Southern Roots: Back Home to Memphis

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

Contents
Background
Recording and reception
Track listing
Personnel
References
External links
Studio album by Jerry Lee Lewis

Background Released 1973

Recorded Columbia Studios,
Southern Roots: Back Home In Memphis was touted as a Nashville, Tennessee
"comeback" album for Lewis, which was misleading at best; Lewis Genre Rock, soul, gospel
had been enjoying enormous success on the country music charts
since 1968, scoring 15 top 10 hits (including four chart toppers) and Label Mercury
selling out concerts on the road. In addition, although the title Producer Huey P. Meaux
implies a return to his rock and roll roots, Lewis had enjoyed his Jerry Lee Lewis chronology
highest pop charting album since 1964 with The Session...Recorded
in London with Great Artists, a collaboration with British rockers Sometimes Southern I-40
that had been released earlier in the year and had reached number 37. a Memory Roots: Country
His singles "Me and Bobby McGee" had also grazed the top 40 Ain't Back (1974)
[1]
(peaking at #40, 1972). As Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic Enough Home In
observed, "Apart from the gospel closer, country has been (1973) Memphis
consciously removed from the menu, a move that feels like the (1973)
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."

Recording and reception

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[2] 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.")

Southern Roots did make the Billboard country albums chart, peaking at number 6. 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.

Track listing
1. "Meat Man" (Mack Vickery)
2. "When a Man Loves a Woman" (Calvin Lewis, Andrew Wright)
3. "Hold On! I'm Comin'" (Isaac Hayes, David Porter)
4. "Just a Little Bit" (Rosco Gordon)
5. "Born to Be a Loser" (Karen Carpenter, Richard Carpenter)
6. "The Haunted House" (Bob Geddins)
7. "Blueberry Hill" (Al Lewis, Vincent Rose, Larry Stock)
8. "The Revolutionary Man" (Doug Sahm)
9. "Big Blue Diamonds" (Kit Carson)
10. "That Old Bourbon Street Church" (Mack Vickery)

Personnel
Jerry Lee Lewis - vocals, piano
Tony Joe White, Carl Perkins, James Tributton, Kenny Lovelace, Paul Cannon, Steve Cropper
- guitar
Charles Owens - steel guitar
Donald Dunn, Herman "Hawk" Hawkins, Tommy Cathey - bass
J.L. "Marty" Morrison - organ
Augie Meyers - Vox organ
Al Jackson Jr., Joel Williams, Robert "Tarp" Tarrant - drums
Jerry Lee Lewis, Jr. - percussion
Mack Vickery - harmonica
Bill Taylor, Mark Lindsay (ex. Paul Revere & the Raiders, saxophone), Russ Carlton - horns
Memphis Horns: Andrew Love, Ed Logan, Jack Hale, James Mitchell, Wayne Jackson - horns
Sugar Sweets - backing vocals

References
1. http://www.billboard.com/music/jerry-lee-lewis
2. http://www.allaboutbluesmusic.com/tony-joe-white/
External links
Southern Roots: Back Home to Memphis (https://www.discogs.com/master/159406) at Discogs
(list of releases)

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This page was last edited on 28 October 2019, at 18:32 (UTC).

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