Lewis, Jerry Lee (1935—)

Self-taught pianist and singer Jerry Lee Lewis is an original artist who, along with Elvis Presley, personifies the popular cultural ethos of the 1950s when rock 'n' roll emerged and rose to popularity, but forged his own unique and uninhibited style within the genre. A pianist and vocal stylist since the age of nine, Lewis began playing professionally at the age of 15 and rapidly developed into a consummate showman, enjoying a commercially successful career punctuated with a long spell of disfavor arising from the conduct of his personal life. His songs have made both the pop and country singles charts, and his rise to stardom from his humble beginnings is a tribute to his creativity, tenacity, and originality.

Born on September 29, 1935 in the Northern Louisiana town of Ferriday, Lewis grew up in grinding poverty, the son of subsistence farmer Elmo Lewis, whose meager living depended on the price of cotton. The family switched from the Baptist denomination to the Assembly of God Church, where the young Jerry Lee sang. He and his cousin, later the notorious evangelist Jimmy Lee Swaggart, would sneak into Haney Big House in the so-called "colored" section of town and listen to the blues men play. Lewis, a poor student, attended school only sporadically, and occasionally stole from the local merchants. The piano became an early focus in his life and he spent hours practicing on a neighbor's piano and those in the church until 1945 when his father borrowed against his belongings and bought an upright Starck piano for his ten-year-old son.

The youthful Lewis felt an affinity for the percussive sound of boogie-woogie blues, and his favorite songs in 1940s were the popular boogie hits "House of Blue Lights" and "Down the Road a Piece." He also sang Jimmie Rodgers and Al Jolson songs that he picked up from listening to his parent's records and, in 1948, first heard Hank Williams on The Louisiana Hayride, a radio program patterned after the Grand Ole Opry and broadcast from Shreveport, Louisiana. Lewis idolized Williams and learned his songs from the local radio broadcasts. Thus, Rodgers, Jolson, and Williams, along with boogie-woogie, were the influences that shaped his own style. In 1949, a hillbilly band played at the opening of a Ford dealership in Ferriday. The Lewis' were present, and Elmo Lewis urged the owners of the dealership to permit his 14-year-old son to sit in on piano. They consented, Lewis performed Stick McGhee's "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee," and the people loved him. Thereafter he quit school entirely to play for the local community on his upright piano that Elmo would load onto a pickup truck.

His religious upbringing in the Assembly of God Church caused conflict for Lewis, whose lifestyle was at odds with the church teachings, and he periodically hesitated at the crossroads of whether to serve God or Mammon. At the age of 15 he thought he might pursue the ministry and was sent off to attend Southwestern Bible Institute in Texas, but soon developed a taste for the Dallas night life and tired of the Institute's routine and discipline. He was eventually expelled from the Institute for playing the gospel song "Yes, God is Real" in a boogie-woogie style. His spiritual struggles tended to resolve themselves in favor of the secular when he needed money, and in 1954 he was hired by Johnny Littlejohn, a local Mississippi disc jockey and bandleader. From time to time, his conflict between God and the so-called devil's music would surface, and Littlejohn would have to plead with him to continue in the band.

Lewis continued to play professionally in Louisiana and Mississippi in "bucket of blood" clubs with the Johnny Littlejohn band. In the course of auditioning for The Louisiana Hayride program on KWKH in Shreveport, he recorded two songs, "I Don't Hurt Anymore," and "I Need You Now." The Memphis-based Sun Records, which had become the premier label of white rock 'n' roll by 1954 with Elvis Presley on their label, was a good prospect for an aspiring performer, and Lewis's family gathered 33-dozen eggs and sold them to the local supermarket to finance a trip to Memphis with his father to audition for Sun. A few country and rock 'n' roll sides were cut for Sun. On Lewis's second trip to Memphis, he recorded "Crazy Arms," a country hit by Ray Price that convinced Sun owner Sam Phillips that his music was commercially viable. While the record failed to make any charts, the response to "Crazy Arms" was ecstatic.

From 1954 to 1957, Lewis worked as a session pianist for Sun singers Warren Smith and Billy Lee Riley and continued to tour professionally. In 1957 Sun released "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," which was followed by a long tour with Johnny Cash in Canada, during which Lewis honed his stage act with antics such as kicking back the piano stool and playing the piano with his foot, and closed each performance with "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." He also earned the nickname "Killer" for his knockout performances. "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire" peaked at number three and number two respectively on the pop singles chart, and both reached number one on the country singles chart by the end of July, while "Breathless" reached number seven on the pop chart. Lewis's performance of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" triggered a backlash among people who perceived the song and its singer as a pernicious influence on young teenagers.

