More than half the songs on
Memphis Beat were recorded on January 5 and 6, 1966 at Phillips Studio in
Memphis. The remaining selections were taken from a rare
New York City session eight months earlier and Lewis's earliest sessions at Smash in 1963. The album includes one of the few songs composed by Lewis called "Lincoln Limousine," a remarkable tribute to
John F. Kennedy. In his book
Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found,
Joe Bonomo calls the track "simply weird, so ambiguous and amateurishly written that it's impossible to determine exactly what motivated him to write it." The album also includes "Too Young," a piano lounge number that Bonomo deems "a real laugher" and "hysterically uncomfortable." Most of the other songs show a more familiar side of Lewis, up-tempo Boogie and Blues standards such as "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee" and "Big Boss Man", the Swamp pop classic "Mathilda" from
Cookie and his Cupcakes, and
George Jones' Country classic "
She Thinks I Still Care." Two cover songs were selected as the album's singles, but neither
Sham the Sham's "Memphis Beat" nor
Ray Charles' "Sticks and Stones" reached the Billboard charts. ==Reception==