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.
YOU ARE THE KILLER … THE ONE AND ONLY! AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED.
I’ve been a fan since 1975 and still listen to your songs and remember the times I saw you live.
Keep on Keeping On, my friend!
Doug Harrold
Lenoir, NC
Here’s hoping you come back to the UK sometime. I saw you in London around 1990, I remember a guy got up on stage for your autograph, and you very graciously grave him it after waving off the security guard who tried to stop him. You are a true legend sir. Wishing you a long, healthy and happy life.
Thank you for all those memories of your great music. My husband loves you as I do. I want to surprise him and take him to your ranch.
Thanks for all that you’ve done for so many people for so many years!
Love your music Jerry and u keep rockin love it man I hope I am still rockin like that at your age I am only 40 ! Just wow!
Jerry Lee , first I’m sorry to hear of your familys loss of Mikey GILLEY. He was a great entertainer. I also want you to know how much I’ve enjoyed your music. Thank you for all you have given us.
I’m a second-generation fan of The Killer. I was raised right. Lol. Jerry Lee, I want to thank you for all the wonderful, rockin’ music. You and your pumping piano changed the world. I’m waiting for another gospel album from you. If not now, then in eternity. See you, brother.
Jerry Lee Lewis is the King of Rock & Roll! Thank you for all the great music & the Legacy you have made for our family & the whole world!
The BEST to ever do it! Thank God for The Killer…
Thank You for all the great memories your music made possible.
My grandfather and I have been listening to you since 1981 (I was 5!)
I think you are the greatest ever. You will be the super king forever. No one will ever match you. Your neighbor . I would love to have one of your pipes from your collection .
We love you Jerry
Hey Jerry I love all of you’re music you are the greatest of all time thanks for all you do have you ever thought about you and jimmy swaggart making a gospel album together it would be a great thing to listen to just something to think about I love you Jerry thanks
From the moment I first heard “Crazy Arms” Christmas time 1956 on WRAP, Norfolk’s premier black station back then, I told my friends you were the best rockin’ singer/pianist I’d ever heard. I was 13 then; today I’m 80, and my opinion has never changed. Bought every one of your 24 Sun singles, 4 EPs and 2 LPs as soon as they came out, up through my college days in 1963 … and kept right on through your Smash – Mercury – Elektra years. Still have them all. As a writer, I had the pleasure of interviewing you 3 times and found you to be, deeo down, a real kindred soul, a man of the South. “Killer” is a great rock & roll image, but it belies the down-to-earth “giving person” you really are. You never sold out to the corporate music world, but stayed true to your music and the people who loved both you and your music. God gives talent to a lot of folks — and a lot of folks waste it. You didn’t. And, because of that, you are an immortal. You will live forever through your music.
God bless you, Jerry Lee.
I was 8 years old whenever I watched “Great Balls of Fire” the week after I watched it, I signed up for piano lessons, I am 21 now, and have been playing ever since. I can sit and listen to you play for hours. You have always inspired me.
My first experience with Jerry Lee was when I was 7 or 8 years old back in 1957 0r 58. My grandmother was a house mother at a girls orphange. She worked on the 4th floor which was the teenagers, After dinner and homework was done the girls used to go down to the end of the hall to play records and dance. They played a lot of Jerry Lee. I am now 71 years old and the memories are all so vivid. I was never much of a music lover, But I have found I love you from seeing a documentary on TV which led me to You Tube and WOW. I can not believe I missed an entire lifetime of your music. My fiends say its never to late. So here I am . Bless you and your family and Keep on Rockin’
Hi Jerry,
Thank you for all of the great music over the years!
My one wish is that you will record a full studio Christmas album.
I even have the title for you…
Jerry Lee Lewis- “Rock n’ Roll Christmas (and a Rock n’ Roll New year)” 🙂
Songs like “Run Rudolph Run” (Chuck Berry), “Santa Claus is Back in Town” and “Blue Christmas” (Elvis), Jingle Bell Rock” (Bobby Helms), “Please Come Home For Christmas” (Charles Brown/The Eagles), “Jingle Bells” (Brian Setzer), White Christmas” (Bing Crosby), “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” (Brenda Lee), “Christmas Baby Please come Home” (Darlene Love/U2), and
“Rock n’ Roll Christmas, (and a Rock n’ Roll New Year)” (David Gouge) just to name a few…
Anyway, keep on rockin’ Killer!
We love ya!
Take care and God bless!
your lifetime fan,
David Gouge
Hello Killer,
Thank you so much for that Rock n Roll Whole Lotta Shakin and Country Classic She even woke me up to say goodbye.
God Bless
Dear Jerry,
I’m sorry I haven’t been quite as loyal of a fan as maybe I should have been. Hope you’ll forgive me for that. My heart goes out to you now in greatful admiration. I used to see you often at Memphis Aero as you would leave for a concert somewhere. Then, there was another time in a little after hours bar on Brooks Rd (I think). My favorite song of your’s isn’t one that’s well-known, but for me it stands out, and tells me that you are a man with a heart of gold. It’s “Middle Age Crazy.” Thanks for all your hard work!
My first experience with Jerry Lee was when I was 7 or 8 years old back in 1957 0r 58. My grandmother was a house mother at a girls orphange. She worked on the 4th floor which was the teenagers, After dinner and homework was done the girls used to go down to the end of the hall to play records and dance. They played a lot of Jerry Lee. I am now 71 years old and the memories are all so vivid. Loved you then at that young age and still do. Keep on Rockin’
You could write a Sonnet… About our Easter Bonnet!! 2022 Always the Go To, For Easter! Love You Killer! Last Man Standing!
I took my Mom and Daddy to see you at the Russellville ballroom here in Michigan..i think 1980 or 1981..i was on the floor taking pictures of you with my brand new polaroid camera…still got the photos..my whole family always loved you and i still do..God bless and protect you always!!!
Dear Mr and Mrs Lewis.
Have a happy Easter and a wonderful summer.
Best regards from Norway
Greetings from Norway! The killer Will always be the number one!
Mr Lewis, there are music legends out there, I’m a fan of anyone that can play and sing the way you have and still do. You have got to be the legend of legends. I am designing my dining room as a r&r cafe and a tribute to all of you guys that brought music ALIVE! can you let me know if or how I can get a signed photo please. Keep rocking Mr Lewis…….. Regards Mark.
My best friend of 67 years and I have been avid fans since1957. We had tickets for a group of us from TN, AL and IN to meet for the last show you booked in Nashville So sorry it was canceled. Went to see your show for my 40th and 6oth birthdays. You wished me a Hapoy Birthday from the stage on my 40th and Mr. Lovelace did for my 60th. Thrilled me no end. Have been to several other of your shows in different places. We are in Hernando, MS tonight and hope to tour your place tomorrow. Would love to meet you in person. My friend and I travel a lot together and always play your music as entertainment on the road. We are planning our next trip to tour Ferriday We love you and hold you in our prayers.