Jerry Lee Lewis ... RIP !

[Clarets4me]

It's official, this time ... Absolutely the last man standing, of the first wave of Rock and Rollers who changed the soundtrack to all our lives !!

RIP, Killer !

[Juan Tanamera]

His keyboard playing was exceptional.
Along with the likes of Little Richard and Chuck Berry, the early pioneers rock n rock produced great music.
I was lucky my two older brothers were buying this music and passed it on to me.
RIP Jerry Lee, The Killer.

[conyoviejo]

R.I.P. Killer.You were the greatest of them all.


https://youtube.com/watch?v=8Y51bM5vAmY ... mKnC5IiRIQ

[Clarets4me]

Once he gets through the Pearly Gates, I suspect skidding sideways in a Cadillac, smoking a cigar, shouting " F**k me, what a ride that was ! ", there'll be quite a reception committee waiting ....

Just from Sun Studios, the tiny Memphis recording label where he got his start .... Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Charlie Rich and owner Sam Phillips .... " What kept you, Killer ? "

[4midable]

https://www.uptheclarets.com/messageboa ... =2&t=65202

[Spijed]

Lucky enough to see Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry at Wembley arena in 1998.

RIP.

[Spijed]

Once he gets through the Pearly Gates, I suspect skidding sideways in a Cadillac, smoking a cigar, shouting " F**k me, what a ride that was ! ", there'll be quite a reception committee waiting ....

Just from Sun Studios, the tiny Memphis recording label where he got his start .... Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Charlie Rich and owner Sam Phillips .... " What kept you, Killer ? "

Apparently it's still the original flooring when you do a tour of the studios.

[Clarets4me]

Apparently it's still the original flooring when you do a tour of the studios.

True ... there are three crosses marked on the floor where Elvis, Scotty Moore & Bill Black stood when they recorded " That's Alright, Mama "...

DSCN2027-550x412.jpg (60.49 KiB) Viewed 1689 times

It's also still a working recording studio, Chris Isaak, U2, Def Leppard, Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Cash, Ringo Starr, and John Mellencamp have all recorded there since it reopened in 1987 .... Their prize possession is the original heavy base stand Microphone which Elvis used for all his Sun recordings. Cash's " I walk the line " , Orbison's " Ooby Dooby ", J-L-L " Great Balls of Fire ", and " Blue Suede Shoes " by Carl Perkins, were some of the many hits it was used for. During the Studio tour, they also play clips from old tape to tape reels of Cash, Presley, Perkins and Jerry Lee laughing and joking together, from 1956 ... it makes the hairs stand up on your neck !!

[burnleybonzo]

Sounds like you maybe a fan clarets4me?

[Clarets4me]

Sounds like you maybe a fan clarets4me?

Guilty ... love the early Rock and Roll stuff, always found it fascinating how the Charts went from Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra, Dean Martin & " How much is that doggie in the window " to " Heartbreak Hotel " and " Good golly Miss Molly " almost overnight in 1956 ....

And no f*****g autotune with these artists, just talent ...

[ŽižkovClaret]

13yr old cousin, wasn't it?

It would put me off a fella, I know that

[Devils_Advocate]

Was he the guy who used to play the piano with his foot cos he had no hands?

[Clarets4me]

13yr old cousin, wasn't it ? It would put me off a fella, I know that

Wasn't particularly unusual in the Southern States back then, Loretta Lynn was married at 14 ... but you're right, I wouldn't want to have had him walk my sister home of an evening !! Mind you, " White Customers only " signs were still common back then ..

" The past is a foreign Country, they do things different there "

[Bosscat]

In the absence of Beamish

Jerry_Lewis_(Paramount_photo_by_Bud_Fraker).jpg (14.47 KiB) Viewed 1463 times

[Spijed]

Guilty ... love the early Rock and Roll stuff, always found it fascinating how the Charts went from Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra, Dean Martin & " How much is that doggie in the window " to " Heartbreak Hotel " and " Good golly Miss Molly " almost overnight in 1956 ....

