In 1969, Jerry Lee Lewis and Tom Jones ran through some of Lewis’s hits on Jones’s TV show, This Is Tom Jones. As noted in a previous post, Jones was a big fan of Lewis, and it was Lewis’s recording of “Green Green Grass of Home” that inspired Jones to do his own hit version.
Here, the groove is more upbeat as the two run through songs that include: “Great Balls Of Fire,” “Down The Line,” “Long Tall Sally,” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.”
Additionally, the two guys look like they are having a great time. Check it out.
Jerry Lee Lewis is releasing a new album on October 28, Rock & Roll Time. Like his other recent albums of duets, Last Man Standing (2006) and Mean Old Man (2010), the new album features help from some famous names like Keith Richards, Ron Wood, Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, Shelby Lynne, and Nils Lofgren.
The Memphis Commercial Appeal reports that the album will have eleven tracks, with roughly half originals and half covers (like “Folsom Prison Blues” and Bob Dylan’s “Stepchild”). Check out the title track, “Rock & Roll Time,” below.
Rock & Roll Time is not all we will be hearing from Jerry Lee Lewis. On September 23, Saguaro Road Records is releasing The Knox Phillips Sessions, a previously unreleased 1970s album from Lewis that was produced by Knox Phillips (the son of the legendary producer Sam Phillips). Additionally, a new Jerry Lee Lewis authorized biography Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story hits bookstores October 28. For the book, Lewis sat for interviews with author Rick Bragg.
It looks like there’s going to be a lot of Jerry Lee Lewis this Fall. The more Killer the better.
What is your favorite Jerry Lee Lewis song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Check out this video for the 1977 broadcast of The Johnny Cash Christmas Show. The show features June Carter Cash, the Carter Family, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, the Statler Brothers, and “special guest star” Hee-Haw‘s Roy Clark. On the TV special, Cash recounts some of his past Christmases, including recalling his stint in the military and learning to play the guitar.
One of the most touching moments is when Cash, Lewis, and Perkins pay tribute to the fourth member of the Million Dollar Quartet, Elvis Presley. The three men and Roy Orbison play “This Train is Bound for Glory” for Elvis (31:40), who had died in August of that year.
Several of the artists sing non-holiday former hits. Carl Perkins sings “Blue Suede Shoes” (20:35) for example, and Jerry Lee Lewis rocks out on “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” (27:30). Somewhat surprisingly, Roy Orbison sings “Pretty Woman” (24:05) instead of his 1963 holiday hit, “Pretty Paper.” Lewis calms down for “White Christmas” (30:00).
This special is one of four Johnny Cash Christmas specials that CBS broadcast from 1976 to 1979. You may watch the other ones collected on Dangerous Minds. Also, check out our earlier discussion of the connections between the song “This Train,” the past, and the present.
What is your favorite variety show Christmas special? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash gathered at the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The gathering was not planned, but because of the fast thinking of a recording engineer, it created a unique moment in music history.
How the Gathering Started
On that date, Carl Perkins was in the studio to record a follow-up to his hit “Blue Suede Shoes.” A still-unknown Jerry Lee Lewis, whose “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” would be released in a few weeks, played piano for Perkins.
During the session, Johnny Cash dropped by. And the 21-year old Elvis Presley, who already had left Sun for RCA, stopped by with his girlfriend to say hello. Soon, the singers began jamming together.
Recording engineer Jack Clement had the smarts to run a tape of the session, although the tape would not be heard for decades. But Sam Phillips called a local reporter to take a picture. The local paper used the caption that is still how we remember the session: the “Million Dollar Quartet” (which also later inspired a Broadway musical).
The session includes Elvis playing piano and the group running through a number of songs. Near the end, after Presley got up to leave, Lewis took over the piano and continued playing and singing.
Did Johnny Cash Sing With the Group?
In the recordings, you do not hear Johnny Cash’s voice up front, which has led to some speculation about whether he stayed around to sing with the other three men. In his autobiography, though, Cash explained that he was there the whole time but was furthest from the mike and singing higher than normal to be in key with Presley.
Cash also revealed it was the first time he had heard Jerry Lee Lewis. Cash explained why Elvis left after Lewis took over the piano. “If you’re wondering why Elvis left right after Jerry Lee got started,” he explained, “the answer is simple: nobody, not even Elvis, ever wanted to follow Jerry Lee.”
