The talented hell-raiser of early rock and roll died at 87.
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Like most of his remarkable and rambunctious peers, Lewis got himself into trouble of his own making.
There is one filmed interview with Jerry Lee Lewis that could be mistaken for an outtake fromMindhunter.
Their titles alone capture Lewiss character his unbridledness and by extension the music he came to personify.
Lewis could play by ear and re-create any song he had listened to even once from memory.
He played with a concussive boogie-woogie beat, but thats like saying Jackson Pollock painted.
He didnt have a friendly, ingratiating manner like his fellow Louisianans Fats Domino or Professor Longhair.
It was a trip down a treacherous musical mountain road with no guardrails.
a lusty, unmistakable carnality that left very little to the imagination.
It seemed like chaos but one of his secrets was, paradoxically, control and dynamics.
However unhinged his delivery, there was always a sense of detachment and control.
Lewis knew what he was doing.
In his prime, he was the most musically sophisticated of the times wildest interpreters.
Or, as Lewis himself said: I never said I was the greatest.
In the meantime he occupied himself by skipping school and embarking on a life of burglary.
The bride was a 17-year-old preachers daughter named Dorothy Barton.
Lewis rued the union on the morning after the wedding night.
He didnt pay much attention to his wife moving forward.
King to Gene Autry.
A second child, named Ronnie Guy, Lewis refused to acknowledge.
Neither of them bit.
But Phillips was out of town; they were instead heard by a producer named Cowboy Jack Clement.
He played equally well with either hand.
Sam Phillips could barely be contained when presented with the results, and Lewis was signed.
It was credited to Jerry Lee Lewis With His Pumping Piano.
It sold a little and got on the charts.
He also embarked on a punishing touring regimen, including a month across Canada playing every night.
The photo, however, belied the groups actual personal relationships.
Lewis was far from a star.
I think he has a great future ahead of him.
Lewiss name would be made with his next release.
It was February 1957.
It wasoriginally recorded by blues singer Big Maybelle, with Quincy Jones producing.
In this recording the sound is brassy, with a thin guitar behind; her delivery is almost stately.
Lewis brought his own hillbilly-country approach faster moving and, in his hands, piano driven.
Phillips was specifically on the hunt for new rock-and-roll hits out of his studio and could recognize something sensational.
But it was released.
An appearance onThe Steve Allen Showbrought Lewis to widespread national attention and ultimately took the song to No.
3 on theBillboardpop charts.
(It was a country and R&B No.
It also faced societal resistance for its smoldering, focused energy.
Lewiss onstage audacity was immediately apparent, as was his arrogance.
Tensions arose as Lewiss dazzling playing and emergent showmanship pushed him to the top of the bill.
Jackson recalled him being unhappy with an upright piano hed found at a gig.
It was an old upright that had seen better days, she wrote later.
He said, Who would bring a piano like this and expect me to play it?
Ill tear this thing up before my shows over so nobody else will have to use it.
Im gonna put it out of its misery.
And he did, too, boy.
He kind of frightened me.
I didnt want to be around Jerry Lee too much.
Lewis followed Shakin with Great Balls of Fire.
(It was written by Otis Blackwell, author of Presleys Dont Be Cruel and All Shook Up.)
This song, too, took off on the charts.
(In some versions of the tale, he uses a racial epithet.)
Lewis himself told this story to great effect, but theres little evidence it actually happened.
It went to No.
Lewis had had three top-ten hits.
To some, very much including Lewis himself, he was Elviss heir apparent.
Thats not how things worked out.
By this time, Myra had turned 13.
Lewis was clearly a predator, even within a culture where early marriages were common.
(His own sister had married at 12 and then again at 15.
Cousins had been marrying in his family for generations, too.)
On this issue and many others, Lewis remained defiant, in blockheaded fashion, throughout his life.
She was a woman, Lewis told Rick Bragg, unapologetically and unappetizingly, in his 2012 authorized biography.
She looked like a grown woman, blossomed out and ready for plucking.
He took her home and dropped her off immediately after the wedding with no word to her family.
It took a few days for the pairs secret to come out.
(JW is said to have been at least a bit exercised over the union.
Myra Lewis wrote later that she got a whoopin.)
The trouble began as soon as the group got off the plane in London.
It wasntnothin, Lewis insisted and embarked on ever-more-elaborate arguments about why this was so.
Myra Lewis chimed in, too.
The papers were insatiable filled with news about the pair and official investigations into child abuse.
On returning home, Jerry Lee found that audiences looked at him differently.
He was chagrined to find that mainstream television talent bookers felt the same way.
He kept recording tracks for Sun, but the label was paralyzed in the face of public reaction.
To the end of his life, he marveled at what had happened.
I didnt know the hole I was diggin was that deep, he said many years later.
High School Confidential dropped off the charts.
His career imploded; he was never a commercial threat on the pop charts again.
Meanwhile, Presley duly went to Germany for his military service.
The next year, a plane carrying Buddy Holly would crash on tour in Iowa.
A few months later, Chuck Berry would be arrested on Mann Act charges and ultimately sent to prison.
Neither made the charts.
Phillips did what he could in an impossible situation, but it wasnt enough for Lewis.
Perkins and Cash had both soured on Phillips and ultimately left the label.
Lewis handled things differently: He attacked the producer physically.
Frustrated, he went back on the road with his small band.
With money suddenly tight, the Lewises had to give up their house outside Memphis.
As the 1960s stretched on, Lewis kept touring and even went back to England.
But then, almost accidentally, he became a country star.
A label executive sensed he could sell Jerry Lee to a less persnickety audience.
Given his highly regional appeal, it seems fair to say even this understates his prominence in the South.
Lewis never retained good producers, and most of his country output is schlocky and tedious.
He could always be relied upon to do the wrong thing.
Man, maybe we could do something together some time?
suggested Bob, politely.
exclaimed Jerry Lee, and pounded his piano with fury as Bob and Johnston made their retreat.
You tell him the Killer is here, Lewis told the guards.
Presley told his guards to call the police, and Lewis was arrested.
He was a determined tax cheat as well, and never seemed to learn.
In 1988, he declared bankruptcy, citing some $4 million in debts.
In 1993, trying to escape the tax authorities, he moved to Ireland.
More legal problems followed there.
And if you give me a bad write-up, you dead.
And it was July.
They divorced in 1970.
She had a child, Lori Leigh Lewis, but againLewis insisted he was not the father.
She was found dead in a swimming pool in June 1982.
5 was Shawn Michelle Lewis, whom he married in 1983.
She was found dead in Lewiss house after 77 days of marriage.
Her death was examined by investigative reporter Richard Ben Cramer in a very longRolling Stonestory the next year.
A year later he married wife No.
Rest of em are just imitators.
His last years were relatively quiet save for one last twist in the branches of his incestuous family tree.
(This was the basis for the insipid 1989 biopic starring Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder.)
Judith Brown eventually divorced Rusty and took up with Jerry Lee Lewis.
Judith Lewis survives him.
