Jerry Lee Lewis Returns with New Album ‘Rock & Roll Time’

Jonny Whiteside

Jerry Lee Lewis, rock & roll’s most infamous wild man, has significantly slowed his live show schedules and recorded output in the last ten years but don’t for one minute think that it’s because the 79-year-old singer-pianist is no longer able.

The arrival of “Rock & Roll Time,” his first new album since 2006, has all the head-on impact and lusty braggadocio that’s always been his calling card and, let’s be frank, it’s downright flabbergasting that Lewis is still in such fine condition.

Despite a lifetime of near non-stop hell-raising, oceans of liquor, pills by the fist full and God only know what all else manner of sinful indulgence and soul-deep malfeasance, the pipes are remarkably strong and clear toned and he whips the 88s with emphatic, adventuresome authority.

It’s an impressively delivered set of songs, loaded with crafty, well-suited song selections and big-name studio sit-ins who, for once, don’t get in the way or stink up the proceedings (participants include Ron Wood, Neil Young, Robbie Robertson). The title track (a vintage 1974 tune introduced by Bob Neuwirth, who co-wrote it with Roger McGuinn and Kris Kristofferson) sets the defiant, outsider tone that always defined Lewis’ cultural persona, and he rocks through the song with gleeful involvement.

Lewis also surprises with some solid guitar playing on versions of “Bright Lights Big City” and “Folsom Prison Blues.” The Killer’s fretwork is relaxed, funky, very much in classic Sun Studio Roland Janes style, and it’s a thrill to hear. It’s also a big relief because, in recent years, things have not looked—or sounded—that good for Lewis. His last single, “Mean Old Man,” was a lackluster number on which he did not even play one note of piano. The disastrous “Last Man Standing” duets album featured plenty of first-rate performances but was badly hobbled by a squad of croaking, mismatched rock stars whose anachronistic presence was downright infuriating.

But “Rock & Roll Time’s rich mixture of blues, country and rock & roll is a reassuring and thoroughly admirable achievement, and, considering that he’s already issued some of the most exciting, perfect and mind-bending audacious disks in the history of recorded music, the album also, rates as, yes, a return to form. While the pumping piano doesn’t reach Lewis vintage thunderous intensity, it still imparts all the high-voltage brilliance that made him Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s very first inductee.

Perhaps Gene Taylor (the formidable blues-boogie pianist best known for long stints with the Blasters and Fabulous Thunderbirds), after giving this album a spin, summed it up best: “There are people who know that Jerry Lee Lewis is the most talented person who ever walked this earth… And then there’s brain-dead mammy-rammers who ain’t quite figured things out yet.”

Jerry Lee Lewis will release ‘Rock and Roll Time’ on Oct. 28.