Biography
Born in Ferriday, Louisiana, Jerry Lee Lewis showed
an early, natural talent for the piano. His parents were
poor but took out a loan to buy a third-hand upright
piano for him. Sharing piano lessons with his cousins
Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Lee Swaggart, the ten-year old
Lewis is said to have shown remarkable aptitude for the
instrument. A visit from piano-playing older cousin Carl
McVoy revealed the methods for the boogie-woogie styles
he was hearing on the radio and across the tracks at
Haney's Big House, which was owned by his uncle, Lee
Calhoun, and catered exclusively to blacks. Lewis mixed
boogie-woogie with gospel and country and developed his
own style. He combined genres in the way he syncopated
his rhythms on the piano: his left hand generally played
boogie while his right played the high keys with
flamboyant elaboration and show. By all family accounts,
by the time Lewis was 14, he was "as good as he was ever
going to get."
Like
Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis was raised singing
the Christian gospel music of integrated southern
Pentecostal churches. In 1950 he attended Southwestern
Bible Institute in Texas but was expelled for
misconduct, including playing rock and roll versions of
hymns in church.
Leaving religious music behind, he became a part of the
burgeoning new rock and roll sound, cutting his first
record in 1954. Two years later, at Sun Records studio
in Memphis, Tennessee, producer and engineer Jack
Clement discovered and recorded Lewis for the Sun label,
while owner Sam Phillips was away on a trip to Florida.
As a result, Lewis joined Presley, Roy Orbison, Carl
Perkins, and Johnny Cash as stars who began their
recording careers at Sun Studios around this same time.
Jerry Lee Lewis' first recording at Sun studios was his own
distinct version of the country ballad "Crazy Arms". In
1957, his piano and the pure rock and roll sound of
"Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" propelled him to
international fame. "Great Balls of Fire" soon followed,
and would become his biggest hit. Watching and listening
to Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis said if he could play the
piano like that, he'd quit singing. Lewis' early billing
was Jerry Lee Lewis and his Pumping Piano.
Lewis' performances were dynamic. He kicked the piano
bench out of the way to play standing (a stunt later
adopted by admirer Elton John), raked his hands up and
down the keyboard for dramatic accent, and even sat down
on it. His frenetic performance style can be seen in
films such as "High School Confidential" (he sang the
title song from the back of a flatbed truck), and
"Jamboree".
Jerry Lee Lewis' turbulent personal life was hidden from
the public until a 1958 British tour, when reporters
learned about the twenty-three year old star's third
wife, Myra Gale Brown, who also happened to be his
13-year old second cousin. Lewis didn't consider this
odd, as marrying distant cousins was acceptable in the
South at the time, and his sister had been married at
fourteen. The publicity, however, caused an uproar, and
the tour was cancelled after only three concerts.
The scandal followed Lewis home to America, and as a
result he almost vanished from the music scene. His only
hit during this period was a cover of Ray Charles'
"What'd I Say" in 1961. His popularity recovered
somewhat in Europe, especially in the UK and Germany
during the mid 1960s. A live album, Live at the Star
Club, Hamburg (1964), recorded with The Nashville Teens,
is widely considered one of the greatest live rock and
roll albums ever. A comeback eluded him in the USA,
however. In 1968, Lewis began focusing on country and
western music, achieving several No. 1 and Top 10
country hits. Although he toured and played many
sold-out concerts, he never regained the heights of
success he had prior to the 1958 scandal, although he
had a major international hit with "Chantilly Lace" in
1972.
Plagued by alcohol and drug problems after Myra divorced
him in 1970, tragedy struck when Lewis' 19-year-old son,
Jerry Lee Lewis Jr., was killed in a road accident in
1973. During the 1960s, his second son, Steve Allen
Lewis, had drowned in a swimming pool accident. Lewis'
own erratic behavior during the 1970s led to his being
hospitalized after nearly dying from a bleeding ulcer.
His fourth wife drowned in a swimming pool under
suspicious circumstances. Little more than a year later,
his fifth wife was found dead at his home from a
methadone overdose. Again addicted to drugs, Lewis
checked himself into the Betty Ford Clinic.
While celebrating his 41st birthday in 1976, Jerry Lee
Lewis playfully pointed a gun at his bass player, Butch Owens,
and thinking it was not loaded, pulled the trigger,
shooting him in the chest. Owens miraculously survived.
A few weeks later (November 23) he was involved in
another gun-related arrest at Elvis Presley's Graceland
residence. Lewis had been invited by Presley, but
security was unaware of the visit. When questioned about
why he was at the front gate, Lewis displayed a gun and
jokingly told the guard he had come to kill Presley.
In 1989, a major motion picture based on his early life
in rock & roll, Great Balls of Fire, brought him back
into the public eye. The film was based on the book by
Lewis' first ex-wife, and starred Dennis Quaid as Lewis,
Winona Ryder as Myra, and Alec Baldwin as Jimmy Swaggart.
The very public downfall of his cousin, television
evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, resulted in more adverse
publicity to an already troubled family. Swaggart is
also a piano player, as is another cousin, country music
star Mickey Gilley. Lewis' sister, Linda Gail Lewis, is
also a piano player, and has recorded with Van Morrison.
Despite the personal problems, Lewis' musical talent is
widely acknowledged. Nicknamed The Killer for his
forceful voice and piano production on stage, he was
described by fellow artist Roy Orbison as the best raw
performer in the history of rock and roll music. In
1986, Jerry Lee Lewis was part of the first group inducted into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
That same year, he returned to Sun Studios in Memphis to
team up with Orbison, Cash, and Perkins to create the
album Class of '55. This was not the first time he had
teamed up with Cash and Perkins at Sun. On December 4,
1956, Presley dropped in on Phillips to pay a social
visit while Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks
with Lewis backing him on piano. The three started an
impromptu jam session, and Phillips left the tapes
running. He later telephoned Cash and brought him in to
join the others. These recordings, almost half of which
were gospel songs, survived, and have been released on
CD under the title Million Dollar Quartet. Tracks also
include Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man", Pat
Boone's "Don't Forbid Me" and Presley doing an
impersonation of Jackie Wilson (who was then with Billy
Ward and the Dominoes) singing "Don't Be Cruel."
Lewis has never stopped touring, and fans who have seen
him perform say he can still deliver unique concerts
that are unpredictable, exciting, and personal. In
February of 2005, he was given a Lifetime Achievement
Award by the Recording Academy (which also grants the
Grammy Awards.) At the presentation, it was announced
that a new album would be made with a line-up including
Eric Clapton,
B. B. King,
Bruce Springsteen,
Mick Jagger and
Keith Richards.
The album, entitled The Pilgrim, is set for March 2006.
Hit singles
- "Crazy Arms"
- "It'll Be Me"
- "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" (July 1957, reached #3 on U.S. Billboard magazine charts)
- "Great Balls of Fire" (December 1957, reached #2 on U.S. Billboard charts)
- "Breathless" (March 1958, reached #7 on U.S. Billboard charts)
- "High School Confidential" (June 1958, reached #21 on U.S. Billboard charts)
- "What'd I Say" (April 1961, reached #30 on U.S. Billboard charts)
- "Another Place, Another Time"
- "What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made A Loser Out of Me)"
- "Me and Bobby McGee" (January 1972, reached #40 on U.S. Billboard charts)
- "Chantilly Lace"