48. Jerry Lee Lewis — Live At The Star-Club Hamburg (1965)

The Killer

1. Woof. I had to double check that my shirt wasn’t drenched in sweat after listening to this one. You can hear Jerry Lee Lewis absolutely working his ass off on the stage in this live recording, ferociously pounding the keys of his piano and stomping and hollering and shouting through fiery track after track. Live At The Star-Club Hamburg is the best pure rock and roll record thus far in the list.
2. The recording itself is fantastic, authentic, elemental. The piano shines through without drowning out the remainder of the band; Jerry’s voice doesn’t sound great, per se, but it sounds real. Live rock and roll albums don’t come around so often these days, but webcasts are common, and all I can say is — I wish the mixing on those were more akin to this. Webcast audio often ends up feeling flat, the vocals too thin; this recording approximates what I imagine it might’ve actually sounded like in person. If you were to crank this up to 11 in a concert venue, it’d sound like there were a band on stage.
3. Every track on this album slaps. Jerry’s covers of “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” and “What’d I Say” are phenomenal. His performance of “Great Balls of Fire” is, uh, fire. If you held a gun to my head and forced me to find a criticism, I’d say it’s almost too much. Jerry doesn’t stop to catch his breath or rest on a slow jam until the 10th track, so neither do we. Listening to this, it’s kind of a wonder he wasn’t the biggest artist in the world. Then you remember why.
4. I’d be remiss not to address the fact that he, y’know, married his 13 year old cousin. Which is not even remotely ok! I’m not really sure the best manner to deal with ethical issues like that in this list, which are sure to reappear time and time again. Phil Spector killed a woman; David Bowie slept with 13 year old groupies; Michael Jackson is Michael Jackson. I don’t know how to weed through what’s ok to listen to and what’s not. My general rule is that for the worst artists, I’d prefer not to financially support them by listening, but if they can’t benefit (Spector is in jail for life; Jackson is dead), then I can listen and try to separate the art from the artist. But it’s an imperfect policy, and I fail repeatedly. And in talking about those behaviors, how does one contextualize them? This album was recorded during Lewis’s “Wilderness” period, while the public had basically shunned him for the aforementioned child marriage, and it’s hard not to wonder if that turned him into someone who left it all out on the table in live performances. What to make of that? I don’t know. I don’t have the answers. It’s just a damned shame.
5. Spotify is missing a substantial portion of this album, so if you want to give it a spin, I’ve included a Youtube playlist. It doesn’t appear that Jerry benefits himself from those Youtube plays, though I can’t be sure. And this really is a phenomenal album.

One Essential Song:

Listen on Youtube: