Producers include: Jack Clement, Sam Phillips, Jerry Kennedy, Eddie Kilroy, Steve Rowland.

Compilation producer: Andy McKaie.

Includes liner notes by Colin Escott.

Digitally remastered by Jim Phillips (MCA Music Media Studios, North Hollywood, California).

This is part of MCA's 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection series.

20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection collects 12 highlights from Jerry Lee's Smash recordings, which means the first four tracks -- "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," "Great Ball of Fire," "Breathless," and "High School Confidential" -- are re-recordings. Good re-recordings, but re-recordings all the same. That doesn't really matter, since the remaining eight songs are all prime hardcore honky tonk from the killer. "Another Time Another Place," "What's Made Milwaukee Famous," "She Even Woke Me up to Say Goodbye," "Drinking Wine Spo-Dee O'Dee," and "Middle Age Crazy" are all classics, and the remaining three cuts are just a notch below their high quality. So, while 20th Century Masters may not deliver the classic Sun hits, it does provide a good budget-line introduction to his country work, which is still underappreciated by audiences who just know his rocking classics. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

It is of course impossible to do justice to the scope and grandeur of the Killer's oeuvre in only 12 songs, but if you have to do it, this is probably as good as it can be done. Lewis's pioneering Sun Records work is represented by three epochal rockers and the country weeper "You Win Again." From the Mercury years, when he miraculously reinvented himself, you get the wry "What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me") and "She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye." Other highpoints include a ferocious remake of "Drinking Wine Spo-Dee O'Dee," from an early '70s album where he was backed by British musicians including Peter Frampton; and from 1980, his last country hit, the genuinely poignant "Thirty-Nine and Holding."