A Whole Lotta Jerry Lee Lewis [Box set, Collector's Edition, Extra tracks, Original recording remastered]

4 Cds, and they're all top drawer. Putting aside what Ace do with their Southern Soul and Fame Studio box sets, this is seriously good value for money at under £25, and one of the best reissues of 2012 thus far.

I know there'll be some caveats: not enough Sun material, nor enough of the live recordings. My main caveat is that there is not enough of the Southern Roots album , which was the last great album of the Killer's. Only two tracks, however, yet there should have been countless more. Whither That Old Bourbon Street Church, or Meat Man ? It didn't even merit a mention in the booklet, whereas the Session did.

Objectively, I have always found the Session to be similar to albums recorded by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf in London, whereby the older artist retreads his way through some older tracks, and the younger guest plays some tasty licks. I prefer Jerry Lee's version of Drinkin Wine Spo Dee o Dee from 1966's Memphis Beat album, and where was the marvellous coda to The Session that was Jack Daniels Old No 7 ?

However, I have still given it five star: 12 tracks from the Sun era is more than enough. Record shops are inundated, and so too is Itunes, with budget versions of Jerry Lee's Sun material. I have also found that the Sun material lacks the emotional depth and maturity of the post 1968 country material, nor does Jerry rock as hard as he did on, yes you guessed it, Southern Roots. I also think that, on disc 1, two of his best rock tracks are I'm On Fire and Hi Heel Sneakers, which are from the Smash era.

The early Smash era, up to Soul My Way, was a series of misfires, but with some great tracks, i.e. I'm On Fire, Hi Heel Sneakers, Green Green Grass of Home, but Shelby Singleton and Jerry Kennedy didn't know what to do with Jerry Lee - Can we market him rock, country, soul, blues etc ? Smash also had the same problem with Charlie Rich, and he had to wait until 1972 for success after his initial promise of greatness on Lonely Weekends from 1960.

However, it is disc 2 where Jerry Lee really kicks up a gear. Country was as natural as living and breathing to the Killer. From 1968 - 1973 he hardly misfired, and his earning capacity skyrocketed. What was amazing about Another Place, Another Time, What's Made Milwaukee Famous, She Still Comes Around, and She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye, was that there were all stripped down honky-tonk ballads. The strings didn't kick in until 1971 with Touching Home, Would You Take Another Chance On Me, and Think About It Darlin. I think the only misfire on Disc 2 is Roll Over Beethoven with Linda Gail Lewis: it really doesn't rock.

Disc 3 shows that the country is getting diluted somewhat with strings. The material is still great, ranging from Chantilly Lace through to Boogie Woogie Country Man. However, it is the country stuff that still has the emotional depth, i.e. No Traffic Out of Abilene, Ride Me Down Easy, Sometimes A Memory, He Can't Fill My Shoes. Though, I feel we could have done with Jerry Lee's cover of Billy Joe Shaver's Bottom Dollar, or Keep Me From Blowing Away, or the greatest ever Killer outtake, All Over Hell & Half of Georgia.

Disc 4 highlights the final years of the Mercury recordings. Again it's the country stuff that means the most, that shows the Killer more engaged. Jerry Lee's Rock n Roll Revival Show is a turgid track on a great album, i.e. Country Class. The Closest Thing to You, Let's Put It Back Together, Middle Age Crazy, and Come On In are all great country tracks, yet I Hate You is an undiscovered gem from the pen of Dan Penn: an equally good version of this track is by Bobby Bland on Get On Down, which was Bobby's country album.

We then move to the Elektra recordings from 1979-1980; Rockin My Life Away totally annihilates Jerry Lee's Rock n Roll Revival Show. It's a pity there was no space for the Killer's version of Rita Mae from 1979, which was The Killer cutting Bob Dylan for the first and last time, thus far, or his version of Don't Let Go. However, as Bobby Gillespie stated on the recent Ron Wood show on Sky1, you can't beat the Killer's version of Over the Rainbow, which is here on all its glory, and so too is 39 & Holdin' which was the Killer's last great country hit.

This leaves me to state that the last few tracks are from the MCA era, the Class of 55, and a re-recording of Wild One from 1989. The MCA stuff could have benefited from having She Sang Amazing Grace and That Was The Way It was Then on the compilation, and Honky Tonk Rock n Roll Piano Man excised from the compilation. Sixteen Candles though was the best thing on the Class of 55 album. However, what about the X Rated Whole Lotta Shakin' from the Great Balls of Fire soundtrack, or It Was The Whisky Talkin' ? I think the original version of Whisky Talkin was from the soundtrack to Dick Tracey, an awful movie enlivened by the Killer's dixieland track.

Ultimately, you want the Killer, buy this as it highlights the true, many sides of Jerry Lee.

