Jerry Lee Lewis loves his fans. Sign Jerry Lee Lewis’ Official Guestbook by adding your comment below.
Jerry Lee Lewis loves his fans. Sign Jerry Lee Lewis’ Official Guestbook by adding your comment below.
Somewhere in the world, in a mean little honky-tonk or big music hall or church basement rec room, someone is playing a Jerry Lee Lewis song. Wherever there is a piano, someone is shouting…
You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain
Too much love drives a man insane…
“But they won’t play it like the Killer,” Lewis liked to say, as if he needed to make sure the whole world was hearing him right, hearing the pounding genius of it, in songs like “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” “Breathless” and “Great Balls of Fire.”
“’Cause,” he liked to say, “ain’t but one of me.”
You broke my will
But what a thrill…
Lewis, perhaps the last true, great icon of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, whose marriage of blues, gospel, country, honky-tonk and raw, pounding stage performances so threatened a young Elvis Presley that it made him cry, has died.
He was there at the beginning, with Elvis, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, and the rest, and watched them fade away one by one till it was him alone to bear witness, and sing of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll.
“Who would have thought,” he said, near the end of his days, “it would be me?”
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!
He suffered through the last years of his life from various illnesses and injuries that, his physicians have often said, should have taken him decades ago; he had abused his body so thoroughly as a young man he was given little chance of lasting through middle age, let alone old age.
“He is ready to leave,” his wife Judith said, just before his death.
Lewis, who performed everything from “Over the Rainbow” to Al Jolson, who played the Opry and the Apollo and even Shakespeare, was 87 years old.
Some music historians have wondered if Lewis, regarded by his fans and many music historians as rock’s first, great wild man, might be indestructible; his obituary has been written, re-written, then shelved, gathering dust for a day that seemed inevitable, but seemed to never come. He defied death in his old age just as he shrugged off the hard-driving, self-destructive lifestyle of his younger years, to play his music to a worldwide audience across seven decades, decorate the walls of his home with Grammys and gold records, and spawn a million outrageous stories — most of them true.
Once, when asked by a biographer: “Is it true that…”
“Yeah,” interrupted Lewis, without waiting to hear the particulars, “it probably was.”
His beginnings sounded like myth. His father, Elmo, and mother, Mamie, mortgaged their farm to buy him a piano, after he climbed onto a piano bench and, without ever having touched a keyboard before, began to play. His nickname, Killer, had nothing to do with his playing, but came from a schoolroom fight in Ferriday when he tried to choke a grown man with his own necktie; still, it fit the man, the musician to come, but there was more to him than a barroom piano pounder who sometimes kept a pistol in his pants.
Musicians and music journalists called him a true virtuoso, whose music was so rich and complex that some of them swore there were two pianos on stage instead of one. He played honky-tonk and blues across the same keyboard in the same instant, could play melody with both hands. He sang rockabilly before he knew it had a name, sang blues, gospel and country in the same set and sometimes the same breath, to become No. 24 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Sam Phillips, who launched the careers of Elvis and Lewis at Sun Records in Memphis, called Lewis the most talented person he had ever seen. A talent that made him one of the very few to be inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s first class in 1986 and, most recently this past week, at long last, into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
As Lewis stacked hits on the charts in ’57 and Elvis received his draft notice, the reigning king of rock ‘n’ roll drove to Sun Records in tears, to tell Lewis: “You can have it.”
But if Jerry Lee’s life was a comet that streaked across the sky of American music, it was also a thing that scorched him inside and out, and so many of the people around him.
Judith, his seventh wife, was by his side when he passed away at his home in Desoto County, Mississippi, south of Memphis. He told her, in his final days, that he welcomed the hereafter, and that he was not afraid.
Born into the Assembly of God church in his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana, he never stopped believing, even when his lifestyle made the specter of hell seem closer. His greatest fear, that he would be condemned to a lake of fire for playing what many in his Pentecostal faith called “the devil’s music,” haunted him. He shared his fear with Elvis, who begged him to never mention it again. Lewis thought Elvis, also a Pentecostal, was the one person who might understand, but he died in ’77, leaving Lewis to wonder, alone.
