I’ve got a new book out, a history of rock ‘n’ roll in Oxford’s “Very Short Introduction” series, and it prompted me to revive a bunch of songsI’ve known since my early teens but rarely perform, since I rarely have a rock ‘n’ roll band or vocal group handy.

This one is a bit of an exception. I’ve performed “Great Balls of Fire” in various venues and situations over the years, when I did have the chance to work with a band, or just when someone asked me to play some rock ‘n’ roll. I’m not sure why, but it has always felt right for me in a way that all the various Little Richard and Elvis songs didn’t,  much as I may have liked them.

And Jerry Lee Lewis… he seems to have been a difficult, mercurial, and potentially dangerous character, but a hell of a singer. I put him up with Ray Charles for his ability to take on material in all kinds of styles and genres — country, pop, rock, soul — and put them across with a depth, skill, and personal touch that made them uniquely his own. (Aretha Franklin is another one, but different, because whatever she sang was transformed from its original genre into hers; Lewis and Charles were stylists rather than virtuosos, and although their singing was wildly distinctive and instantly recognizable, their rock songs sounded like rock, their country like country, their pop like pop.)

I’ve written a bit about Jerry Lee’s country stuff in my post for “Crazy Arms,” and that still may be my favorite period of his work, but of course I first heard him singing rock ‘n’ roll, either “Great Balls of Fire” or “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” To me, he has always been in a class by himself among the white rock ‘n’ rollers of that period. I like Elvis fine, especially in the early movies, but he was doing an act, while Lewis was a genuine rock ‘n’ roll wild man. For better or worse–if you don’t know the biography or all the other stories, I’m not going to recap them here but they’re easy to find.

What matters here, at least to me, is how much I’ve always loved to play and sing this one. Again, I’m not sure why it felt so right, but it always did. Ridiculous, maybe, but right. I particularly remember playing it one afternoon in a hall of the Odéon stop on the Paris Metro.

I normally worked on the trains, where there was a captive audience and we made a lot more money, and at that period was in a trio with Vince McCann and a bass player named Doug (covered in my post for “Truck Driving Man“). Vince wasn’t around that afternoon and Doug and I tried playing as a duo in the hall. I was doing a lot of rock ‘n’ roll songs, especially this one, and we weren’t making any money, and at some point another musician came by, and said, “The thing about that music is you have to have the energy.” To which Doug responded, “Oh, that’s not his problem; he has the energy.”

Which could have been a compliment, but also might have suggested that energy was pretty much all I was bringing to the table. Be that as it may… there’s something about this song that still energizes me like nothing else I play. It’s just so much fun.