Jerry Lee Lewis

===Country comeback===
[[File:Carl Perkins Roy Orbison Johnny Cash Jerry Lee Lewis 1977.jpg|thumb|left|Lewis performing with [[Roy Orbison]], [[Johnny Cash]] and [[Carl Perkins]] on ''The Johnny Cash Christmas Special'' in November 1977]]
Frustrated by Smash's inability to score a hit, Lewis was planning on leaving the label when promotions manager [[Eddie Kilroy]] pitched the idea of cutting a pure country record in [[Nashville, Tennessee|Nashville]]. With nothing to lose, Lewis agreed to record the [[Jerry Chesnut]] song "[[Another Place, Another Time (Del Reeves song)|Another Place, Another Time]]", which was released as a single on March 9, 1968, and, to everyone's amazement, shot up the country charts. At the time of the release, Lewis had been playing [[Iago]] in a rock and roll adaptation of ''Othello'' called ''Catch My Soul'' in Los Angeles but was soon rushed back to Nashville to record another batch of songs with producer [[Jerry Kennedy]]. What followed was a string of hits that no one could have predicted, although country music always remained a major part of Lewis's repertoire. As Colin Escott observes in the sleeve to the 1995 compilation ''Killer Country'', the conversion to country music in 1968 "looked at the time like a radical shift, but it was neither as abrupt nor as unexpected as it seemed. Jerry had always recorded country music, and his country breakthrough 'Another Place, Another Time' had been preceded by countless country records starting with his first, '[[Crazy Arms]]', in 1956." The last time Lewis had had a song on the country charts was with "Pen and Paper" in 1964, which had reached number 36, but "Another Place, Another Time" would go all the way to number 4 and remain on the charts for 17 weeks.

Between 1968 and 1977, Lewis had 17 Top 10 hit singles on the Billboard country chart, including four chart-toppers. Hits include "What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made A Loser Out of Me)", "To Make Love Sweeter For You", "She Still Comes Around (To Love What's Left of Me)", "Since I Met You Baby", "Once More With Feeling", "One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)", and "Sometimes A Memory Ain't Enough". The production on his early country albums, such as ''[[Another Place, Another Time (album)|Another Place, Another Time]]'' and ''She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye'', was sparse, quite different from the slick "[[Nashville sound]]" that was predominant on country radio at the time, and also expressed a full commitment by Lewis to a country audience. The songs still featured Lewis's inimitable piano flourishes, but critics were most taken aback by the rock and roll pioneer's effortlessly soulful vocals, which possessed an emotional resonance on par with the most respected country singers of the time, such as [[George Jones]] and [[Merle Haggard]]. In his book ''Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story'', biographer Rick Bragg notes that the songs Lewis was recording "were of the kind they were starting to call 'hard country', not because it had a rock beat or crossed over into rock in a real way, but because it was more substantial than the cloying, overproduced mess out there on country radio".

In a remarkable turnaround, Lewis became the most bankable country star in the world. He was so huge in 1970 that his former Smash producer [[Shelby Singleton]], who purchased [[Sun Records]] from [[Sam Phillips]] in July 1969, wasted no time in repackaging many of Lewis's old country recordings with such effectiveness that many fans assumed they were recent releases. One of his later unreleased Sun recordings, "[[One Minute Past Eternity]]", was issued as a single and soared to number 2 on the country chart, following Lewis's recent [[Mercury Records|Mercury]] hit "She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye". Singleton would milk these unreleased recordings for years, following ''The Golden Cream of the Country'' with ''[[A Taste of Country]]'' later in 1970.