Jerry Lee Lewis

 

Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the great pioneers of rock ’n’ roll, and is considered a leading figure in the history of rock. However, his career faltered when, in 1958, it was revealed that his third wife, whom he had recently married, was only 13 years old. What made it even worse was the fact that she was distantly related to him, being his second cousin twice removed. So negative was the publicity surrounding this that the star had to cancel his British tour and returned home in disgrace.

 

‘Playing for the devil’

 

Jerry Lee Lewis was born on 29 September 1935 to a poor Southern family in the town of Ferriday, Louisiana. His parents, Elmo and Mamie Lewis, were both farmers. As a boy Jerry Lee showed a natural flair for music and played piano with his cousins, Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart. Swaggart later became an evangelical religious leader, whose own sex scandal hit the headlines in later years.

Jerry Lee showed such talent that his parents bought him a piano, apparently mortgaging their farm to do so. As he grew up, he continued to absorb influences from all around him, which came out in his piano playing. He had a cousin, Carl McVoy, who was a talented pianist and he also visited a black juke joint in the neighborhood, Haney’s Big House, where he learnt a number of different piano styles. Listening to the radio as well, he began to mix all these sounds together, adapting it to his own style, which encompassed boogie woogie, gospel, country and rhythm and blues.

By the time Jerry Lee reached adulthood, he was playing the piano professionally. His mother, worried about the possible bad influence of the entertainment industry on her son, enrolled him into a religious university in Texas, but at a concert there, he began to play My God is Real in a boogie woogie style, resulting in his expulsion. He later said that he always knew he was ‘playing for the devil’, rather than for God.

Having given up any idea of making religious music, Lewis set out for a life on the road, playing at clubs around the south, and making his first recording in 1954. He then went to Nashville and tried to make an impact on the country music scene, but met with little enthusiasm from producers there. One of them told him he should take up guitar instead of playing piano, whereupon he apparently replied, ‘You can take your guitar and ram it up your ass.’

Not surprisingly, his aggressive, erratic behaviour did not make him very popular among the smooth executives of the Nashville music industry, and it was not until Sam Phillips of the legendary Sun label discovered him, that Lewis’s career really took off. Legend has it that when Elvis Presley heard him play, he remarked, ‘If I could play the piano like that, I’d quit singing’.

 

The under-age bride

 

Lewis initially began working for Phillips as a session musician, playing on hits by Carl Perkins and other artists. Then, billed as ‘Jerry Lee Lewis and his Pumping Piano’, he began to tour the country as an artist in his own right. He soon found an audience for his exciting stage shows, which combined all the Pentecostal fervour of his church upbringing with his commitment to ‘playing for the devil’. He soon had a hit record, Great Balls of Fire, which became a rock ’n’ roll classic. His piano style was imitated by many musicians, and came to be known as ‘piano rock’. In live performances, he would often stand up at the piano, and was known for antics such as sitting on the instrument, kicking it and banging it with his foot. In later years, artists such as Billy Joel and Elton John would copy this style, to great effect, and this manic behaviour at the keyboard became one of the staple crowd pleasers of rock shows.

Jerry Lee Lewis’s personal life was, throughout his early career, dogged by scandal. He married his second wife before the divorce from his first wife became final, but the scandal that really rocked his career was to do with his third wife, Myra Gale Brown. Brown, a distant relative, was just 13 years old when Jerry Lee married her. This was more or less accepted in America at the time, where very young brides were common enough in the South; but in Britain, where the scandal broke, that was not the case. When it was discovered just how young Lewis’s ‘child bride’ really was, the press were outraged, and Lewis became so unpopular in the media that his British tour was cancelled after just three shows, to the disappointment of many of his fans.

 

the shunned musician

 

On his return to the United States, Lewis found himself shunned by people who had previously accepted his marriage, and felt himself to have been betrayed. He was not invited to play on TV music shows, such as the Dick Clark Show, the most important teenage pop show on television at the time, and was angered when Sam Phillips of Sun Records released a single, The Return of Jerry Lee, poking fun at his troubles. One of his few remaining allies in the music business was Alan Freed, the pioneering rock ’n’ roll DJ, but Freed had a scandal of his own looming, and was kicked off the air for allegedly accepting bribes to play records.

During the 1960s, Lewis went back to record for Phillips, and had a hit with a cover of the Ray Charles classic, What’d I Say. However, by 1963 his contract with Sun was over, and although he continued to record and tour, especially in Europe, he failed to make a comback in the United States.

 

Playing with guns

 

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jerry Lee Lewis reinvented himself as a country singer and had more success, but by now his behaviour was beginning to veer seriously out of control. His wife Myra divorced him in 1970, and from then on his mental and physical health began to deteriorate. His older son was killed in a car accident, and then another son drowned in a swimming pool. He began to drink heavily, so much so that he developed severe stomach ulcers and nearly died from a perforated stomach. He was known to play with guns, and on one occasion, injured his bass player, Butch Owens, while shooting at empty bottles.

Today, in his 70s, Jerry Lee Lewis continues to tour, and by all accounts, his performances have lost little of their passion and intensity over the years. His importance as one of the great exponents of rock ’n’ roll has been recognised, and it seems that, for many, this has blotted out the scandal of his marriage to an under-age girl during the 1950s. However, the scandal certainly cast a shadow over Lewis’s career for a long time, even though today he has taken his place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside great pioneers of rock ’n’ roll such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley.