Jerry Lee Keeps Rockin'

Background

Jerry Lee Keeps Rockin' was Lewis's final album with Mercury Records, the label he had been with since 1963. Although Lewis was no longer scoring hits with the frequency that he had been earlier in the decade, the Waylon Jennings-flavored "I'll Find It Where I Can" hit the top 10 on the country chart. The album, however, only reached number 40 on the Billboard country albums chart. In the liner notes to the 1995 Mercury compilation Killer Country, Colin Escott observes that by this time producer Jerry Kennedy "had become tired of hassling with Jerry Lee Lewis, and the rewards were getting smaller. Jerry Lee's motivation for entering the studio was sapped by the fact that whatever he made in royalties and advances was being garnished by the IRS. When he didn't sound bored, he often arrived with a voice fried to a crisp from a long tour or two or three nights of roaring." "I thought it was healthy that he left," Kennedy explains in the 2006 box set A Half Century of Hits. "He was tired." Lewis confided to biographer Rick Bragg in 2014 that leaving was a "bad mistake. I should have never left Jerry Kennedy. I should have never left Mercury Records. 'Cause they were too good to me."

Track listing

1. "I'll Find It Where I Can" (Michael Clark, Zack Van Arsdale)
2. "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes" (Slim Willet)
3. "Sweet Little Sixteen" (Chuck Berry)
4. "Last Cheaters Waltz" (Sonny Throckmorton)
5. "Wild and Wooly Ways" (Bob Morrison, Alan Rush)
6. "Blue Suede Shoes" (Carl Perkins)
7. "I Hate You" (Leroy Daniels, Dan Penn)
8. "Arkansas Seesaw (Michael Bacon, Thomas Cain)
9. "Lucille" (Albert Collins, Richard Penniman)
10. "Pee Wee's Place" (Duke Faglier)
11. "Before the Night Is Over" (Ben Peters)