Jerry Lee Lewis, the untamable rock ‘n’ roll pioneer whose outrageous expertise, vitality and ego collided on such definitive information as Nice Balls of Hearth and Entire Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On and who sustained a profession in any other case upended by private scandal, died on Friday at 87.
The final survivor of a era of groundbreaking performers that included Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Lewis died at his residence in Memphis, Tennessee, his consultant Zach Farnum stated.
Of all of the rock rebels to emerge within the Nineteen Fifties, few captured the brand new style’s attraction and hazard as unforgettably because the Louisiana-born piano participant who referred to as himself “The Killer”.
Tender ballads have been finest left to the outdated of us. Lewis was a one-man stampede who made followers scream and keyboards swear, his stay act so flamable that in a 1957 efficiency of Entire Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On on The Steve Allen Present, chairs have been thrown at him like buckets of water on an inferno.
“There was rockabilly. There was Elvis. However there was no pure rock ’n ’roll earlier than Jerry Lee Lewis kicked within the door,” a Lewis admirer as soon as noticed. That admirer was Jerry Lee Lewis.
It’s with nice unhappiness we have discovered in regards to the passing of Jerry Lee Lewis, who was simply inducted into the Nation Music Corridor of Fame this month. We lengthen our heartfelt condolences to his household and family members throughout this troublesome time. pic.twitter.com/Kzeb7XUR7d
— CMA Nation Music (@CountryMusic) October 28, 2022
However in his non-public life, he raged in ways in which may need ended his profession at this time — and practically did again then.
For a short time in 1958, he was a contender to exchange Elvis as rock’s prime hit maker after Presley was drafted into the US military. However whereas Lewis toured in England, the press discovered three damaging issues: He was married to 13-year-old (probably even 12-year-old) Myra Gale Brown. She was his cousin. And he was nonetheless married to his earlier spouse. His tour was cancelled, he was blacklisted from the radio and his earnings dropped in a single day to just about nothing.
“I most likely would have rearranged my life a bit of bit totally different, however I by no means did cover something from individuals,” Lewis advised the Wall Avenue Journal in 2014 when requested in regards to the marriage. “I simply went on with my life as regular.”
Over the next a long time, Lewis struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, authorized disputes and bodily sickness. Two of his many marriages led to his spouse’s early dying. Brown herself divorced him within the early Seventies and would later allege bodily and psychological cruelty that almost drove her to suicide.
“If I used to be nonetheless married to Jerry, I’d most likely be lifeless by now,” she advised Individuals journal in 1989.
Lewis reinvented himself as a rustic performer within the Nineteen Sixties, and the music trade ultimately forgave him, lengthy after he stopped having hits. He gained three Grammys and recorded with among the trade’s biggest stars.
In 2006, Lewis got here out with Final Man Standing, that includes Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, BB King and George Jones. In 2010, Lewis introduced in Jagger, Keith Richards, Sheryl Crow, Tim McGraw and others for the album Imply Outdated Man.
In The Rolling Stone Illustrated Historical past of Rock & Roll, first revealed in 1975, he recalled how he had persuaded disc jockeys to present him a second probability.
“This time I stated, ‘Look, man, let’s get collectively and draw a line on these things — a peace treaty you realize,’” he defined. Lewis would nonetheless play the outdated hits on stage however on the radio he would sing nation.
Lewis had a run of high 10 nation hits between 1967 and 1970 and hardly mellowed in any respect. He had remained common in Europe and a 1964 album, Reside on the Star Membership, Hamburg, is extensively thought to be one of many biggest live performance information.
A 1973 efficiency proved extra troublesome: Lewis sang for the Grand Ole Opry and broke two long-standing guidelines — no swearing and no non-country songs.
“I’m a rock and rollin’, country-and-western, rhythm and blues-singin’ motherf**ker,” he advised the viewers.