Available Recordings
The above recording is listed as a “complete” session of the session. There are a number of CD versions, including a 1990 release. Then the songs were reordered for a later 2006 release that also included some additional tracks.
No matter which CD version you hear, I love the recording of the men jamming and laughing together. I periodically listen to the CD of the session the whole way through.
Although we know of the great talent of these four men, it is often easy to forget the joy they found in the music. But that joy radiates through this recording.
What is your favorite part of the Million Dollar Quartet recording? Leave your two cents in the comments.
For these and other reasons, in recent years Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York also have stopped using capital punishment. Other state legislatures are considering bills to abolish the death penalty.
“Green, Green Grass of Home” and Its Twist Ending
Thinking about Maryland’s death penalty, I remembered a hit song from the 1960s called “Green, Green Grass of Home.” Claude “Curly” Putman, Jr. wrote “Green, Green Grass of Home,” which is probably his biggest hit song along with Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” (he also co-wrote the George Jones song “He Stopped Loving Her Today”).
“Green, Green Grass of Home” belongs in a unique group of songs that have a twist ending. The song begins with the singer talking about a trip home, but in the last verse, we learn that it was all a dream. Although there is no specific reference to the death penalty or executions, the verse makes clear that the singer will die at the hands of the state in the morning. Then I awake and look around me, At the four gray walls that surround me, And I realize that I was only dreaming, For there’s a guard and a sad old padre, Arm in arm we’ll walk at daybreak, And at last I’ll touch the green green grass of home.
Putnam performs a clever sleight of hand in the song. He gets us to see the singer as a human being, one with feelings we can relate to, because everyone has been homesick. Only then does he let us know that the singer is on death row. Had the song begun by telling us the singer was condemned, we would have seen him in a different light and judged him as something other than human. But like Steve Earle’s “Over Yonder,” the song “Green, Green Grass of Home” lets us see the humanity even in the worst of us, which is pretty cool.
But Porter Wagoner was the first one to have a hit with “Green, Green Grass of Home” in 1965. Check out this performance and note the subtle special effects where the prison bar shadows appear at the end.
Tom Jones Version
The next year in 1966, Tom Jones had a hit with the song. His version went to number 1 on the U.K. charts.
This TV rendition of the song goes for a less subtle approach than the Porter Wagoner shadows. Here, Tom Jones sings from a jail cell. The setting of the song, though, kind of spoils the surprise ending.
Jerry Lee Lewis Version
Tom Jones was inspired to record “Green, Green Grass of Home” after hearing it on Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1965 albumCountry Songs for City Folk. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.
Here is Lewis’s version.
Joan Baez Version
Joan Baez gives a unique version by being one of the rare woman’s voices to tackle the song. It is appropriate because there currently are approximately sixty women on death rows around the country.
Baez does a nice job in this performance from The Smothers Brothers Show.
Finally, in 2006, Lewis and Jones performed “Green, Green Grass of Home” together. While the lyrics of the song constitute a soliloquy that does not lend itself to being a duet, it was still cool to see the great Tom Jones singing with the legend who inspired him to record one of his biggest hits. [October 2014 Update: Unfortunately, the video of the duet is no longer available on YouTube.]
Capital Punishment After “Green, Green Grass of Home”
One may only speculate about the impact of the song on society or society’s impact on the song. But in 1965-1966 when the song was a big hit for Porter Wagoner in the U.S. and for Tom Jones in the U.K., the death penalty was at low levels of popularity in those countries.
Great Britain would abolish the death penalty on a trial basis in 1965 and abolish it permanently in 1969. In the U.S., executions ground to a halt in the late 1960s as courts considered court challenges to the U.S. death penalty.
Within a decade, after states passed new laws, the U.S. death penalty machine began chugging along in the late 1970s, even as other countries continued to abolish capital punishment. But more recently, since the turn of the century, several states have joined the other states and countries that have decided the death penalty is unnecessary, uncivilized, and wasteful of resources.
Maryland has now joined those civilized states and countries. The end of the death penalty, unlike “Green, Green Grass of Home,” is not a dream.
What is your favorite version of “Green, Green Grass of Home”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
. Like his other recent albums of duets, Last Man Standing (2006) and Mean Old Man (2010), the new album features help from some famous names like Keith Richards, Ron Wood, Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, Shelby Lynne, and Nils Lofgren.
. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.