Smiley Lewis I Hear You Knocking (LP, 180g Vinyl)

(Pure Pleasure Records) 12 tracks, 180g vinyl

Dave Bartholomew has often been quoted as saying that Smiley Lewis was “a singer with a lot of bad luck” because he never sold more than 100,000 copies of his singles for Imperial. In fact, Lewis was lucky in many ways - he always had the support of the best session musicians at Cosimo's, benefited from first-class material and production (by Bartholomew) and left behind a legacy of fabulous Crescent City rhythm'n'blues. And we listeners can also count ourselves lucky that he existed.
Born with the unwieldy name Overton Lemons, Lewis arrived in New Orleans as a teenager armed with a big, booming voice and some skill on the guitar. He performed, sometimes under the name 'Smiling' Lewis, and often with pianist Tuts Washington at various clubs in the French Quarter. As rhythm'n'blues developed in New Orleans, so did Lewis. He scored his first national hit in 1952 with “The Bells Are Ringing”, but his biggest sales came in 1955 with the jubilant “I Hear You Knocking”, whose immortal piano solo was contributed by Huey Smith. And this is where Lewis' alleged bad luck struck again - the ludicrously white-washed interpretation of this sad ballad by pop chanteuse Gale Storm nipped any possibility of a crossover to pop in the bud.
But Storm didn't dare tackle the single's B-side, the rocking Joe Turner-style “Bumpity Bump”, or some of Simley Lewis' other mid-50s classics (“Down the Road”, “Lost Weekend” or “Real Gone Lover”). In the front line of the Crescent City's hottest musicians (saxophonists Lee Allen and Clarence Hall and Herb Hardesty usually accompanied Lewis), he roared like a lion.
Surprisingly, Fats Domino had more success with some of Smiley Lewis' songs than he did, especially with “Blue Monday”. Elvis Presley, who smoothed out the cheeky “One Night”, also had a big hit, but Lewis' original from 1956 also did well.
By this time, stomach cancer was already taking its toll on the once burly singer. He died in the fall of 1966, quickly forgotten outside his hometown of New Orleans. The following decades corrected this misjudgment of music history, Smiley Lewis' place as one of the greatest in the ranks of R&B artists in New Orleans in the 1950s is assured. His glorious, exuberant rhythm'n'blues deserves a better fate than it has received to date.
Recording: At Cosimo's (New Orleans) in mono