Let me say straight off that I haven't purchased this set but I am the owner of more than 90 per cent of the contents - and that's without counting - many of which tracks I have on both vinyl and CD. I think that gives me at least some credibility in attempting a review. The presence of existing positive reviews from Uncut, Mojo and even the Daily Telegraph leads me to believe that there's likely to be very little wrong with the sound quality. Nor is there anything wrong with the packaging. Uncut awards 8/10 for what it quaintly calls "Extras", in other words, the 70 page booklet including rare photos, biography and full track details. This is just the sort of packaging that I would expect to get with a retrospective but then I was spoilt by the 2006 Snapper "Sun Essentials" 4 CD set from the Killer.

Although the appearance in the aforesaid reviews is of a new look back at the Lewis career, Amazon's headline description of the album includes phrases like "Collector's Edition" and "Extra Tracks" which rather suggests that this is but an updated version of an existing retrospective. I have to admit to ignorance on whether or not this is the case but several aspects about the contents do rather confirm the impression.

Chief among these is the woefully short list of tracks from that glorious Sun period. I can understand any compiler's problem here. In the great man's youthful period - I originally wrote "pomp" but that would have been wrong - every individual song was attacked with flair, gusto and above all, imagination leading to an unbelievably high and consistent quality of output. Just what would you leave out? What we are left with on Disc 1 is 12 tracks only, these largely being the hits which doesn't do any justice to the terrific volume of material he recorded in the timeframe. Indeed there is a higher proportion of music on Disc 1 from the initial Smash/Mercury period (which yielded zero hits) prior to the man's country breakthrough. This does seem slightly against the grain even if this music is well worth hearing, which it is of course.

Disc 2 focuses on that country breakthrough and, it has to be said, makes a sterling job of covering the period. This particular disc plus a few of the tracks on Disc 3 does as good a job of summarising Jerry's country phase as I've seen anywhere. The only major omission is his reading of Kristofferson's "Help me make it through the night" which should have been present. Set against that is the inclusion of some tracks which don't often appear in collections.

The above evidence does suggest that this set was originally compiled by those folks at Smash/Mercury, or whichever conglomerate has swallowed them up now, with earlier tracks purchased since I'd guess this was prior to all the Sun material coming available in the public domain.

Regardless of the above the key question is still, does this set do the job as a "Definitive Retrospective" which is what it claims to be?

I'd say that the answer has to be a hesitant yes but with quite a few negatives which I've listed below. To the best of my knowledge there is no other set which attempts to cover the career of Jerry Lee from his Sun days up to roughly, 1980, so this isn't a bad start and maybe a later update might be even better.

So, the negatives ...

- Even though the set contains plenty of pre-country Smash material it doesn't have his great covers of the two Cookie & the Cupcakes numbers, "Mathilda" and Got you on my mind". Nor does it have his take on George Jones' "I Still Care" which has always been a favourite of mine.
- There's nothing from the recently re-released "Live at the Star Club, Hamburg" album, a candidate for best live rock'n'roll album ever.
- I would have liked one or two more of his versions of Mickey Newbury songs in addition to "She even woke me up to say goodbye". I always felt Jerry was one of the few artists to make a real fist of Newbury songs.
- From the Elektra period, which is otherwise well covered, the near autobiographical "I'd Do it All Again" doesn't appear and this is a serious omission. The good news is that they do retain his marvellous "Over the Rainbow".
- There's nowhere near enough from the "Killer Rocks On" album - I'd have had more of these tracks and less of the London session.
- I'd also have liked to have had "Born to be a Loser" from the "Southern Roots" album which is another one that's under represented.
- There's nothing from the 1995 "Young Blood" album which had a mixed critical reception though as I stated earlier, I guess the set stops somewhere in the eighties. Needless to say there's nothing from the more recent, Rubin style, "Last Man Standing" or "Mean Old Man" albums.

With the exception of the near minimal presence of Sun tracks, all the above could be viewed as gripes from a Lewis fanatic who's never going to be satisfied with any best-of, even one as relatively all embracing as this. And I have to add that, if you complemented this set by one of the longer Charly/Snapper albums from the man, you would have a pretty good picture of the Killer's oeuvre.

The vast majority of people only know Jerry from his Sun sides and only the better known hits at that. What this set does do is more than balance this perception of Jerry's output. I refused to use the word pomp earlier when mentioning the Sun period. And that's because Jerry's rarely not been in his pomp (and that's ignoring his own opinion of himself!). Even when he was really churning out country stuff like there was no tomorrow there was almost invariably the odd track per album where he rose above the sometimes mundane material he was given. And every now and then he'd pull out an absolute beaut - give a listen to "Don't Boogie Woogie when you say your prayers tonight" which leads off Disc 4 for a typical inflammatory example. Of all the fifties rockers and that's including his great rival Elvis, Jerry continued to make inspired records even up to yesterday ("Mean Old Man"). His voice may not be quite what it was but it's still a lot better than Dylan's!

I was going to drop a star because of the lack of many key Sun tracks but if I'm honest the material here deserves the full monty even if, for a definitive retrospective, it could have been better. However anything that continues to boost the appreciation of Lewis as a major figure in American music who has put on record superb performances in blues, R&B, country, gospel, country soul and even standards, rather than just a caricatured rocker has to be applauded.

