Southern Roots

The legendary 1974 sessions form the Trans Maximus Studios in Memphis, Tennessee featuring Jerry Lee Lewis - voc/piano, backed by Stax studio catts and members of the Blues Brothers band, and Booker T. & The MGs (Steve Cropper - guitar, Donald 'Duck' Dunn - bass, Al Jackson Jr. - drums), Carl Perkins - guitar, Tony Joe White - guitar, The Memphis Horns, a. m. o. At long last here are the original session tapes that produced Jerry Lee Lewis' 1974 'Southern Roots' LP. Produced by Huey Meaux, a fellow Louisiana wildman, the final results reveal what happens when two fiery, free-spirited forces lock horns in the studio Meaux had just gotten out of prison and had a reputation you wouldn't want in your family tree. Separately, Meaux and Lewis each spelled trouble in a big way and could be impossible to work with. Together? God knows what would happen. The results could be an utter disaster or a stroke of genius. As Meaux later observed, 'I knew Jerry and I would fight, but in the end we'd come out with the record. We fought, but we delivered.' For three days in September, 1973 Jerry Lee Lewis and Huey Meaux went at it, and each other. Listen as Jerry Lee is turned loose in the studio by a producer who did try to rein in Jerry's ego. In fact, Meaux did everything he could to feed it. That ego is nowhere more evident than on Jerry's version of the Percy Sledge 1966 hit, When A Man Loves A Woman, which Jerry turns into a sermon on war between the sexes.