He had prayed every day across his long life for forgiveness, and for salvation. His was a church that believed in miracles; why, he sometimes wondered, should he not be one of them? He found peace near the end of his life in a simple idea: that a music that brought such joy to so many could only come from God, “and the devil,” he said, “didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.”
“He said he was ready to be with Jesus,” said Judith.
His last album was a gospel record with his cousin, lifetime televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who had preached against his music when they were younger. In Jerry Lee’s final months, they took turns at the keyboard, singing songs they learned as children: “Old Rugged Cross” and “Lily of the Valley” and “In the Garden.” Lewis, though his voice and body were weakened by his injury and a recent stroke, seemed happy, content.
Much of his life, Lewis had seemed determined to leave the world in the great fire he sang about. He set pianos ablaze, busted hecklers in the head with the butt-end of his microphone stand and rammed the gates of Graceland with his Rolls Royce. He shot holes in the wall of his Memphis office with a .38 revolver, shot his bass player in the chest, “by accident,” with a .357. His life, at different times, was a blur of high-speed chases and Crown Royal. The DEA met his planes on the runway. Fortunes came and went; all the wild rock musicians who came after him, he said, were mostly amateurs. Keith Richards tried to toss up a bottle of Crown Royal and catch it by the neck, like him, “but he never did it right … wasted a bunch of good liquor.”
But if you asked him, in his waning years, what he hoped people would say about him, he had a simple answer.
“You can tell ‘em I played the piano and sang rock ‘n’ roll.”
His career, like his body, seemed doomed a dozen times.
After soaring to the top of the charts in ’57 with songs like “Shakin’” and “High School Confidential,” he was castigated in the press for his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin, Myra. His rock’n’ roll star seemed to burn out even as it began to rise, and after a few big hits in the early 1960s his career seemed to be over. He responded by loading two cars with instruments and musicians and hitting the road, to play some big rooms, still, but also every honky-tonk and beer joint that would pay him to perform. He fought his way out of beer joints in Iowa, then drove all night and all day to another town and another show.
Sometimes he gave them magic and sometimes, if the mood was on him, he gave them less, but in his old age he swore he gave them the magic all the time. In ’64, record producers taped his show at a Hamburg, Germany, nightclub and made what would become music history. Live at the Star Club would be regarded as one the rawest, wildest, and greatest live albums of all time.
Then, in a twist that surprised many of his rock fans, Jerry Lee Lewis went country. “Another Place, Another Time,” was just the beginning of a string of soulful country chart-toppers that made him rich and famous all over again. He had more than 30 songs reach Billboard’s Top 10, including “To Make Love Sweeter for You” and a haunting “Would You Take Another Chance on Me.” It seemed only natural to Jerry Lee. He had always believed that Hank Williams hung the moon.
In this new stardom he finally played the Grand Ole Opry, the organization that had once snubbed him, and ignored the two-song protocol to play what and for long as he pleased, even playing through the commercials. Then, in perhaps the oddest twist of his musical career, he was cast as Shakespeare’s sinister Iago in a musical production in Los Angeles; he was a natural.
Once again, he flew around the world, sometimes on his own plane, and once again his lifestyle made almost as many headlines as his music. Tragedy followed him; he buried two sons. His health began to fail, marriages failed, but somehow he always rallied, always kept playing, for big paydays, or for free in a Memphis nightclub, living the life he sang about in his songs.
In 2006, his Last Man Standing album sold a million copies, his best-selling album of his long career. He followed that with another success, Mean Ol’ Man. You could hear the ghosts of the old honky-tonks in them, as if Jerry Lee Lewis had, truly, found a way to stop time. He did a duet with Springsteen.
His Lifetime Achievement Grammy was a kind of crowning achievement, and he appeared at Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame shows to accept his due and to school the whippersnappers on how it was done.
In 2012, when he was 76, he fell in love and married Judith, and they lived quietly – quietly for Jerry Lee Lewis – in northern Mississippi, though Lewis continued to do shows here in the U.S. and abroad. That year they took a trip to Ferriday to visit the family cemetery, and to drive across the bridge to Natchez where, as a boy, Jerry Lee used to dangle over the girders high above the brown water of the Mississippi and the passing boats below. The other boys begged him to get down, but he just hung there, grinning, till they were in tears. When asked if he was scared, a lifetime later, he just looked surprised. The Killer didn’t get scared. But looking down at the river as an old man, he said he might have been crazy.
