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
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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.
There is no other. Jerry Lee Lewis. Thanks for existing here on planet Earth. You are larger then life my favorite kind of person. The world salutes you. Now kick down some of that top shelf whiskey, hop on that big daddy roth custom bar stool, peel out and feel the breeze
Hello! Hope this note finds you well, if it finds you at all! Im 45 and have been dancing and singing along to your music as long as I can remember! You have left your mark, no doubt! Your ability to do it “your way” and stay true to that rather than being a sell-out is what I admire most of all……..in closing I will mention that my in-laws are from Ferriday – The Craft’s and The Water’s , so I have heard a few stories 😂! Keep on Keeping On!!!!❣️
Miss you and hope you are well.
The Paul Vaughn Family
Ann
Wendy (Austin, Madelyn and Mason)
Mark (Traci )
Thank You. I love you.
You are The KILLER !! Rock on !!
JUST AN OLD FAN, I’M 81, BEEN A FAN SINCE BACK IN THE 50’S. HEARD ONE OF YOUR SONG FOR THE FIRST TIME TODAY. IS=T’S CALLED “SEASONS OF MY HEART. I THINK IT’S ONE OF YOUR BEST. I MET YOU TWO OR THREE TIME BACK IN THE 60’S, JUST AT ONE OF YOUR SHOWS, JUST SHOOK HANDS. I PLAY PIANO AND PLAY A LOT OF YOUR SONGS, I CAN’T PLAY LIKE YOU BUT SURE DO LIKE TO TRY. I HAVE DOWNLOADED YOUR SONGS INTO MY COMOUTER, THEM I ENJOY PLAYING MY PIANO WITH YOU.
I’M NOT LOOKING FOR AN ANSWER, JUST WANTED TO TELL YOU ANOTHER PERSON REALLY LIKES YOUR MUSIC.
One of the Biggest KILLER Fans Here!!!!! My name is Shane George of Lena Flatwoods in Lena Louisiana. I have always wanted a personal autograph on a photo and maybe even his greatest hits cd. My favorite Songs are Great Balls of Fire, Fools like Me, Crazy Arms, Whole Lotta Shaking Going On, What I’d Say, I am what I am, Rockin’ my Life Away, Flip Flop and Fly, and even Don’t put No Headstand on my Grave. I have been a loving KILLER fan since 1994 which was my sophomore year in high school. I would love to talk with you and possibly even see you, but I am down on my luck and have very limited income and no transportation at this time. The KILLER is one of my favorite musicians and a big role model to my life. It has been a bucket list item of mine for many years. I have recently lost both my parents, my mama in November 2018 and then my daddy 6 months later in May 2019. That was one of the hardest things I ever experienced and I wasn’t ready to lose them yet, but with the support and love of my wife Alexandra I have accepted that they are in a better place and I will see them again one day. I know you guys are very busy and have a lot to do, but if you could read this and respond it would make a dream of mine come true. I do not personally own a phone but my wife’s number is (318) 451-0451, if you could please text her and maybe possibly send a autographed current photo of the KILLER and maybe even an autographed cd of his to her at Alexandra Gail 1600 Lena Flatwoods Rd Lena Louisiana 71447. It would be very much appreciated if y’all could respond at least, I will never uncommitt myself as one of the BIGGEST KILLER FANS… Well now I wait and see what will happen, thanks for letting me have the opportunity to contact you and the KILLER personally and express my feelings and view of one of the Greatest in the World. Thank You Again, Sincerely Shane T. George…..
Mr. Jerry Lee,
Sir I have always been a huge fan of what I consider the greatest artist of all time. This year I celebrate my 50th birthday and ever since I can remember the Legends that came from Sun Records are the best that ever lived. When my wife asked what I wanted to do for my big 50th, of course I said I wanted to go to Memphis. This will be my wifes first time and I plan on taking her everywhere I can. I wish I could have been around in the early years to experience all the greats in person, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, BB King and of course the man behind the piano. I hope you are doing well and God Bless.
