RIP Jerry Lee Lewis (1935-2022)

Jerry Lee Lewis, whose hammering boogie-woogie piano, unleashed-tomcat voice, and unapologetic bad-boy persona made him an architect of rock & roll and an early rival of Elvis Presley, has died. Lewis’ publicist confirmed his death to Rolling Stone, but a cause of death was not immediately available; he was 87. Lewis died at his home in Desoto County, Mississippi, with his seventh wife, Judith Coghlan, by his side. Lewis’ two 1957 singles, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire,” were some of rock’s earliest and most primal hits: howling, whooping, libidinous performances that announced, as defiantly as any other records of the period, that a new style of music had arrived and would take zero prisoners. “I had created rock & roll before they ever thought about having rock & roll,” Lewis told Rolling Stone in 2014. “When Elvis come out, he was rockabilly. When I come out with ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,’ that was rock & roll. That’s when the name ‘rock & roll’ was put in front.” 

“He’s the best rock & roll pianist ever,” Elton John said in 2007. “I couldn’t play like him because he’s too fast.” Born Sept. 29, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana, Lewis grew up poor (his father Elmo worked as a carpenter, when he worked at all). Around the house, young Jerry Lee was exposed to cowboy music, blues 78s, and swing records, and he sneaked into local clubs to hear the likes of Ray Charles and B.B. King. Although he was proficient at drums, Lewis began playing piano at age eight — Lewis’ father mortgaged their farm to buy him one, and an older cousin taught him the boogie-woogie style soon after — and he gave his first public performance at 15 in the parking lot of a car dealership. He once said that the first song he learned to play was “Silent Night” — but, as he told Rolling Stone, “I played it rock & roll style.” After high school (where he landed his lifelong nickname, the Killer), Lewis attended Bible school in Waxahachie, Texas. But in an early sign of his struggles between the secular and the sacred, Lewis performed the gospel song “My God Is Real” at a school function — also in a “rock & roll style.” 

In May 1958, Jerry Lee was presented in Uk as some kind of serious threat, an example of the Southern American at his virulent worst. Even the British government took a hand in the affair, sending officers from the Home Office to inspect Jerry Lee’s and Myra’s passports and immigration status. The headlines screamed: 'Baby Snatcher, go home. We Hate Jerry Lee Lewis, shout ex-fans!' The British tabloids ripped Lewis to shreds, and his career "took a nosedive right into the concrete," as told to music journalist Alan Light. Columnists called for his arrest and deportation and for an investigation by the child welfare office. Even Parliament weighed in. Sir Frank Medlicott, of the constituency of Norfolk Central in the House of Commons, questioned why a man of such nefariousness was granted a permit to work in England. Young women announced they were going home to smash his records. At a show in Tooting, South London, fans chanted “We Hate Jerry!” and cried “Cradle Robber!” from the audience. 

Myra Gale Brown later covered their marriage in the 1982 book Great Balls of Fire, which was adapted into a 1989 film starring Dennis Quaid as Lewis and Winona Ryder as Myra. "They were looking for a place to stick the knife into rock & roll. And Jerry gave it to them—well, I did, I opened my mouth. That's exactly what it was," Myra told Alan Light. Journalist Alan Light recounted in a story published in Medium's Cuepoint in 2014 that Jerry Lee Lewis and ex-wife Myra (now Williams) "were playful and affectionate" during the photo shoot for the Rolling Stone story. Light wrote that the duo were "joking and giggling, poking and swatting each other, Jerry Lee even sneaking a kiss at one point..." Dick Clark had already written Jerry Lee off. And it was only beginning. Sam Phillips seemed unsure how to respond, at least publicly, to the attacks on their marquee star. He knew the threat was serious, potentially career-ending. “Jerry Lee can’t be managed,” concluded Phillips. “People ask me what effect England had on me, and mostly the effect was on Sam Phillips and distribution,” Jerry Lee says now. “He just was not puttin’ my records out there.”

His famous 1956 jam session with Presley, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins was turned into a Broadway musical, Million Dollar Quartet, in 2010. At the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, director Ethan Coen premiered Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, his documentary on the icon. In recent years, Lewis — still living in Nesbit, by then with his seventh wife, Coghlan, whom he married in March 2012 — had corralled some of his manic ways, thanks to his daughter and manager, Phoebe Lewis. Source: rollingstone.com