Jerry Lee Lewis

===Smash Records===
Lewis's Sun recording contract ended in 1963, and he joined [[Smash Records]], where he made several rock recordings that did not further his career. The team at Smash (a division of [[Mercury Records]]) came up with "I'm on Fire", a song that they felt would be perfect for Lewis and, as [[Colin Escott]] writes in the sleeve to the retrospective ''A Half Century of Hits'', "Mercury held the presses, thinking they had found Lewis's comeback hit, and it might have happened if [[the Beatles]] hadn't arrived in America, changing radio playlists almost overnight. Mercury didn't really know what to do with Lewis after that."<ref name="Escott">{{citation|title=A Half Century Of Hits|url=http://albumlinernotes.com/A_Half_Century_Of_Hits.html|type=CD liner|date=January 2006|author=Colin Escott|publisher=[[Time Life]]|access-date=October 30, 2022|archive-date=April 20, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210420104332/http://albumlinernotes.com/A_Half_Century_Of_Hits.html|url-status=live}}</ref> One of Smash's first decisions was to record a retread of his Sun hits, ''[[Golden Hits of Jerry Lee Lewis]]'', which was inspired by the continuing enthusiasm European fans had shown for Lewis's firebrand rock and roll. In June 1963, Lewis returned to the UK for the first time since the scandal that nearly ended his career five years earlier, to headline a performance on the ''[[MV Royal Daffodil (1939)|MV Royal Daffodil]]'', for a [[English Channel|cross-channel]] rock and roll cruise from [[Southend-on-Sea|Southend, Essex]], to [[Boulogne-sur-Mer|Boulogne, France]]. For this performance, he was backed by [[Ritchie Blackmore]] and [[The Outlaws (band)|the Outlaws]].<ref name="Bloom2009">{{Cite book |last=Jerry Bloom |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1f53kihTyRMC&pg=PA100-IA5 |title=Black Knight: Ritchie Blackmore |date=November 5, 2009 |publisher=Omnibus Press |isbn=978-0-85712-053-3 |pages=100 |access-date=March 10, 2020 |archive-date=July 13, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230713173507/https://books.google.com/books?id=1f53kihTyRMC&pg=PA100-IA5 |url-status=live }}</ref> None of Lewis's early Smash albums, including ''[[The Return of Rock]]'', ''[[Memphis Beat]]'', and ''[[Soul My Way]]'', were commercial successes.