The power and sway of rock 'n' roll was too strong for the small backlash against Lewis's music, and his popularity surged. He enjoyed a number of important bookings that exposed him to a national audience, including appearances on The Big D Jamboree (a country-and-western show from Dallas), the Steve Allen Show in New York, Alan Freed's television show The Big Beat, and Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Lewis also performed at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem for a predominantly black audience and was well received. A 12-day engagement booked by Alan Freed at the Paramount Theatre in New York, where Lewis shared the headline spot with Fats Domino, broke attendance records.

A number of women came to play a significant role in Lewis's life. At the age of 16, while toying with the idea of becoming a minister, he married and divorced Dorothy Barton; in 1953, at the age of 17, he met and married Jane Mitcham and was a father by age 19. Before the breakup and divorce of that marriage, he fell in love with his second cousin, 13-year-old Myra Gale. Lewis and Gale were married and soon after, accompanied by Myra, Lewis embarked on a 37-day, 30-show tour engagement in England. A media frenzy and public animosity over his child-bride's age ensued, and forced the cancellation of the tour after three performances. He returned to the United States amidst a storm of controversy, and despite issuing an apologetic response to Billboard readers upset by his marriage, the media was unrelenting and moral outrage continued. Jerry Lee Lewis's career went into decline for ten years.

In addition to concert engagements, Lewis had appeared in a handful of movies, including Jamboree (1957), a low-budget Warner Bros. excuse for featuring rock 'n' roll artists in which he sang "Great Balls of Fire," and High School Confidential (1958). He was also in Be My Guest, a low-budget pop stage musical in London, and played Iago in a Los Angeles production of Catch My Soul, a rock opera version of Shakespeare's Othello. While theater critics were negative about the show itself, Lewis's performance as Iago was deemed sensational.

The musician finally made a comeback, as a country star, in 1968. His contract with Sun records had ended in 1963, after he had cut more than 160 titles, and he signed with Smash Records, a subsidiary of Mercury Records. In 1968, Lewis recorded "Another Place, Another Time" for Smash, and for the first time in ten years, found himself with a Top Ten country hit, which crossed over to the pop charts. By 1969, Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the hottest country singers in the South and made a successful appearance at The Grand Ole Opry in 1973. A string of hit records, including "Another Place, Another Time," "What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)," "There Must Be More To Love Than This," and "Chantilly Lace," helped to raise his concert fee to $10,000 per performance. In 1973, he recorded the last sides for Mercury and then signed with Elektra.

Lewis's music can be divided into two stylistic periods: rock 'n' roll period from 1957 to 1968 and country from 1968 onwards (although he was also continuing to play revival and "oldies" bills, performing numbers from the rock 'n' roll repertoire). Lewis's early musical influences included African-American blues and gospel, as well as the popular music heard on records and the radio. His early piano style is basically a simple rhythmic boogie left hand, with excessive use of glissando (rapid running of the thumb across the keys) and a distinctive percussive pounding in the right hand; his characteristic vocal style makes use of yodeling, upward bends with occasional falsetto breaks. The combined result is frenetic, entertaining, sometimes moving, and intensely musical.

Controversy and tragedy have dogged Jerry Lee Lewis. Both his sons died, triggering his return to the pills and alcohol that he had been addicted to since his teens. He accidentally shot his bass player in the chest, and in 1976 was arrested for waving a gun outside Elvis Presley's mansion, Graceland. The circumstances surrounding the deaths of his fourth and fifth wives have been viewed with suspicion. His fourth wife died in a swimming pool, and his fifth was found dead at his home following a methadone overdose. By 1979, the IRS took possession of his property in lieu of $274,000 in back taxes. He has been hospitalized several times, reportedly close to death, and was alleged to have suffered a mild heart attack in 1996.

Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the first inductees to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 and, despite the shadows hanging over his life, the "Killer" was still performing—resolutely upbeat in body and spirit—as the twentieth century drew to its close. In 1989 Great Balls of Fire!, a biographical movie, was released, starring Dennis Quaid as Lewis and charting the rocky road with Myra (Winona Ryder) in dramatic detail.

—Willie Collins