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| Southern Roots: Back Home in Memphis | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1973 | |||
| Recorded | Columbia Studios, Nashville, Tennessee | |||
| Genre | Rock, soul, gospel | |||
| Label | Mercury | |||
| Producer | Huey P. Meaux | |||
| Jerry Lee Lewis chronology | ||||
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Southern Roots: Back Home in Memphis is an album by Jerry Lee Lewis released on Mercury Records in 1973.
Southern Roots: Back Home in Memphis was touted as a "comeback" album for Lewis, which was misleading at best; Lewis had been enjoying enormous success on the country music charts since 1968, scoring 15 top 10 hits (including four chart toppers) and selling out concerts on the road.[ citation needed ] In addition, although the title implies a return to his rock and roll roots, Lewis had enjoyed his highest pop charting album since 1973 with The Session...Recorded in London with Great Artists, a collaboration with British rockers that had been released earlier in the year and had reached number 37. His singles "Me and Bobby McGee" had also grazed the top 40 (peaking at #40, 1972). [1] As Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic observed, "Apart from the gospel closer, country has been consciously removed from the menu, a move that feels like the producer's choice, since Lewis' performances aren't all that much different or more impassioned than what came before...Jerry Lee doesn't sound relieved to be in this setting; he simply sounds like himself, barrelling through a set of songs as he twists them to suit his needs." [2]
Produced by Huey Meaux, a fellow Louisiana wild man who had just recently gotten out of prison, the sessions commenced in September 1973, which would go on to be a hellish year for Lewis; he was jailed and fined for driving while intoxicated and, just after his release, his son Jerry Lee Lewis, Jr. was killed when a car he was towing jackknifed and hit the abutment of a bridge near Hernando, Mississippi. Three weeks later, Lewis's fourth wife, Jaren, filed for divorce. According to Rick Bragg's authorized biographer Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story, Lewis was in a foul mood when he showed up at Trans Maximus Studios in Memphis to record: "During these sessions, he insulted the producer, threatened to kill a photographer, and drank and medicated his way into but not out of a fog." During one exchange that can be heard on the 2013 reissue Southern Roots: The Original Sessions, Meaux asks Lewis, "Do you wanna try one?", meaning a take, to which Lewis replies "If you got enough fuckin' sense to cut it." Recorded over three days, the album displays a heavy soul influence, with Lewis receiving support from Stax Records alumni Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Jr. and Donald "Duck" Dunn, fellow rock and roll icon Carl Perkins, Tony Joe White [3] and the Memphis Horns, but a single, the overtly lascivious "Meat Man," did not crack either the pop or country charts. (In his essay for the box set Mercury Smashes...and Rockin' Sessions, Colin Escott calls "Meat Man" "so wonderfully lewd" that Lewis was the "only person in country music who would even have considered cutting it.")[ citation needed ]
Southern Roots did make the Billboard country albums chart, peaking at number 6.[ citation needed ] The album garnered Lewis a lot of publicity and good will, and he remained a huge in-demand performer, appearing on the ABC series In Concert and the now classic late-night TV series The Midnight Special. As recounted in Bragg's 2014 biography, when Lewis played the Roxy in Los Angeles a month.
Jerry Lee Lewis is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Nicknamed the Killer, he has been described as "rock n' roll's first great wild man and one of the most influential pianists of the 20th century." A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made his first recordings in 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis. "Crazy Arms" sold 300,000 copies in the South, but it was his 1957 hit "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" that shot Lewis to fame worldwide. He followed this with the major hits "Great Balls of Fire", "Breathless", and "High School Confidential". However, his rock and roll career faltered in the wake of his marriage to Myra Gale Brown, his 13-year-old cousin.
Booker T. & the M.G.'s were an American instrumental R&B/funk band that was influential in shaping the sound of Southern soul and Memphis soul. The original members of the group were Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper (guitar), Lewie Steinberg (bass), and Al Jackson Jr. (drums). In the 1960s, as members of the Mar-Keys, the rotating slate of musicians that served as the house band of Stax Records, they played on hundreds of recordings by artists including Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Bill Withers, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor and Albert King. They also released instrumental records under their own name, including the 1962 hit single "Green Onions". As originators of the unique Stax sound, the group was one of the most prolific, respected, and imitated of its era. By the mid-1960s, bands on both sides of the Atlantic were trying to sound like Booker T. & the M.G.'s.