And no f*****g autotune with these artists, just talent ...

Did you know he had arguably more success when he turned to country and western music?

He was very successful

[ClaretCliff]

Saw him at Trentham Gardens round about 1970 when I was a student at North Staffs Poly. He was into his country music by then and after about 1/2 to 3/4 an hour of that the audience , particularly the front rows full of ex-teddy boys were starting to get a bit restless. He then suddenly started to smash the keyboard and launched into Great Balls of Fire and the place erupted. Then followed a set of pure Rock’n’Roll. Absolutely brilliant!!!

[Clarets4me]

Did you know he had arguably more success when he turned to country and western music? He was very successful

" What made Milwaukee famous " was a great track ... " His live version of " Me & Bobby McGee " is electric ....

[ClaretCliff]

Also I love the story of him performing on the same bill as, I think, Chuck Berry.
After much argument It was decided that Chuck Berry would finish the show.m, so Jerry Lee Lewis then did a storming set and finished by pouring petrol onto the piano, set light to it, and then left the stage yelling “Follow that!!!”

[daveisaclaret]

Another nonce in the ground. But he sure could play that piano

[tarkys_ears]

Argh, killer!

Loved him ever since I watched Great balls of fire when I was about 13

Still the best part of that film is "wild one" before the credits

Guy had his problems but was definitely the best

[Chobulous]

Another nonce in the ground. But he sure could play that piano

No doubt Bowie was there to greet him. Jimmy Page won’t be long behind them.

[conyoviejo]

A good read about the killer..

"Jerry Lee Lewis was no killer – but he was the most dangerous man in rock’n’roll" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artis ... rocknroll/

[Chobulous]

A good read about the killer..

"Jerry Lee Lewis was no killer – but he was the most dangerous man in rock’n’roll" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artis ... rocknroll/

If you enjoy reading less that one paragraph before it disappears behind a paywall then that was a great read.

[conyoviejo]

Sorry Chobulous,I've tried to copy it for you..

Jerry Lee Lewis, wild piano-playing rock and roll legend whose hits included the barnstorming Great Balls of Fire – obituary

He was nicknamed ‘the Killer’ by a school friend when, at the age of 12, he attempted to throttle a teacher with his own necktie

ByTelegraph Obituaries28 October 2022 • 6:44pm




Jerry Lee Lewis, who has died aged 87, was the most spectacular of all rock and roll performers; along with Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, he was one of the foundation stones on which the original edifice of rock music was built in the 1950s, but generally won greater notoriety for his behaviour off stage than fame for his undoubted originality as a musician.

During his 12 months at the peak of international stardom, Lewis seemed hell-bent on proving that the devil had the best songs and that he was the man to sing them. His piano style was essentially a kind of psychotic variation on boogie-woogie; a pounding bass line accompanied by a demented raking of the upper octaves.

At the climax of many performances the piano stool would be sent skidding across the stage. Indeed his technique owed little to the traditions established by classical pianists. He was fond of emphasising certain passages by playing them with his feet; and during one concert with Chuck Berry, he delighted the audience by dousing the keyboard in petrol and playing on through the flames. (Lewis always denied the allegation that he walked off stage telling Berry to “follow that, n-----”.)

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Lewis in 1957 CREDIT: Bettmann

Lewis’s fans knew him affectionately by his nickname “the Killer” – an appellation that was widely believed to have derived from his explosive stage-act, but in fact had been given to him by a school friend when, at the age of 12, Lewis had attempted to throttle a teacher with his own necktie.

As Lewis himself once noted, “They call me the Killer. The only thing I ever killed in my life was possibly myself” – an observation that neatly encapsulated a life that ran the gamut of drunken driving, income tax evasion, bankruptcy, alcohol and drug abuse (he had a weakness for amphetamines), firearm charges and emergency hospital admissions.

Death and catastrophe seemed to haunt him: one son, Jerry Lee Junior (by his second wife) died at the wheel of his Jeep; another, Steve Allen Lewis (by his third wife) drowned in a swimming pool; and two of his ex-wives died tragically in the early 1980s.