Lewis married seven instances and was not often removed from bother or dying. His fourth spouse, Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, drowned in a swimming pool in 1982 whereas suing for divorce. His fifth spouse, Shawn Stephens, 23 years his junior, died of an obvious drug overdose in 1983. Inside a 12 months, Lewis had married Kerrie McCarver, then 21. She filed for divorce in 1986, accusing him of bodily abuse and infidelity. He countersued, however each petitions ultimately have been dropped. They lastly divorced in 2005 after a number of years of separation. The couple had one baby, Jerry Lee III.
One other son by a earlier marriage, Steve Allen Lewis, drowned in a swimming pool in 1962 on the age of three, and son Jerry Lee Jr died in a site visitors accident at 19 in 1973. Lewis additionally had two daughters, Phoebe and Lori Leigh, and is survived by his spouse Judith.
His funds have been additionally chaotic. Lewis made thousands and thousands, however he appreciated his cash in money and ended up owing tons of of 1000’s of {dollars} to the Inside Income Service. When he started welcoming vacationers in 1994 to his longtime residence close to Nesbit, Mississippi — full with a piano-shaped swimming pool — he arrange a telephone quantity followers might name for a recorded message at $2.75 a minute.
The son of one-time bootlegger Elmo Lewis and the cousin of TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and nation star Mickey Gilley, Lewis was born in Ferriday, Louisiana. As a boy, he first discovered to play guitar however discovered the instrument too confining and longed for an instrument that solely the wealthy individuals in his city might afford — a piano. His life modified when his father pulled up in his truck sooner or later and offered him with a dark-wood, upright set of keyboards.
“My eyes nearly fell out of my head,” Lewis recalled in Jerry Lee Lewis: His Personal Story, written by Rick Bragg and revealed in 2014.
He took to the piano instantly and started sneaking off to Black juke joints and absorbing every little thing from gospel to boogie-woogie. He was conflicted early on between secular and sacred music. He give up faculty at 16 with plans of changing into a piano-playing preacher. Lewis briefly attended Southwestern Assemblies of God College in Waxahachie, Texas, a fundamentalist Bible faculty, however was expelled reportedly for enjoying the “incorrect” sort of music.
Nice Balls of Hearth, a sexualized tackle Biblical imagery that Lewis initially refused to document, and Entire Lotta Shakin’ have been his most enduring songs and efficiency items. Lewis had solely a handful of different pop hits, together with Excessive Faculty Confidential and Breathless, however they have been sufficient to make sure his place as a rock ‘n’ roll architect.
“No group, be it [the] Beatles, Dylan or Stones, have ever improved on Entire Lotta Shakin’ for my cash,” John Lennon would inform Rolling Stone in 1970.
A roadhouse veteran by his early 20s, Lewis took off for Memphis in 1956 and confirmed up on the studios of Solar Information, the musical residence of Elvis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Money. Informed by firm founder Sam Phillips to go be taught some rock ‘n’ roll, Lewis returned and shortly hurried off Entire Lotta Shakin’ in a single take.
“I knew it was a success once I lower it,” he later stated. “Sam Phillips thought it was gonna be too risque, it couldn’t make it. If that’s risque, nicely, I’m sorry.”
In 1986, together with Elvis and Berry, he made the inaugural class of inductees for the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame. “The Killer” not solely outlasted his contemporaries however noticed his life and music periodically reintroduced to youthful followers, together with within the 1989 biopic Nice Balls of Hearth, starring Dennis Quaid, and Ethan Coen’s 2022 documentary Bother in Thoughts. A 2010 Broadway musical, Million Greenback Quartet, was impressed by a recording session that featured Lewis, Elvis, Perkins and Money.
He gained a Grammy in 1987 as a part of an interview album that was cited for finest spoken phrase recording, and he obtained a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2005. The next 12 months, Entire Lotta Shakin’ was chosen for the Library of Congress’s Nationwide Recording Registry. Its board praised the “propulsive boogie piano that was completely complemented by the drive of JM Van Eaton’s energetic drumming. The listeners to the recording, like Lewis himself, had a tough time remaining seated throughout the efficiency.”
