In Loving Memories: The Jerry Lee Lewis Gospel Album
| In Loving Memories: The Jerry Lee Lewis Gospel Album | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Jerry Lee Lewis | ||||
| Released | 1971 | |||
| Recorded | 1970 | |||
| Genre | Country gospel | |||
| Label | Mercury | |||
| Producer | Jerry Lee Lewis, Linda Gail Lewis | |||
| Jerry Lee Lewis chronology | ||||
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In Loving Memories: The Jerry Lee Lewis Gospel Album is an album by Jerry Lee Lewis that was released on Mercury Records in 1971.
Lewis's love for gospel music is well documented. As a teenager, Lewis studied at the Southwest Bible Institute in Waxahachie, Texas before being thrown out for daring to play a boogie-woogie version of "My God Is Real," and that early incident foreshadowed his lifelong conflict over his faith to God and his love of playing "the devil's music." Lewis had a recorded argument with Sam Phillips during the recording session for "Great Balls of Fire," a song he initially refused to record because he considered it blasphemous ("How can...How can the devil save souls? What are you talkin' about?" he asks Phillips during one heated exchange). Lewis also endured years of condemnation from his cousin, evangelist Jimmy Lee Swaggart, who never passed up an opportunity to criticize Lewis's lifestyle. In the 1990 documentary The Jerry Lee Lewis Story, an intense Lewis, who could quote the Bible backwards and forwards, explains to the interviewer, "The Bible don't even speak of religion. No word of religion is even in the Bible. Sanctification! Are you sanctified? Have you been saved? See, I was a good preacher, I know my Bible...And for you to receive the third part of the Trinity, which is the Holy Ghost - which is evidence of speaking in other tongues where you get the Holy Ghost - it will not dwell in an unclean temple. And to receive the greatest gift in the world, the Holy Ghost, you're gonna have to get your heart pure and clean...I find myself falling short of the glory of God." "Falling short" may have been putting it mildly, but Lewis's faith was always best demonstrated through his music, and gospel music always remained part of his repertoire. After a string of hit country albums, he decided to record a proper gospel album for the first time in 1970. The decision may have been informed by the failing health of his mother Mamie, who had been a bedrock of support to him (she would die of lung cancer in April 1971).
Lewis produced the album himself with his sister Linda Gail Lewis, who wrote on the back jacket that "Jerry Lee has always played his own style of Gospel music." In addition to the usual ace musicians that accompanied him on his recent Mercury albums, Lewis is backed by the Jordanaires and the Nashville Sounds. The album features well known Gospel songs that country music listeners would have been quite familiar with, such as "I'll Fly Away" and "Lily of the Valley" as well as three songs composed by Linda Gail and Lewis's manager Cecil Harrelson. The album's appearance came shortly after an all-gospel show performed and recorded at a Church of God in Memphis, which would surface in 1986 on a Bear Family box set.
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