![]() I know that I should leave, but then I just can't go. J LEWIS: (Singing) The news is out all over town that you've been seen out running round. As far as I'm concerned, you can have "Whole Lot Of Shakin' Going On" and "Great Balls Of Fire." This is the Jerry Lee Lewis I like to listen to. The fact is country music suited his rolling, tumbling piano style, and its lyrics suited the roiling emotions he brought to every performance. The native of Ferriday, La., had a twang in his voice, and he included a cover of Ray Price's honky tonk classic "Crazy Arms" on his first Sun Records rock album in 1958. ![]() There had always been a lot of country in Jerry Lee. 3, and Lewis' country career was launched. 4 on the Billboard country chart, the first time in a decade that a Lewis song was in any Billboard Top 10. TUCKER: "Another Place, Another Time" hit No. I heard you whisper we'll meet again, another place, another time. I guess it's for the best I just put in my last dime. I've been feeding that ol' jukebox just to hold you tight. J LEWIS: (Singing) One by one, they're turning out the lights. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ANOTHER PLACE, ANOTHER TIME") And what Kilroy and Lewis and producer Jerry Kennedy came up with was this. Since they had all but written off Jerry Lee, Kilroy was allowed to do what he wanted. He was about to lose his contract to Mercury Records when a Nashville producer named Eddie Kilroy made a pitch to his bosses in New York to cut an album of country songs with Lewis. And by the late '60s, his sound was irrelevant to rock music anyway, one of the many ways the Beatles had changed the culture. ![]() ![]() His rock 'n' roll career had stalled after the scandal of his marriage to his underage cousin in the late 1950s. KEN TUCKER, BYLINE: In 1968, Jerry Lee Lewis was at a low point. But I'm here to tell the world, nobody knows ol' Jerry Lee. I've done a lot of everything, folks, from good to bad to what you see. JERRY LEE LEWIS: (Singing) I've been the whole world over, a lot of places I have seen. Ken believes Lewis' beautiful country ballads very well may be better music than any of his rock 'n' roll hits. But in the wake of Lewis' passing, rock critic Ken Tucker has been listening to another aspect of Lewis' career, his time as a country music artist, beginning in the late 1960s. Jerry Lee Lewis, who died recently at age 87, was the last of the first generation of rock 'n' roll stars in the 1950s, known for his wild man persona on and offstage. ![]()
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