In June 1969,
Sun Records founder
Sam Phillips sold the entire Sun catalog to
Shelby Singleton which included a treasure trove of unreleased Lewis recordings. With Jerry Lee's rebirth as a country star for
Smash Records, Singleton began releasing these older songs and packaged them in such a way that many buyers assumed they were recent recordings. Under the terms of the deal between Singleton and Phillips, the Sun International Corporation was formed with Phillips as a minority share holder, ensuring that Phillips would continue to get a piece of the pie and that the Sun name would remain relevant. As
Colin Escott observes in his essay for the 1986 retrospective The Killer: The Smash/Mercury Years, "After only seeing two Sun albums by Jerry Lee Lewis between 1957 and 1969, the market was suddenly flooded with three or four a year and even more recycled into budget compilations on
Pickwick Records." Consequently, Lewis found himself competing with his own past. Much like
Johnny Cash, his masters had also been a part of the Singleton/Phillips deal. Singleton would milk these unreleased recordings for years following The Golden Cream of the Country with A Taste of Country later in 1970.
"The Killer" was so hot in 1970 that Singleton issued one of Lewis's latter unreleased Sun recordings, "
One Minute Past Eternity", as a single and it climbed to number two on the country chart, following on the heels of Lewis's recent
Mercury smash "
She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye". The album also includes two songs by
Hank Williams, one of Lewis's biggest influences, as well as the
George Jones-penned "Seasons of My Heart," which Jerry Lee performs as a duet with his sister
Linda Gail Lewis.
