Dave Bartholomew Band
date & photographer unknown
The
Elvis Presley cover of the Lewis song
One Night (which altered one risque
lyric) was number 4 on the U.S.
Billboard Hot 100 chart and number 1 on
UK Singles Chart. I love this song with its klink-klink-klink piano beat that makes the song smoothly glide along, in spite of the bouncy rhythm, while Presley does what he does best.
Lewis's recording of Shame, Shame, Shame was used in the soundtrack of the film Baby Doll in 1956. The song failed to enter the R&B chart. It was covered by the Merseybeats for their EP On Stage in 1964 and Aerosmith included it on their blues album, Honkin' on Bobo, released in 2004. The song also provided the title of the fifth episode of the HBO television series Treme, which included a rewritten version of the song with lyrics critical of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina.
A short clip from I Hear You Knocking is included on the Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman novelty hit, The Flying Saucer (link below),
in which, in an ironic nod to his original stage name, Lewis is
referred to as "Laughing Lewis." Like everyone else whose music was
appropriated for the record, Lewis was never paid.
In 1975, Sylvia Robinson wrote a song with the same title performed by
Shirley & Company, however, it was noting like the Lewis song. It is disco at it's best with a fantastic sax played by
Seldon Powell! It was at the beginning of the disco era, so, what more can be said about that?
Lewis was hospitalized in 1965 with a diagnosis of
ulcer; surgery revealed that he had
stomach cancer.
Bartholomew organized a benefit for him at La Ray's on Dryades Street.
On October 7, 1966, three days before the benefit, Lewis died, in the
arms of his second wife, Dorothy Ester Lemons, whom he had married six
months before.
