The Session...Recorded in London with Great Artists
| The Session...Recorded in London with Great Artists | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Jerry Lee Lewis | ||||
| Released | 1973 | |||
| Recorded | London, England | |||
| Genre | Country, rock and roll, blues | |||
| Label | Mercury | |||
| Producer | Steve Rowland | |||
| Jerry Lee Lewis chronology | ||||
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The Session...Recorded in London with Great Artists is a double album by Jerry Lee Lewis released on Mercury Records in 1973. It was recorded in London and features Lewis teaming up with British musicians, including Peter Frampton and Albert Lee.
After scoring a dozen country hits since 1968, Lewis returned to the pop charts with "Me and Bobby McGee" in 1971 and "Chantilly Lace" in 1972, and this turn of events, coupled with a revitalized public interest in vintage rock and roll, inspired Mercury to fly Lewis to London to record with a cadre of gifted British and Irish musicians, including Rory Gallagher, Kenney Jones, Albert Lee, Alvin Lee, Peter Frampton, Gary Wright, and Klaus Voormann. The concept was not new; Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, and B.B. King had already done the same thing in the previous decade. The year before, Lewis had joined Chuck Berry and Little Richard as part of a historic rock and roll show at Wembley Stadium, the first concert ever in that arena. Having toiled in obscurity for most of the sixties, Lewis was the most bankable country star in the world by 1973, living the rock and roll lifestyle to the hilt; according to Rick Bragg's authorized biography Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story, Jerry Lee was commanding $10,000 per show and had his own plane, first a DC-3, with "room for all manner of hangers-on and amiable drunks and pretty women with no particular place to go," and later a Convair 604.
Lewis's son, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jr., also made the trip and participated as a drummer.
By all accounts, the sessions were tense. Part of the reason for this may have been the fact that Lewis had rarely ever recorded outside of Tennessee and, feeling out of his comfort zone and surrounded by a bevy of long-haired musicians, he masked his insecurity by ramping up his already considerable bravado. "I seen all these cats standing around," Lewis recalled in the liner notes to the 2006 box set A Half Century of Hits. "Real long hair and everythin’. I turned to Junior and I said, 'Boy, have I made a mistake comin’ over here.'" His temper, always infamous, was not helped by the booze and pills that sustained him, and although the musicians (who were actually only a few years younger than him, for the most part) were reverential, Lewis's flippant attitude comes across. "So much for that," he says wearily at the conclusion of "Sea Cruise." "Next?"
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