Great Balls of Fire
1957 popular song by Otis Blackwell and Jack Hammer
"Great Balls of Fire" is a 1957 popular song recorded by American rock and roll musician Jerry Lee Lewis on Sun Records and featured in the 1957 movie Jamboree. It was written by Otis Blackwell and Jack Hammer. The Jerry Lee Lewis 1957 recording was ranked as the 96th-greatest song ever by Rolling Stone. It is written in AABA form. It sold one million copies in its first 10 days of release in the United States, making it one of the best-selling singles at that time.
Background and Composition
"Great Balls of Fire" is best known for Jerry Lee Lewis's original, which was recorded in the Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, on October 8, 1957, using three personnel: Lewis (piano/vocals), Sidney Stokes (bass), and a session drummer, Larry Linn, instead of the usual Sun backups Jimmy Van Eaton (drums) and Roland Janes (guitar). Lewis was quoted in the book JLL: His Own Story by Rick Bragg, (pg 133), as saying "I knew Sidney Stokes, but I didn't know him that well either, and I don't know what happened to them people. That's the last time I ever seen 'em. That's strange isn't it?" It was released as a 45 rpm single on Sun 281 in November 1957. It reached number two on the Billboard pop charts, number three on the R&B charts, and number one on the country charts.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Great Balls of Fire” is 1957 popular song by Otis Blackwell and Jack Hammer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Great, Balls and Fire, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1957 popular song by Otis Blackwell and Jack Hammer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1028032. The Library of Congress control number is n2007069930. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Great Balls of Fire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.