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Jerry Lee Lewis sits for a picture at the Country Music Hall of Fame after it was announced he would be inducted as a member, May 2022, in Nashville, Tennessee CREDIT: AP Photo/Mark Humphrey

He exhibited a particularly cavalier attitude towards firearms. In 1976 he was arrested whilst waving a .38 Derringer pistol at the gates of Graceland, proclaiming that he was the true King of Rock and Roll: he was bitterly envious of Presley’s success.

In the same year, Norman “Butch” Owens, Lewis’s bass player, was having what he thought was a social drink with “the Killer” when Lewis fired two bullets into his chest, almost killing him (the singer later claimed that he had mistaken “Butch” for a Coca-Cola bottle).

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On another occasion, having passed the time by drunkenly shooting at random into a wall of his office, he awoke, hungover, the next day to discover the bullets had destroyed a display case of antique dentures in the dental practice next door. As his biographer noted, “He was relieved to find they were not actually in someone’s mouth.”

And yet Lewis appeared to be keen on reforming his public image. He relished an opportunity to reforge his legend when he was asked to act as “creative consultant” on the film about his life story, Great Balls of Fire (1989), starring Dennis Quaid.

The film concentrated on Lewis’s year of stardom, rather than on his years of abandon, and went some way to achieving his desired reconciliation with his fans. “I want them to remember me not for all my wives,” he said, “although I’ve had a few, or for my mansions and high living or the money I made and spent. I want them to remember me for my music.”

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Lewis at the Armadillo in Glasgow, 2004 CREDIT: Wattie Cheung

Jerry Lee Lewis was born at Ferriday, Louisiana, on September 29 1935. His father, Elmo, was a carpenter, who briefly served prison time for bootlegging. The family were Pentacostalist Christians – Jerry Lee’s first cousin was the disgraced evangelist Jimmy Swaggart – and in spite of the prolonged spiritual nosedive he was later to embark on, Lewis always declared that he was, in his own way, a staunch believer.

The first song he learned to play was Silent Night, and he spent much of his childhood travelling the country with his father, a piano loaded on the truck, giving shows wherever there was an audience.

At 15 he was sent to the Southwestern Bible Institute, a Pentecostal Church school near Dallas, dedicated to establishing “clean conduct and conversation, modest apparel in dress and a distaste for promiscuity”. He lasted three months there before being expelled following a boogie-woogie rendition of the hymn My God is Real at chapel prayers, and began to play piano and drums in groups playing in bars along Highway 61.

In 1956 he went to Memphis and was signed up by Sun records, where in December he took part in the legendary impromptu jam session – dubbed the “Million Dollar Quartet” by the Memphis Press-Scimitar – with Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Elvis Presley, by far the most famous of the group at the time, who had dropped by in the afternoon.

The next day Presley was quoted by Robert Johnson of the Press-Scimitar paying tribute to Lewis’s musical originality: “That boy can go. I think he has a great future ahead of him. He has a different style, and the way he plays piano just gets inside me.”

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Jerry Lee Lewis with his third wife Myra as they arrive in New York from London, May 1958 CREDIT: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

It was Lewis’s version of Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On, in April 1957, that launched him, and by the time he released the classic Great Balls of Fire five months later, Whole Lotta Shakin’ had sold a million copies.

For a brief moment Lewis was on the verge of toppling Elvis from his throne as the king of rock and roll, until his career was shattered overnight on his first tour of Britain by the revelation of his bigamous marriage to his third wife and 13-year-old cousin Myra Gale.

This was not his first such offence – Jerry Lee had become a bigamist at 17 – and the English press, who had described Myra as looking “Like a Well-Scrubbed Fourth-Former”, were hardly mollified by her explanation that back in Tennessee, “You can get married at 10, if you can find a husband.”

At a show at the Granada Theatre in Tooting, Lewis was greeted with cries of “cradle snatcher” and, when he performed his previously popular hillbilly gimmick of combing back his hair between songs, “Sissy”.

