THE VOICE: THE COLUMBIA YEARS 1943-1952
Jerry Lee Lewis
Columbia C5X 40558
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The Columbia sides deliver up a crooner only beginning to discover the full depth of his already prodigious style. The hallmarks -of that style-respect for a song I ‘s melody, a sure instinct for the selection of repertoire, an unparalleled ability for phrasing, and emotional fidelity and truth — were in place early on. Only Sinatra’s involvement in the pop song conventions of the day and a certain void of experience kept his brilliance from expressing itself full-blown in these earliest sides.
One need only compare the version of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s saloon classic “One for My Baby” recorded in an Axel Stordahl arrang ement in 1947 to the Nels on Riddle version cut I I years later on Only the Lonely to learn how far Sinatra came in a decade. The Columbia version lacks the burning resignation of the Riddle take; in ’47, the arrangement was marzipan, and Sinatra, singing in a light baritone, might be as king Joe the bartender for another soda POP. The s sparer ’58 rendition, moved by a bluesy piano, holds a hurtful sting that the Sinatra of ’47 would not, and perhaps could not, have instilled in the material. Sinatra negotiates the song skillfully on the Columbia version; he plumbs it for its most profound ,meanings on the Capitol track.
The gropings of the Mercury A&R staff are appalling to behold. Muddled, overproduced remakes of early Sun hits and misguided attempts at covering piano-pounding selections from the. Ray Charles and Fats Domino books represent the nadir of inspiration. Happily, Jerry Lee was an inestimable live performer during this era, and the Bear Family set includes three unbelievable concerts from the mid60s. The best and most frenetic of these, cut at Hamburg’s Star Club (which saw the residency of a Liverpool bar band called the Beatles a few years earlier), finds the Killer sailing on what were ,apparently some high-quality amphetamlnes. Here, Lewis and the Nashville Teens rip through “Mean Woman Blues, “Money,” and “Long Tall Sally” with foamflecked lunacy. Volumes one and two of The Greatest Live Show on Earth are only slightly less demented.
The well-programmed set reaches its arguable apex shortly after midpoint when Springsteen and the band rampage through a caustic sequence that includes”Born in the U.S.A.,” the bitter, Guthrie-like new song “Seeds,” “The River,” and the hackle-raising cover of Edwin Starr’s “War.” Along the way, one hears Bruce at his most antic (“Cadillac Ranch,” “Rosalita”) and his most harrowing (the stupendous “Johnny 99,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town”). The album resolves itself beautifully in a lyrical reading of Tom Waits’s “Jersey Girl.”