Kenny
In 1966 i was 12 years old and my brother bought me a record Jerry Lee Lewiis THE GREATEST LIVE SHOW ON EARTH i wore that thing out and then some. it was the greatest thing i ever heard and still is here at 68 yrs old I have always had a copy of that record Thank You for all the great music . there will never be another one like you .
So much talent. Love your music. I was there when you played Lewiston, Maine in the 50s. Believe you were on some Alan Freedman tour. Chuck Berry square foot junked to the top of your piano while playing and singing. Wish there was music in me but my talent goes to oil painting. I watch you almost nightly on You Tube. You and the Three Stooges are nightly guests.
Mr.Jerry Lee Lewis, from being a baby on my mama had me listening to you and I’m 39 years old now and still listen and love every second of your music. Always wanted to see you play, or shake your hand! Thank you for the awesome music and now I have all these sweet memories of listening to you with my mama. Thank you for that! She passed away a decade ago. I hope you are doing well sir.
Amazing life, and sound! Wow what a artist for the ages! I do not feel he received nearly enough credit for his contributions. In my book he is the king of cool!
Dear Jerry Lee,
Thank you for recording such beautiful gospel solos and duets. Although they are not your most popular songs, they are my favorite.
Jerry lee keep rockin……..elvis,johnny,and carl is not here,but we love you….don’t give up jerry,keep being motivated……I think you need to do a tribute album dedicated to you,elvis,johnny,and carl……do it killer plz……..I wrote a song do you want it…. ill give it to you, all I wanna be is a a name that wrote the song you can have the rest……. message me and I’ll give you the details…… you are the last man standing with the million dollar quarter……sun records baby…….. love you jerry……My daddy was on the grand old opry…. with lester flat and earl Scruggs…… Shhhhh….
Jerry Lee thank you for your music and your faith in JESUS .
Music is my life. Ok was a Dee jay for a dozen radio stations from ’71-’14. High school radio until I was near sixty.
Jerry Lee – my 4-year-old nephew George is a big fan. We’ve been playing your music for him from the beginning. he is especially riveted when we watch videos of you playing the piano. He watches your hands fly 🙂
Is it possible to receive an autographed picture? Is there a fee that we could pay?
JERRY LEE IS ROCK N ROLL .
This coming June 2022, I turn 51 years old. I grew up listening to Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash, to name a few. It was musicians, like these, that taught me how to express myself. I always wished I had the opportunity to say, “Thank you for your amazing talent and all you represented while just staying true to yourself.” Elvis passed when I was 6. I met, met & shook hands with Johnny Cash at 10 years old and got to tell him I loved his music. Now, I hope that my comment here reaches Jerry Lee Lewis. If it does, I would like him to know that he was one of the musicians that I introduced to my kids, and my grandkids, and taught them to appreciate all forms of music. Again, thank you, and keep doing what makes you happy.
It was ’71 or ’72. I saw you playing at the airmen’s club at Chanute AFB in Rantoul, IL in the afternoon to an audience of a handful.
I love your music. A student in my first grade class brought a record of “Great Balls of Fire”. At the time we all laughed because the music seemed so strange. Now, of course, every kid in that class will remember what he was doing when he first heard your music.
Thanks for the great memories Jerry..
I will be in Memphis in June and wonder if the ranch will be open then
Hope you are recuperating and doing well in 2022. Thanks for all the great music and the inspiration you go to the World!
Thanks for making the good times roll! Your music still shakes my nerve and rattles my brain.
My Wife Cathy & I Love Your Music ! I Saw You In Person (Atlantic City N.J. & Las Vegas Nevada @ The Tropicana) You Are The Best Performer I Have Ever Seen Including Tom Jones & Wayne Newton. Wishing You All The Best.
I have always been a big fan and so inspired by your story. You were gifted before and beyond your time. Not just in the overall music industry but also in the church. I can only imagine what music could have come from your heart if the church wouldn’t have pushed you away. I’m sorry you had to deal with that. God loves you as much today as he did when you were playing My God Is Real in a way people just couldn’t understand. He has always understood you. Blessings to you and your family.