "Down The Line" | Roy Orbison | 2:58 |
Total length: | 40:00 |
To play the songs in the order they were performed, the sequence is 14–2–10–7–5–6–1, 8–4–3–13–9–11–12.
Credits for Live at the Star Club, Hamburg adapted from AllMusic. [17]
Jerry Lee Lewis was an American pianist, singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "The Killer", he was described as "rock 'n' roll's first great wild man". A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made his first recordings in 1952 at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana, and early recordings in 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. "Crazy Arms" sold 300,000 copies in the Southern United States, but it was his 1957 hit "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" that shot Lewis to worldwide fame. He followed this with the major hits "Great Balls of Fire", "Breathless", and "High School Confidential".
John Henry Bonham was an English musician who was the drummer of the rock band Led Zeppelin. Noted for his speed, power, fast single-footed kick drumming, distinctive sound, and feel for groove, he is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential drummers in history.
"Great Balls of Fire" is a 1957 popular song recorded by American rock and roll musician Jerry Lee Lewis on Sun Records and featured in the 1957 movie Jamboree. It was written by Otis Blackwell and Jack Hammer. The Jerry Lee Lewis 1957 recording was ranked as the 96th greatest song ever by Rolling Stone. It is written in AABA form. It sold one million copies in its first 10 days of release in the United States making it one of the best-selling singles in the United States at that time.
Arthur Alexander was an American country-soul songwriter and singer. Jason Ankeny, music critic for AllMusic, said Alexander was a "country-soul pioneer" and that, though largely unknown, "his music is the stuff of genius, a poignant and deeply intimate body of work on par with the best of his contemporaries." Alexander's songs were covered by such stars as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Otis Redding, Tina Turner, Pearl Jam, and Jerry Lee Lewis.
The Nashville Teens are an English rock band, formed in Surrey in 1962. They are best known for their 1964 hit single "Tobacco Road", a Top 10 hit in the United Kingdom and Canada, and a Top 20 hit in the United States.
"Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" is a song written by Dave "Curlee" Williams and sometimes also credited to James Faye "Roy" Hall. The song was first recorded by Big Maybelle, though the best-known version is the 1957 rock and roll/rockabilly version by Jerry Lee Lewis.
The Star-Club was a music club in Hamburg, Germany, that opened on Friday 13 April 1962, and was initially operated by Manfred Weissleder and Horst Fascher. In the 1960s, many of the giants of rock music played at the club. The club closed on 31 December 1969 and the building it occupied was destroyed by a fire in 1987. The address of the club was Große Freiheit 39 in the St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg. Große Freiheit is a side street of the Reeperbahn. The club had a capacity of 2,000 people, and cinema-style seating.
"Be-Bop-a-Lula" is a rockabilly song first recorded in 1956 by Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps.
This is a detailed discography for American rock and roll, country, and gospel singer-songwriter Jerry Lee Lewis (1935–2022). One of the pioneers of rockabilly, Lewis recorded over 40 albums in a career spanning seven decades. Lewis was a versatile artist, and recorded songs in multiple genres. Lewis, in 1986, was one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was the last surviving rock and roll pioneer of Sun Records. Some of his best known songs are "Great Balls of Fire", "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On", and "High School Confidential". His album, Live at the Star Club, Hamburg, is widely considered one of the greatest live concert albums ever. In his lengthy career in music, Lewis had 30 songs reach the top ten on the "Billboard Country-and-Western" chart. Lewis was regarded as one of the greatest and most influential pianists of the rock and roll era, and was ranked number 24 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".
"High School Confidential" is a 1958 song written by Jerry Lee Lewis and Ron Hargrave as the title song of the MGM movie of the same name directed by Jack Arnold.
"Little Queenie" is a song written and recorded by Chuck Berry. Released in March 1959 as a double A-side single with "Almost Grown", it was included on Chuck Berry Is on Top (1959), Berry's first compilation album. He performed the song in the movies Go, Johnny Go! (1959) and Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll (1987). One year earlier, Berry had released "Run Rudolph Run", a Christmas song with the same melody.
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Siegfried "Siggi" Loch is a German record producer, a record industry executive, and the founder of the ACT Music record label. As both a producer and record label pioneer, Loch is considered to have had a significant impact on the exposure, development, and success of modern jazz music, particularly European jazz.
Bibliography