Background

By 1968, Jerry Lee Lewis had been touring america and Europe constantly for ten years in hopes of re-establishing the stardom that he had loved throughout his time at Solar Information within the Fifties, earlier than his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin Myra derailed his profession. Though he remained a riveting stay performer (as will be heard on the album Dwell on the Star Membership, 1964), he had not been a related presence on the charts, though he had scored a minor hit with a canopy of the Ray Charles track “What’d I Say” in 1961. In 1963, Lewis left Solar for Smash (later absorbed into Mercury Information) however, regardless of a string of musically various albums, didn’t rating one other hit. “When the DJs stopped taking part in my data, I by no means mentioned something,” Lewis defined within the sleeve for the 2006 retrospective A Half Century of Hits. “What might I do? Hollar and scream at ’em? For some time they wasn’t taking part in Elvis, Chuck Berry, or none of them. You’d suppose rock ‘n’ roll had died within the night time. All they performed was them Bobbys – Bobby Vee, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Darin. In case your identify was Bobby, you had been in with a sporting likelihood. I have to be the one artist on the planet who’s been down as many instances as I’ve. I imply all the way down to all-time low. I used to be making ten thousand an evening, and received knocked again to two-fifty.” Pissed off at what he noticed as a scarcity of help from his file label, Lewis was nearing the tip of his contract when promotions supervisor Eddie Kilroy known as him and pitched the concept of chopping a pure nation file in Nashville. By this level, Lewis’ business inventory was extraordinarily low. In Nick Tosches Lewis biography Hellfire, Kilroy recollects calling each credible writer in Nashville asking for materials for Jerry Lee, however solely three acetates turned up after two weeks, including, “That was all the fabric that had are available in. No person wished a Jerry Lee Lewis lower. I believed, Holy God, that is embarrassing.”^[1]

With nothing to lose, Lewis agreed to file the Jerry Chestnut track “One other Place, One other Time,” which was launched as a single on March 9, 1968, and, to everybody’s amazement, shot up the nation charts. On the time of the discharge, Lewis had been taking part in Iago in a rock and roll adaptation of Othello known as Catch My Soul in Los Angeles however was quickly rushed again to Nashville to file one other batch of songs with producer Jerry Kennedy. In a 2019 interview with Randy Fox of Classic Rock, Kennedy recalled:

…”One other Place, One other Time” was one other factor. It was one heck of a track. Eddie Kilroy, who was promotions supervisor for Smash on the time, discovered the track. When he introduced the demo in, I received fired up. I despatched it to Jerry Lee, and he received excited too…As quickly as we lower it there was pleasure right here in Nashville. It received handed round on the town and everybody beloved it. George Jones known as me and mentioned, “My God, man. Why haven’t you been doing this for years with Jerry Lee?”

Recording

Though he was primarily referred to as a rock and curler, Lewis had been influenced by a variety of artists and kinds, from rhythm and blues to the Nice American Songbook, however his affinity for nation music – particularly the songs of Hank Williams – remained a significant a part of his repertoire. As nation music historian Colin Escott observes within the sleeve to the 1995 compilation Killer Nation, the conversion to nation music in 1968 “regarded on the time like a radical shift, nevertheless it was neither as abrupt nor as sudden because it appeared. Jerry had at all times recorded nation music, and his nation breakthrough ‘One other Place, One other Time’ had been preceded by many, many nation data beginning along with his first, ‘Loopy Arms,’ in 1956.” The final time Lewis had a track on the nation charts was with “Pen And Paper” in 1964, which had reached quantity 36, however “One other Place, One other Time” would go all the best way to quantity 4 and stay on the charts for 17 weeks.

The manufacturing of the album that adopted was sparse, fairly totally different from the slick “Nashville sound” that was predominant on nation radio on the time, and in addition expressed a full dedication by Lewis to a rustic viewers. Lewis launched the Glenn Sutton-penned “What’s Made Milwaukee Well-known (Has Made A Loser Out of Me)” as his subsequent single, which rose to quantity 2 on the Billboard nation chart, giving him his second consecutive high 5 hit. That includes Kennedy’s chiming lead guitar and Charlie McCoy’s campfire harmonica intro, Lewis biographer Joe Bonomo writes in his ebook Jerry Lee Lewis: Misplaced And Discovered: “The association, together with a woodblock relatively than a snare, is prime honky-tonk: no instrument dominates, all complement…Everybody concerned within the recording will need to have identified that it might be a success.” By no means a lot of a songwriter himself, Lewis included two different Chestnut songs, together with “Play Me A Music I Can Cry To” and “On The Again Row,” and fleshed out the album with covers of common nation songs, such because the Merle Haggard hit “I am A Lonesome Fugitive” and the Ernest Tubb basic “Strolling The Flooring Over You.” He additionally recorded the Fred Rose nation normal “We Dwell in Two Totally different Worlds” as a duet along with his sister Linda Gail Lewis. All of the songs function stone nation preparations, augmented by Lewis’s inimitable piano prospers, however critics had been most greatly surprised by the rock and roll pioneer’s effortlessly soulful vocals, which possessed an emotional resonance on par with probably the most revered nation singers of the time, resembling Haggard and George Jones. In his ebook Jerry Lee Lewis: His Personal Story, biographer Rick Bragg notes that the songs Lewis was recording “had been of the type they had been beginning to name ‘laborious nation,’ not as a result of it had a rock beat or crossed over into rock in an actual means, however as a result of it was extra substantial than the cloying, overproduced mess on the market on nation radio.”

Rocker and Lewis fan Rod Stewart coated “What’s Made Milwaukee Well-known (Has Made A Loser Out of Me)” in 1972 and joined Lewis on a rendition of the track for Jerry Lee’s 2006 album Final Man Standing.

Reception

One other Place, One other Time was launched in June 1968 and rose to quantity 3 on the Billboard nation albums chart. Within the February 1, 1969, situation of Rolling Stone, critic Andy Boehm wrote that the album was “undoubtedly value shopping for if you could find it. For rock aficionados One other Place One other Time is an attention-grabbing illustration of an early rock & roll star’s transformation. For nation music lovers, this album introduces one other nice and transferring singer.” AllMusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes of the album: “Music for track, there’s not a foul tune right here, and every efficiency is a stunner, making for not only a nice second starting, however for one of many biggest hardcore nation albums ever.” In 2009, producer Jerry Kennedy informed Lewis biographer Joe Bonomo that when the album hit a quarter-million gross sales, Mercury’s Chicago workplace known as him to ask what pop stations had been taking part in it “as a result of it could not be promoting that many nation. And it was not taking part in on pop wherever. It was all nation radio doing the job.”

Observe itemizing