Questions were asked in the House of Commons by Sir Frank Medlicott, and the tour was abandoned. Though the ceremony was not illegal in Hernando, where the marriage was contracted, the wave of outrage spread to the United States. Jerry Lee married Myra Gale for a second time (“real legally”, as he told the English press), but the scandal had dealt a blow to his career, and the disastrous effect of the resulting publicity set him on the road to what would be a lifetime of bourbon, brawling and benzedrine.

By the mid-Sixties the coming of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had made all the original rock-and-rollers potential has-beens. Lewis revived his career by returning to country music, enjoying hits in 1968 with Another Time, Another Place and What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser out of Me).

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The Million Dollar Quartet: Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley at the piano CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis

In the same year he gave a startling interpretation of the role of Iago in Jack Good’s musical version of Othello, Catch My Soul; he had a great success in the production though on two occasions Jerry Lee “collaborated with the bard” – making no attempt to disguise his Louisiana accent – and exclaimed, on discovering the corpse in Act V, “Great Balls of Fire! My friend, Roderigo!”

But by 1973 when he came to London to record The Session, a double LP with British musicians like Alvin Lee, his life had been taken over by drugs, drink and divorce.

He had periods of seeming recovery, notably towards the end of the 1970s when he had another hit with the classic Every Day I Have to Cry, but by now Lewis was living out a ghastly mixture of The Lost Wee

kend and Sunset Boulevard, maintaining a lifestyle and an ego far out of keeping with his taxable income.

Jerry Lee was one of the patients of the notorious Dr George Nichopoulos, who was prosecuted following the death of Elvis Presley, and Lewis was frequently hospitalised as the result of drug abuse.

The pattern continued into the 1980s, with Jerry Lee interrupting bouts of berserk dissipation with occasional expressions of remorse, articulated in the biblical language he had used as a child preacher in Concordia Parish. He continued to play live concerts, performing mainly gospel and country classics to international audiences who really wanted to hear a 90 minute version of Great Balls of Fire.

In June 1982 his estranged fourth wife Jaren drowned in a swimming pool; three months after his wedding to his fifth wife (1983), she was found dead after a presumed overdose of sleeping tablets.

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His prodigious head of hair standing on end, rock 'n' roll roller Jerry Lee Lewis hugs the microphone as he does a flying leap during his opening night performance at the Cafe de Paris in London, 1958 CREDIT: Bettmann

Fast living brought the Killer close to death on more than one occasion. In 1984, following an amphetamine-induced attack, David Whitten of his road crew, speaking to the British press, pronounced, with unconscious irony, what could have been an epitaph for the singer: “He started shaking and he just couldn’t control it.”

The following year his chances of survival were described as being “touch and go” after doctors cut away a third of his stomach during an operation for a perforated stomach ulcer, though ill-health did not deter him from pursuing an active social life; in February 1987 his sixth wife Kerrie Lynn Lewis, 28 years his junior, gave birth to Jerry Lee Lewis III.

Against all the odds, Jerry Lee continued to perform and record well into his seventies. Last Man Standing, released in 2006, and featuring a guest list of stars including Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and Rod Stewart, reached No 26 in the Billboard charts. His last studio album Rock & Roll Time, again accompanied by eminent collaborators (among them Neil Young, Robbie Robertson and Nils Lofgren), was released to warm critical and popular reception in 2014.

Earlier this year he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and he was the subject of an acclaimed documentary, Trouble in Mind, directed by Ethan Coen.

In 2012, at the age of 76, reasoning that a man needs “good lovin’, good good cookin’, ” he married his seventh wife and one-time sister-in-law of his third wife Myra, Judith Coghlan; she was by his side at his death.

Apart from some inter-familial legal squabbles, Lewis’s last days were passed in repose at his ranch in Mississippi, with a semi-automatic, so it was said, on his bedside table and an ill-tempered Chihuahua named Topaz Junior on the quilt between his feet.

Jerry Lee Lewis, born September 29 1935, died October 28 2022