Tony Joe White, nicknamed the Swamp Fox, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known for his 1969 hit "Polk Salad Annie" and for "Rainy Night in Georgia", which he wrote but which was first made popular by Brook Benton in 1970. He also wrote "Steamy Windows" and "Undercover Agent for the Blues", both hits for Tina Turner in 1989; those two songs came by way of Turner's producer at the time, Mark Knopfler, who was a friend of White. "Polk Salad Annie" was also recorded by Joe Dassin, Elvis Presley, and Tom Jones.
Albert J. Jackson Jr. was an American drummer, producer, and songwriter. He was a founding member of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, a group of session musicians who worked for Stax Records and produced their own instrumentals. Jackson was affectionately dubbed "The Human Timekeeper" for his drumming ability. He was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2015, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Booker T. & the M.G.'s in 1992.
Donald "Duck" Dunn was an American bass guitarist, session musician, record producer, and songwriter. Dunn was notable for his 1960s recordings with Booker T. & the M.G.'s and as a session bassist for Stax Records. At Stax, Dunn played on thousands of records, including hits by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, Bill Withers, Elvis Presley and many others. In 1992, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Booker T. & the M.G.'s. He is ranked number 40 on Bass Player magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Bass Players of All Time". Dunn was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 as a member of Booker T and the M.G.’s.
The Mar-Keys, formed in 1958, were an American studio session band for Stax Records, in Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1960s. As the first house band for the label, their backing music formed the foundation for the early 1960s Stax sound.
The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads, simply referred to as Soul Ballads or Sings Soul Ballads, is the second studio album by American soul singer-songwriter Otis Redding, released in 1965. The album was one of the first issued by Volt Records, a sub-label of Stax Records, and Redding's first on the new label. Like Redding's debut Pain in My Heart (1964), Soul Ballads features both soul classics and originals written by Redding and other Stax Records recording artists. The recording sessions took place at the Stax studios in Memphis. The album features a stereo mix made by engineer Tom Dowd, replacing the early mono mix.
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Mack Vickery, also known as Atlanta James and Vick Vickers, was an American musician, songwriter, and inductee in the Hillbilly Hall of Fame and Alabama Music Hall of Fame. His songs have been recorded by artists such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Waylon Jennings, George Thorogood, Johnny Cash, George Strait, Hank Williams Jr., George Jones.
Hold On, I'm Comin' is the 1966 debut album by Atlantic Records soul duo Sam & Dave, issued on the Atlantic-distributed Stax label in 1966.
Memphis Beat is the sixth album by Jerry Lee Lewis released on the Smash label in 1966.
The Killer Rocks On is an album by Jerry Lee Lewis that was released on Mercury Records in 1972.
Live at the International, Las Vegas is a live album by Jerry Lee Lewis that was released on Mercury Records in 1970.
The Session...Recorded in London with Great Artists is a double album by Jerry Lee Lewis released on Mercury Records in 1973. It was recorded in London and features Lewis teaming up with British musicians, including Peter Frampton and Albert Lee.
I-40 Country is the 29th album by Jerry Lee Lewis, released on the Mercury label in 1974.
Odd Man In is the 31st album by Jerry Lee Lewis. It was released in 1975 on the Mercury label. The album title was credited to Joanie Lawrence.
Country Class is the 32nd album by Jerry Lee Lewis, released on Mercury Records in 1976. Cam Mullins was credited for the string and horn arrangements on "Let's Put It Back Together", "Jerry Lee's Rock & Roll Revival Show" and "The Closest Thing to You".
Jerry Lee Lewis is the 35th studio album by American rock and roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis, released by Elektra in 1979.
Rock & Roll Time is the 41st studio album by American singer Jerry Lee Lewis, released on November 7, 2014, by Vanguard Records. The album featured several big name friends as musicians including Keith Richards, Band guitarist Robbie Robertson, Neil Young and Nils Lofgren. The album peaked at number 33 on Billboard's Top Rock Albums chart and number 30 on Billboard's Independent Albums chart.
"Meat Man" is a Rock 'n' roll song written by Mack Vickery and originally recorded by him in 1970 under the name Atlanta James. The most well known recording was by Jerry Lee Lewis, and was the first and only single off Lewis's 1973 album Southern Roots: Back Home to Memphis.
