The Best of Jerry Lee Lewis (Vinyl record album review)

Album name: The Best of Jerry Lee Lewis

Artist name: Jerry Lee Lewis

Year: 1970?

Number of discs: one

Label: Smash (Mercury)

Collection: Essex

Distinguishing characteristics:

“Elaine” written on the upper right corner of the album cover

$6.99 price sticker on the lower right of the back of the album cover

Buy it on Amazon: $3.00

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have never listened to this record before and am not especially well versed on Jerry Lee Lewis. The only time his music has come up was when I reviewed The Rockin’ Originals last year.

What I expected

I don’t recognize any of these songs by name, but I expect to recognize a bunch of them when I listen, and I know that rockabilly was Lewis’ primary genre, so that should be great.

What it was actually like

This record’s two rockabilly songs, Louisiana Man and Let’s Talk About Us, were both excellent: really fun, up tempo, with that distinctly percussive piano. I also thought that the latter’s background vocals added a lot, though I didn’t like them very much on She Still Comes Around (To Love What’s Left of Me), since they made it sound too choral.

Besides those, this was really a country record, which surprised me, and I didn’t recognize any of its songs.

They were mostly pretty good, if unremarkable, with What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me) and One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart) both standing out as being great, and on each I thought that the fiddle worked really well, going counter to the singing.

All the Good is Gone was more boring than the others.

Grade

4/5: would listen again