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The Music
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Scene 4 SO VARIED HE, AND OF HIS TORTUOUS TRAINRamblin' Ro
se itself was paired with Jerry Lee's resurrection of an early S UN hit, the Jun-ior Parker n
umber Feelin' Good , this being the main focus of attention at Lewis's firstrecording d
ate in 1962, on 4 th January, back at 639 Madison Avenue. In its new guiseI've Been T
wistin' set a conundrum which has, in the past, led some to think that thereare as many
as four alternate takes of Lewis's reading of the song to experience, threehaving bee
n defined in the 1983 list. The 'slate' numbers called by Sam Phillips indicatethat there
were, indeed, at least four recordings but the reality is that only two takessurvive, to
gether with the issued master; the latter being an amalgam of parts of theraw perfor
mances. The original release displays just how adept Sam was at exploitingthe potenti
al of magnetic tape to frame the results he wanted.The editing
action takes place about two minutes and fifteen seconds into each take;fortuitousl
y both maintain much the same pace throughout so this is the point at whichto listen cl
osely and compare the two originals and the 'third version' represented bythe finishe
d product on the issued master.Notice that
at the operative moment (2.15) on take 1, at the point that JLL sings "I said"immediatel
y before he launches into the prolonged "whoa-hooah" (...choose your ownphonetics),
a guitar note is heard. That same note can also be detected on the S UN 374master. Up
to this point, there are numerous references in the spoken/sung words bothto distingui
sh take 1 from take 2 and to align the master squarely with take 1. As take1 develops
beyond 2.15, the guitar is silent throughout Jerry Lee’s extended wail. How-ever, on th
e issued master, during the course of "whoa-hooah" , you will hear anotherguitar note
struck at 2.18. Staying with the master, we then hear an additional excla-mation at t
he end of the wail, "well I" before Jerry Lee sings "feel so good" . Go back totake 1; he c
omes out of the wail straight into "feel so good" ; there's no "well I" precedingthe familia
r refrain "feel so good" . Now, check take 2; there's no note audible behindJLL singing
"I said" prior to "whoa-hooah" but, as the wail develops, there's the guitaragain. So, j
ust as soon as JLL utters "I said" we find the evidence of where the tapeshave been s
nipped to move seamlessly from take 1 to take 2.It would ap
pear that Sam didn't think much of Jerry Lee's hesitancy at around the 2.43mark on the
first take and recognised that an improvement could be wrought by graftingon the latt
er part of the second take to the bulk of the first to manufacture 'take 3',i.e. the ma
ster. To add to the confusion, the release in the late 1980s of an extra fewseconds of
take 1, which took listeners beyond the original fade out, gave rise to thespurious cl
aim that a third alternate existed. Nor were matters helped by Shelby Sin-gleton havi
ng published an LP in 1977 featuring both take 1 as I've Been Twistin' andthe S
UN
374
master as Feel So Good , an exercise that was something of a disservice tofans. But le
t’s be clear; there are only two takes of I've Been Twistin' , plus the splicedmaster.
The 'twist'
craze was, of course, at its height; Lewis used the opportunity to re-recordWhole Lot O
f Shakin' Going On in the latest popular idiom. One can’t help feeling thatthis might
have had more chance of success than the revival of Junior Parker's shufflingblues numb
er had Sam had the nerve to release it. Listeners may be wondering why onlyone take of
Whole Lotta Twistin' Goin' On is to be found in this collection, given thatpreviously
published discographies have indicated that there were two distinct record-ings. The n
otionally shorter version was the first outing for the song when it materi-alised on a
C HARLY LP in 1974. The fact is that this so-called 'take 1', which will not befound in th
is collection, was simply an edit of the longer, full recording, with a passageof some 27 seconds, commencing at 2.27, having been excised. This piece of engineering
lends weight to the idea that consideration may well have been given to issuing the
recording back in 1962, although even after the removal of some of the more risqué
commentary there was still potentially sufficient innuendo remaining to provoke of-
fence. It's an intriguing 'might have been' which serves as a further reminder that Sam
was very capable of adding a 'twist' of his own to the proceedings. Scene 5 FROM MANY A BERRY, AND FROM SWEET KERNELS PRESSED Lewis next went to the Memphis studio in June 1962 and here we find himwrestling
with one of the relatively small number of songs recorded during the post706 Union
era to endure in multiple takes; here, at least, there is no cause to bemoan the implica-
tions of the high slate numbers uttered by Sam ahead of so many songs that remain only
as 'one-offs'. Sweet Little Sixteen , having been the subject of an isolated run-through
at a June 1961 session, was revisited with the intention of producing a master for single
release. Three of the four takes recorded on this occasion are distinguished by an in-
troduction involving the bass player's rapid fire plucking of a single notewhich, to-
gether with the fact that the piano is at times almost inaudible in a mix dominated by
the organ, reduces the force of Lewis's personality. In the end the third of these alter-
nates was chosen for release on S UN 379. Experimentally, for one take, they upped the tempo and gave Lewis himselfgreater li-
cence on a more vivacious recording that was destined to remain unheard until Shelby
Singleton saw fit to publish it on an LP in 1969. At the time of that unveiling,accidental
or otherwise, given that this take was also presented in lieu of the authentic S
UN
379
recording on a contemporaneous 45rpm single, many thought that Sam Phillips had
missed a trick and that this was Lewis's best reading of the Chuck Berry song. He also
had another stab at Fats Domino's Hello Josephine , though with an earlier version dating
from a June 1961 session having already been released on the LP 'Jerry Lee's Greatest'
it's difficult to imagine there was any serious intent to do very much with the song. It
was no doubt a casual, spur of the moment, decision to record it again. At the same session, Lewis turned to the work of his childhood idol, Jimmie Rodgers.
In the early 1970s, three distinct masters of Waiting For A Train would findtheir way
onto S UN International 45rpm discs, including two variants, dating from 5 thJune (take
2) and 11 th September 1962 (the last of the second batch, see below) respectively on
successive pressings of the 'original' single SI 1119, first issued in October 1970, and a
third (take 1) on a 'Golden Treasure' 're-issue', S UN GT 69, a couple of yearslater. The
lattermost was assumed to have been 'previously unreleased' when pressedonto a UK
C HARLY LP in 1979 but the truth is that it had already been playable on jukeboxes in the
southern States for some years. This June date also saw Jerry Lee trying to make something of the pop-country number
Set My Mind At Ease , of which three takes remain. It need be explained thatthe quality
of the third, hitherto unreleased, has been compromised very slightly by a tape crease
at around the 52 seconds mark. Not for the first time the casual insertion of the word
'honey', here prefacing the fourth line of the song, gives an early pointer to the indi-
vidual status of the take in question. A third, little heard take of How's My Ex Treating You , the song chosen to partner
Sweet
Little Sixteen on S UN 379, is immediately distinguishable from the similar sounding take
first released in 1989 by the slower pace and the way in which Jerry Lee repeats the