CHRIS ISAAK
When one of rock’s coolest crooners sings Sun Records classics, it’s a good, good thing

Chris Isaak can’t stop laughing. He’s at home in San Francisco, watching with rapt attention as his manager’s playful Maltese runs, dives and slides across the floor. “It’s hilarious!” Isaak exclaims. “You can tell he’s having fun.” He’s not the only one. On the new Beyond the Sun, Isaak himself clearly has a blast crooning long-ago hits from Sun Records’ 1950s golden era. The influence of artists like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis has always been audible in Isaak hits like “Wicked Game”

and “Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing,” but Beyond finds him at last charging headlong into the songs that have informed his own music for more than a quarter century. “This was the definition of a labor of love,” he says.

Beyond the Sun finds the California native putting his own stamp on tried-and-true evergreens like Cash’s “I Walk the Line” and Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire,” but unearths a few overlooked gems as well. “I tried to go for a balance,” he says. “I wanted to pick material the average listener would know. But I also wanted to use my expertise to say, ‘Here are a few things you might not know, but might really like.’”

To ensure authenticity, Isaak and his band—bassist Rowland Salley, drummer Kenney Dale Johnson, guitarist Hershel Yatovitz, pianist Scott Plunkett and percussionist Rafael Padilla—set up camp at the real Sun Studios in Memphis. “We recorded it like they did it in the ’50s,” he says. “We cut it all at one time, everybody in the room. No overdubbing, because that’s cheating. I told the guys, ‘This is the way it’s going to be: If I’m singing good, you better be playing good, because if that’s my best vocal take, guess which one we’re gonna use?’ We had a ball.”

Isaak and company had so much fun, in fact, that they got a little carried away. “My manager asked how many songs we’d cut and I said, ‘I think we’re up to 38,’” he recalls. “And she said, ‘Do you know how much it’s going to cost to mix that many?’” Isaak narrowed the set down to 14 tracks for the standard album, although a two-disc special edition throws in another 11. “I hope people go back and listen to the originals,” says Isaak, 55. “Hopefully someone will say, ‘I didn’t know this body of music was out there—but now I do.’”

–Lee Zimmerman

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