In leaving aside the issue of the Sun recordings, as commented on by a previous reviewer, and which, let's face it, get re-issued on CD on an almost weekly basis, this review is going to take a critical look at the selection of the relatively under-exposed 1963-77 Mercury recordings included in this new collection. Taken entirely on its own merits, i.e. without reference to other JLL compilations currently on the market, the choice of tracks appears, at first glance, to be well thought out. But is it really doing JLL fans (or the `general record buying public') much of a service to re-issue no fewer than 12 recordings, including "Walk A Mile In my Shoes", "Lonely Weekends" and "Me and Jesus", from a 2CD set itself issued only about twelve months ago (i.e. "Fireball: The Collection"), and second.....what the heck is it with this obsession with "Workin' Man Blues"??!! (here, rather sloppily, re-titled as "Working Man's Blues")

Ignoring the comprehensive box-sets from Bear Family, this track has already appeared on no fewer than SEVEN Mercury JLL CD compilations , viz

"Killer: The Mercury Years" (Mercury 836-938)
"The World of Jerry Lee Lewis" (Spectrum 552-064)
"Killer Country" (Mercury 556-542)
"The Many Sides of JLL" (Spectrum 983-778), (re-issued as "FIreball: The JLL Collection" in 2011)
"A Half Century of Hits" (Time-Life M19230)
"Gold" (Mercury 80011158)
"Jerry Rocks" (Bear Family BCD 16396)

(all of which, with the possible exception of the first named, are easy enough to purchase via amazon)

In other words, it has featured on an uncomfortably large proportion of all Mercury compilation CD releases (as opposed to re-issues of original LPs) of any stature! It sneaks in everywhere, whether it's a 'country' album, a 'rock' album, or even a JLL 'greatest hits' album (which it wasn't, of course; i.e. a 'hit'!)

Given that the original album from which "Workin' Man Blues" is taken is also widely available on a 2-fer CD, the new set will see its NINTH outing on CD, the TENTH if you count the re-release of "Many Sides" as "Fireball: The Collection" last year. Meanwhile, there's a whole generation of CD listeners who have probably never heard JLL`s version of "Rockin Pneumonia & Boogie Woogie Flu", which has never made it on to CD, other than the Bear Family box, and which, by rights, should have been included on this new set, given that just about every other Smash-Mercury era single is featured - not to mention a whole host of other album tracks that haven't yet made it on to conventional CDs (i.e. excluding the mega box-sets).

Granted, "Workin' Man Blues" is a fine recording, but this 'track record' demonstrates serious over-exposure of just one song, and a lack of due consideration of other worthy material.

One other gripe about the musical content; the version of "One Minute Past Eternity" featured here is not, as suggested, the Sun International 45rpm SI 1107 release; rather, it is the much more familiar `album' cut from "The Golden Cream of the Country" (Sun 108). The latter recording is invariably used on compilations; other than, it should be said, on the three major box sets from Charly, i.e. 12LP vinyl in 1983, "The Sun Years" CD Sun Box 1 in 1989, and "The Ultimate JLL" Sun Box 4, 1993 - in each of these cases the original 45rpm version was included, though none of these collections in fact acknowledged the existence of an alternate. Nor, indeed, did Bear Family when it published its own 8CD JLL Sun collection ("Classic") in 1989, and, in so doing, used the other recording, i.e. the 'album' track. It appears that the compilers of this new collection are still under the impression that only one recording of "One Minute Past Eternity" exists and, as a consequence, tape selection errors persist (effectively it's a random process), hence the appearance on this new collection of what is nominally the 'wrong' track. It's an error perpetuated on six successive 'authoritative' collections: Westside's "I've Always Been Country", Time Life's "The Original Greatst Hits", and "A Half Century of Hits" (these first three produced by Colin Escott), Varese Saranbande's "25 All-Time Greatest Sun Recordings" and "Essential Sun Records Country Hits", and now this set, all of which have identified this recording as being the one released as "Sun International 1107" - which it isn't. (NB the correct take was, however, used on Rhino's landmark 2CD set "All Killer No Filler", mentioned by another reviewer). Granted, it's not the easiest `spot', and it may be of little consequence to most casual listeners, but there are distinct differences between the two recordings, notably on JLL's phrasing of the third line of the first verse, and elsewhere, and in the piano work at the end of the first verse. Shelby Singleton, of course, didn't give a hoot about which particular take of a song he pressed onto 45's (witness the three different versions of "Waiting For A Train" that ended up on SI singles) but ironically he was consistent in using a particular alternate of "One Minute Past Eternity", different to the one included on this set, on all successive pressings of the single release.

Presentation wise, this CD box is a fine looking product, marred somewhat by the unaccountable headline credit, as co-performers, given to two session musicians on the final track, "Wild One". It's also stretching things a little to imply that "Sixteen Candles" is `with Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins'(sic) - they had very little, if anything, to do with this recording despite its inclusion on the "Class of `55" LP. Conversely, on reading through the 70 page booklet I didn't find a single mention of the name "Kenny Lovelace" ...oh, well...