Later, they drove past the church where he beat the piano to pieces with his cousins Swaggart and Mickey Gilley, who would go on to country music stardom, pounding a little blues and honky-tonk into the hymns they were supposed to be practicing.
Just across town from the tiny church had once stood the other temple of his musical education, a blues joint called Haney’s Big House, where some of the biggest acts in the country came to play. As a little boy, he snuck in the door and hid under the tables to hear rolling blues piano and wicked guitar. And somewhere in between it all, between the hymnals and the beer joints, between Hank Williams and Ray Charles, he found something that was his alone. It was always a waste of breath to ask if he had any regrets.
He had a million, and he had none. It all just depended on the song that was running through his head at the time.
“I’ve had an interesting life,” he said, in his 2014 biography, “haven’t I?”
Written by Rick Bragg
—
Jerry Lee Lewis is survived by his wife, Judith Coghlan Lewis, his children Jerry Lee Lewis III, Ronnie Lewis, Pheobe Lewis and Lori Lancaster, sister Linda Gail Lewis, cousin Jimmy Swaggart and many grandchildren, nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents Elmo and Mamie Lewis, sons Steve Allen Lewis and Jerry Lee Lewis Jr., his siblings Elmo Lewis Jr. and Frankie Jean Lewis and his cousin Mickey Gilley.
Services and more information will be announced in the following days. In lieu of flowers, the Lewis family requests donations be made in Jerry Lee Lewis’ honor to the Arthritis Foundation or MusiCares – the non-profit foundation of the GRAMMYs / National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Gracias por tu música. Quizás algún día llegue a conocerte y cruzar unas teclas contigo
I was raised on plenty of the rock n roll greats, but Jerry is by far my favorite! Before the days of computers and autotune, musicians operated on raw talent. Which is why their music is alive and well, and today’s music is trash.
Happy Birthday Jerry , YOU ROCK . I was named after you . Your fan Always
Hi Jerry-Lee; I am a 76 year old keyboard player. I studied classical music until I was 16 but got way more interested in girls and cars. My dad taught me a basic boogie-woogie riff when I was eight years old and I was hooked. I was a shy kid but I could always play the piano and people listened. I have played in many bands over the years but I made my living as a photographer; and even though I failed every grade in school, I ended up as a University Professor teaching media arts, photograph etc. I had quite severe learning disabilities that I only found out about 10 years ago, explained a lot. Just go back from the local Legion (Canadian war vets association all over Canada). Belted out Great Balls of Fire, beer appeared on the top of the piano. Thanks for the music, thanks for the inspiration and thanks for being you ( Oscar Wilde said “You may as well be yourself, everyone else is taken”. Rock on, warm regards, Jim Chambers, Ontario, Canada
An old friend of mine in the ’80s used to tour with Jerry for awhile as a guitarist and his stories of touring with him, as well as with his own band later on hitting the honkytonks, are some great memories, His name was Tom Parker and he left an impression with me through his many stories of this and many other things he had experienced. Sadly, Tom passed away at about 49.
My great grandfather had gone to Texas, and had another family his last name was Walls, and my uncle said that he returned but would never say anything about it. I saw you way back in 69 at the what’s it’ a show for youth put on by a Father Shimth S.C, Ca. Blew my mind, Rock and Roll from that time forword. Took me a while to figure it out, and would love to tell you how I finely did sometime; Stay Strong and Carry On… SlConn
Hi there a Jerry And peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you brother and in the heart of rock ‘n’ roll itself and for my poor heart itself I wish you great health and peace as we travel along this ok’ rocky road! Today I played for the first time a copy of your first son Record and I am an avid collector of all your albums and a musician myself and got to see you in Greenville South Carolina just a little while back right before this terrible virus came through! Keep rockin killer and we send much love from South Carolina
Peace to you always in the love of Christ Jesus,
Bradley C.
