Project 1001: Live At The Star-Club Hamburg by Jerry Lee Lewis
This live recording is a lot of fun and full of crazed energy. It offers a great sampling of the Jerry Lee Lewis ‘Killer’ experience. You get a sense of why he captivated audiences before he was shunned after marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin.1 He was light years ahead of his time. Lots of fun. My rating:
AllMusic championed this album in its five-star review:
“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. 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.”2
Rolling Stone loved it too:
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, after he was banished from the radio and after he had left Sun Records for Mercury, but before he humbled himself and switched to country. Live at the Star Club is not country, boogie, bop or blues but showdown rock & roll, with no survivors but the Killer.
Not that the rockabillies and piano pounders whose tunes he devours — Ray Charles (“What’d I Say”), Carl Perkins (“Matchbox”), Little Richard (“Good Golly, Miss Molly”) and Elvis Presley (“Hound Dog”) — thought of Lewis as their chief competition. But he did. The world at large seemed out to get him, and that was no position for the hardest-working ego in show business. Lewis was not going to just slide through his career doldrums. He wanted to show ’em all — those prigs who looked down their blue noses at his marriage to thirteen-year-old Myra Gayle Brown, those fools who thought Elvis was the King, those damned Brit invaders, even the angry God of his angrier fathers. No enemy could touch him onstage. Once Lewis launches into “Mean Woman Blues,” the audience and his backing band, a vastly overmatched British group called the Nashville Teens, simply toast in the afterburners.
Lewis combines his frightening precision with piano stomps and rolls, and nonstop sneers and boasts (his self-references would not be matched until the rap years). He devours the songs with his sweet-hellfire vocals, spattering everyone with Jerry Lee-sanctified lewdness. He makes the manic pace his everyday beat — “Your Cheatin’ Heart” is the only respite — and the fact that he’s functionally a one-man show doesn’t matter. Throughout, Lewis calls for the guitarist to add some excitement in the middle of the storm, but at that point even a tuba would sound crazed.3
In 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, David Hutcheon wrote:
“Supercharged? This is rock as it was always meant to be: faster, more breathless, and more possessed than anything the world would pay money to hear until the arrival of The Ramones.”4
Enjoy and listen without prejudice. Cheers!
Prime Playlist: 235. Live At The Star-Club Hamburg by Jerry Lee Lewis
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For details about this project, read this: Project 1001 Albums
Charts
• Peak on Billboard 200 album chart: n/a
• Singles on Billboard Hot 100 chart: n/a
• RIAA certification: n/a
Recorded on April 5, 1964. Here’s what else was happening:
Pop Culture
• Number one song: “Can’t Buy Me Love” by The Beatles5
• Number one album: Meet The Beatles! by The Beatles6
• Number one movie: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World by Stanley Kramer7
• Most watched TV programs: The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Petticoat Junction, The Andy Griffith Show8
• NYT bestseller, fiction: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré9
• NYT bestseller, non-fiction: Four Days, U.P.I. and American Heritage Magazine10
Some other albums released that month
• When I'm Alone I Cry by Marvin Gaye
• Kissin' Cousins by Elvis Presley
• The Beatles' Second Album by The Beatles
• Together by Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells
• The Rolling Stones by The Rolling Stones
• A Girl Called Dusty by Dusty Springfield
• A Session with The Dave Clark Five by The Dave Clark Five
• The Believer by John Coltrane
• When Lights Are Low by Tony Bennett
• America, I Hear You Singing by Frank Sinatra with Bing Crosby and Fred Waring
• Funny Girl by Barbra Streisand11
Sport
• Apr 12 Arnold Palmer wins by 6 shots from Dave Marr and Jack Nicklaus to become the first 4-time winner of the Masters; his 7th and final major victory.
• Apr 17 1st game at Shea Stadium, NY Mets lose to Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-3.
• Apr 20 68th Boston Marathon won for second straight year by Aurele Vandendriessche of Belgium in 2:19:59.12
Notable Births
• Apr 5 Christopher "Kid" Reid, American rapper (Kid 'n Play - "Ain't Gonna Hurt Nobody"), actor and comedian, born in The Bronx, New York City.
• Apr 7 Russell Crowe, Australian-New Zealand Oscar-winning actor (A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator), born in Wellington, New Zealand.
• Apr 8 Biz Markie [Marcel Hall], American rapper, DJ and record producer ("Just A Friend"), born in New York City (d. 2021)13
Historical Events
• Apr 1 Military coup in Brazil by General Castello Branco ousts President João Goulart.
• Apr 7 IBM announces the System/360 mainframe computer.
• Apr 8 Unmanned Gemini 1, the first mission in NASA's Gemini program, launched.14
Notable Deaths
• Apr 5 Douglas MacArthur, American US Army General in World War II (Pacific Theater; Philippines) and Korea, dies at 84.
• Apr 14 Earle Hodgins, American fast-talking film and television character actor (Guestward Ho!), dies at 70.
• Apr 14 Rachel Carson, American marine biologist, conservationist and author (Silent Spring), dies of a heart attack at 56.15
If you’re interested in Mary Lewis Williams thoughts on her former husband’s passing, read this: Jerry Lee Lewis' teenage bride speaks out: 'I was the adult and Jerry was the child'
Hutcheon, David, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Fifth printing, ed. by Robert Dimmery p. 74.
Ibid.