Memphis Beat (album)

Last updated
Memphis Beat
Memphis Beat album cover.jpg
Studio album by
Jerry Lee Lewis
Released1966
Recorded1963, 1965, 1966
Genre
Length14:48 (Side A)
15:10 (Side B)
29:58 (Total)
Label Smash
Producer Shelby Singleton
Jerry Lee Lewis chronology
Country Songs for City Folks/All Country
(1965)		Memphis Beat
(1966)		 By Request: More of the Greatest Live Show on Earth
(1966)

Memphis Beat is the fifth album by Jerry Lee Lewis released on the Smash label march 1966. [1]

Contents

Recording

More than half the songs on Memphis Beat were recorded on January 5 and 6, 1966 at Phillips Studio in Memphis. The remaining selections were taken from a rare New York City session eight months earlier and Lewis's earliest sessions at Smash in 1963. The album includes one of the few songs composed by Lewis called "Lincoln Limousine," a remarkable tribute to John F. Kennedy. In his book Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found, Joe Bonomo calls the track "simply weird, so ambiguous and amateurishly written that it's impossible to determine exactly what motivated him to write it." [2] The album also includes "Too Young," a piano lounge number that Bonomo deems "a real laugher" and "hysterically uncomfortable." Most of the other songs show a more familiar side of Lewis, up-tempo Boogie and Blues standards such as "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee" and "Big Boss Man", the Swamp pop classic "Mathilda" from Cookie and his Cupcakes, and George Jones' Country classic "She Thinks I Still Care." Two cover songs were selected as the album's singles, but neither Sham the Sham's "Memphis Beat" nor Ray Charles' "Sticks and Stones" reached the Billboard charts [3] .

Reception

After Memphis Beat was released in May 1966, it stalled at 145 on the Billboard albums chart. [4] Lewis's commercial slump would continue until 1968, when he finally broke on the country charts with "Another Place, Another Time." In 2014 Lewis biographer Rick Bragg wrote, "Throughout the mid-1960s he cut one album after another of other people's music...But none of it was new, not really." [5] Bruce Eder of AllMusic praises the album: "After veering hard into country (and country-pop) territory with Country Songs for City Folks, Jerry Lee Lewis came roaring back with Memphis Beat in 1966, featuring his hardest rocking sounds in years, and a band who were as good as any with whom he'd ever recorded." [6]

Track listing

Side A
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Memphis Beat"
2:52
2."Mathilda"
2:17
3."Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee"
2:17
4."Hallelujah I Love Her So" Ray Charles 2:32
5."She Thinks I Still Care" Dick Lipscombe - Steve Duffy2:50
6."Just Because"
2:00
Total length:14:48
Side B
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Sticks and Stones" Henry Glover 2:06
2."Whenever You're Ready"Cecil J. Harrelson1:50
3."Lincoln Limousine"Jerry Lee Lewis2:38
4."Big Boss Man"
2:52
5."Too Young"
3:00
6."The Urge" Donnie Fritts 2:44
Total length:15:10

References

  1. ↑ "LP Discography: Jerry Lee Lewis - Discography". www.lpdiscography.com. Retrieved 2026-01-12.
  2. ↑ Bonomo, Joe (2011). Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found. Bloomsbury Academic US. p. 137. ISBN   9781441118806.
  3. ↑ "Singles". jerryleelewis.com.
  4. ↑ "Billboard Top LP's" (PDF). Billboard; the International Music-Record Newsweekly. 72 (may 21): 36. May 21, 1966 – via worldradiohistory.
  5. ↑ Bragg, Rick (2014). Jerry Lee Lewis; His Own Story. HarperCollins. p. 322. ISBN   9780062078223.
  6. ↑ Memphis Beat - Jerry Lee Lewis | Album | AllMusic , retrieved 2026-01-12
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