Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Consumer Guide Album

Jerry Lee Lewis: The Knox Phillips Sessions: The Unreleased Recordings [Ace, 2014]
He's always preferred to call himself a stylist, not a rocker, and these impromptu late-'70s recordings with Sam's son cohere into a lost concept album that proves him right. After transforming Leroy Brown into a Memphis motherhumper who stomps all over Jim Croce's stupid cartoon and wears the tatters around his neck like a victory garland, he rewrites a Moon Mullican blues, matches a 50s Chuck Berry medley with a 50s Teresa Brewer-Hugo Winterhalter medley, covers a humble Fanny Crosby hymn and a schlocky Mickey Gilley hit, posits a humble country hit of his own, and--after anointing America's first fulltime professional songwriter "one of the greats of all time" along with Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, and Al Jolson theirself--goes out on the greatest weeper Stephen Foster ever wept. His piano pumping irrepressibly, Jerry Lee defines his musical identity in the middle of the night with nobody listening: a stylist who can't stop rocking. A