Thank you for all music! One of my favorites is “What made Milwaukee famous” and a do listen to it often. Rock on Jerry Lee <3
Elisabeth from Sweden
you are the greatest pianist of all time! I adore you forever! You are very lucky to have been part of Sun Records from the start with Elvis! I’m 70 years old and I’ve been listening to you since the 60’s! I wish you a very happy birthday
with Judith who adores you, very good health and being at the piano until the age of 120! Happy birthday Rock’n roll !!! Sincerely! Thomas
Dear Jerry Lee,
We are a Rock & Roll band called The PrimaDonna Reeds located in NYC on the Lower East Side. We’d be happy to host you to do a show with us, including room and board in my townhouse near Central Park (that my mother left me). Come on FEEL THE NOISE! Let us know. Keep on ROCKING!
Karena
Jerry Lee, I am just 27 years old but I can say that you have been a huge part of my childhood. I would play your songs repeatedly at the mere age of 6 years old and even inspired me to play the piano in the hopes of playing some of your legendary songs! Hopefully I am lucky enough to see one of your shows, it would be an amazing accomplishment for me and honor.
God bless!
“ the greatest music ever made was from Sun Records . And we love you and your music ! Thank you for years of great music !” – Willie Roger Wine –
Jeery Lee, you ROCK! saw you in jackson-hilton ballroom!! who was that little guy who opened fort you? peace and love, vanessa!
Sir:
Keep on rockin .Keep on shakin. You are the killer…I’m a kid to you yet I am 72 years of age. Your songs were some of the first I heard as a youngster..Great balls of fire.
I hope you are in good health.
Thanks for making the music you have made sir.
Peace and love to you.
Sincerely, Raymond
I’m young, just 35 years old but I grew up listening to Jerry Lee Lewis all the time. I recently inherited a piano that the previous owners said Jerry Lee Lewis played! How neat I can tell my kids they’re learning on a piano once played by one of the greats! I’ll always think of you when my piano is played.
JERRY LEE LEWIS, I HAVE LISTENED TO YOUR WONDERFUL TALENT SINCE 1955 ! I am only five years younger than you. You have been a big part of my life for 66 years! What a wonderful talent…. that piano is alive when you play. When I was a kid I listened to you in my bedroom for hours ! You helped me through difficult teenage years. I love you and your amazing talent. How lucky we all are to have been blessed with you in our lives.
i’ve watched pianists in Europe who learned from you and were inspired by you. God Bless You! Waylesy
Jerry you will always be the greatest, but I especially love your country/gospel songs. God bless you.
Thank you Jerry Lee Lewis for the dancing and the tears your music has brought us. We are lucky to have you.
I saw your video on Facebook. I love your music and my son who is 27 loves your music as well. I wish you well sir and wish that we could have seen you in concert. From Eastland, TX
I was 8 yrs old when I started singing and playing music at that time you were my favorite your you win again best cover . I’m 70 now still when I sing your songs people go crazy Thank you for being the KILLE.
R
Thank you for a lifetime of memories! Happy 85th birthday!
I got kicked
Out of SOUTHWESTERN AofG College JUST LIKE like you did
but THANK GOD I.Came Back to
Him. I hope you did to
God bless you and Elvis, and the “the gang”… AND the family!!!!!!!!
hi i am 27 and from England my dad brought up me on your amazing music, and too see all these years later you music is still going and as amazing as it was when you 1st started!
My dad actually met you once in England (croydon) between 1972/1978 with his friend who was doing an article about you for the rock pile magazine and he knew my dad idolised you so he brought him to meet you as it was his biggest dream to meet you. unfortunately the nerves got the better of him and he froze up not being able to speak his biggets regret was not talking to you and getting an autograph, but he has always said it was the biggest honour to be in your presence. thank you for your amazing music. you are a complete legend!!!
I’ve been a fan of Jerry’s since 1957 and still am. Last Man Standing is in my car CD player as I write this. I was lucky enough to see him in person 3 times. The very first time I went with 3 friends to see him in San Jose Ca. but we didn’t have enough money between us for all 4 of us to get in. I wanted to leave one of them in the car while 3 of us went inside but that got voted down, so no one got to see him that night. Bad thing was we could hear him from outside in the parking lot. (that must have been around 1959-60)