Results for "Jerry Lee Lewis"

Jerry Lee Lewis

Though he had only three Top 10 hits in the first, purely rock & roll phase of his career, many critics believe Jerry Lee Lewis was as talented a '50s rocker as Sun labelmate Elvis Presley. Some also believe that Jerry lee Lewis could have made it just as big commercially if his piano-slamming musical style was not so relentlessly wild, his persona not so threateningly hard-edged. Lewis' first musical influences were eclectic. His parents, who were poor, spun swing and Al Jolson records. But his earliest big influence was country star Jimmie Rodgers. In his early teens he absorbed both the softer country style of Gene Autry and the more rocking music of local black clubs, along with the gospel hymns of the local Assembly of God church. Lewis first played his aunt’s piano at age eight and made his public debut in 1949 at age 14, sitting in with a local C&W band in a Ford dealership parking lot

The Archive of Contemporary Music

By KARL ACKERMANN

In Lower Manhattan, sits a musical gold mine. It's the motherlode of recorded music though the small, brightly colored sign above a grey steel door provides only a cryptic clue. The dusty window display of rare 78 RPM records, broken into erratic pie charts serves as a vestige of the past and a cautionary tale about ...

The Three Sounds: Groovin' Hard: Live at the Penthouse 1964-1968

By CHRIS M. SLAWECKI

In the five years spanning 1958 to '62, not only a time of great consolidation and experimentation in jazz but a glorious age for the label, who would you guess was Blue Note Records' best-selling act? Thanks to their nine albums and nearly two dozen more jukebox singles, it was The Three Sounds. Led ...

Groovin’ Hard In Every Style

By CHRIS M. SLAWECKI

Big Mean Sound Machine Runnin' for the Ghost Peace & Rhythm | Blank Slate Records 2017 On Runnin' for the Ghost, Big Mean Sound Machine sounds intent on obliterating every imaginable musical border: the lines between regional or geographic styles, the divide between acoustic and electronic instruments, the ...

Peter Frampton & Cheap Trick at The Paramount

By MIKE PERCIACCANTE

Peter Frampton & Cheap Trick The Paramount Huntington, NY July 29, 2015 Frampton Comes Alive! (A&M, 1976) and Live At Budukan (Epic, 1978) are two of the most iconic live recordings of the past 40-or-so years. As such, it's only fitting (and inevitable) that Peter Frampton and Cheap Trick would eventually ...

A Half-Million Dollars: Biographies of Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis

By C. MICHAEL BAILEY

It was December 4, 1956. The famous black and white, now sepia photograph snapped that winter afternoon shows four young men, silhouetted against acoustic tile, making joyful noise. Three of the four were standing around the one at the piano, the one who would be king. When this photograph was taken, two of the men were ...

Chris Isaak at NYCB Theatre at Westbury

By CHRISTINE CONNALLON

Chris Isaak NYCB Theatre at Westbury Long Island, NY September 7, 2014 Chris Isaak likes to make a splash. The perpetually youthful musician burst onto the stage the way he burst onto the music scene 30 years ago, when he signed to Warner Brothers and subsequently released the CD ...

Maria Muldaur, Marcia Ball, Tracy Nelson and Del Ray at the Musical Instrument Museum

By PATRICIA MYERS

Maria Muldaur, Marcia Ball, Tracy Nelson and Del Ray Musical Instrument Museum “Saluting the Pioneers of Women Who Rock" Phoenix, Arizona October 16, 2013 Four women musicians performed a joyous tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie, black pioneers in gospel and early blues styles that became the roots ...

Anthony Strong: Stepping Out

By BRUCE LINDSAY

Not too many years ago it seemed that the art of the male jazz vocalist was heading in the same direction as black and white televisions and 8-track cartridges. One or two notable voices kept the flame alive, but new, young, vocal talent wasn't emerging. Then it started: a slow process, but new male singers began ...

Reliving Elvis

By SKIP HELLER

No matter how much is written, or by whom, Elvis Presley remains impossible to explain. The usual “young white rocker who could sing black" is as inaccurate as any standing American mythology. His legacy has been as mangled as his career was, often to the detriment of the work itself. Yes, at the time of his ...