Jerry Lee Lewis is an acquired taste, to be sure, one luckily most of us acquired at an early age.
But listening to Before the Night Is Over with Jerry Lee singing at age 71 and B.B. King playing at age 80 is a tribute to the human spirit.
Update:
All Music’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine:
This is the only guest-studded superstar album where all the guests bend to the will of the main act, who dominates the proceedings in every conceivable way. Jerry Lee doesn’t just run the guests ragged; he turns their songs inside out, too — and nowhere is that clearer than on the opening “Rock and Roll,” the Led Zeppelin classic that is now stripped of its signature riff and sounds as if it were a lost gem dug out of the Sun vaults. Far from struggling with this, Jimmy Page embraces it, following the Killer as he runs off on his own course — he turns into support, and the rest of other 20 guests follow suit (with the possible exception of Kid Rock, who sounds like the party guest who won’t go home on an otherwise strong version of “Honky Tonk Woman”).
[…]
[N]o, this is a record that celebrates life, both in its joys and sorrows, and it’s hard not to see it as nothing short of inspiring.
