Southern Roots

(2 CD digipac with 32-page booklet; 39 tracks, 123:36 playing time) 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 didn't 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.

Jerry and Huey cut mostly southern music - soul, country, R&B and a touch of swamp pop. They even included a surprisingly impassioned version of Johnny Ray's 1952 hit record, Cry.

Little did we know that there was supposed to be a second Southern Roots album. Only ten tracks ever appeared on the LP - a scant 34 minutes of music - but we've got it all here, including the music that was scheduled to appear on the second 'lost album,' all neatly overdubbed and ready for release. We've also got the stuff you were never meant to hear, and there's plenty of it.

Some 40 years later this CD lets you be a fly on the wall as Jerry and Huey square off at one another, laughing, arguing and making music late into the night. It's Jerry Lee as you've never heard him before.

2-LP edited version (which doesn't include several alternate takes) also available.