Jerry Lee Lewis: My Musical Hero

It was 1979. I was a pseudo-jaded high school junior, already past my infatuation with the Sex Pistols though still enthralled with punk rock (and indeed would form my first band the Panics next year). In a good-faith attempt to foster understanding between parent & spawn, my father told me he had arranged for the family to go see old time rocker Jerry Lee Lewis at a small club in Brown County called The Little Nashville Opry.
Hmmm, that sounds all right, I thought, a free show and those fifties rockers were kind of cool in their own way. When we showed up, I had no idea what to expect but it turned out that the Little Nashville Opry was a medium sized hall with seats that resembled church pews, nice enough though nothing fancy.
After some anonymous opening act it was time for the headliner. A 5 piece band was warming up when the announcer called out, “And now, Jerry Lee Lewis!” Out strolled a lean individual with a lined face, wearing sunglasses and a striped shirt, who resolutely ignored the crowed applause and went straight to a monstrous black grand piano. He immediately opened up with this weird song about being dead and buried without a tombstone on his grave; the song started slow then suddenly kicked into double time and we were off and flying.
If you ever have been to a loud concert, you’ll encounter a phenomenon where the bass drum thumps you right in the chest like a physical presence of a fist. And the same thing happened that night with the grand piano. When “The Killer’ ran through a boogie-woogie riff, it was as if you had been picked up and flown through the air like a rag doll; it was an indescribable feeling.
He stomped through a set like a demon, kicking back the piano bench and standing up at the drop of a hat, doing up tempo rockers, and generally acting like a crazed individual. He also had an unnerving habit of banging the long wooden cover that came down over the keys as an extra-musical punctuation. He would grab it and slam it against the back base of the piano keyboard, creating an extremely loud WHACK that sounded like a gigantic snare drum and caused most people in the audience to flinch.
The highlight came when someone from the crowd tossed up an inflated 6 foot tall Pink Panther doll. “I’ma gonna teach this animal how to play the piano,” he said. He sat the inflated doll next to him and took its left paw in his left hand. “First you play a little bass line with your left hand,” he drawled and had the Pink Panther join him. Driving piano notes hung in the air like icicles on a tree. Without any other instruments accompanying him, the pure beauty of his playing shone through.
“Then you join in with your right hand,” he finished and continued to play solo. Mere words don’t do the music justice. He then threw the doll up on the piano and finished out the set. When it was all over, I was flabbergasted. My peers at high school would moronically rave about the latest heavy metal band (almost no one would even acknowledge the punk rock phenomenon), but this middle aged dude blew away fops like Foreigner or Van Halen!
I was used to the mania of punk rockers, but this easily matched any craziness from New York or London. Who the hell was this guy? I quickly snatched up a greatest hits album (“Original Golden Hits”); it was a very good start. I loved the original solos, which would be quirky and exuded a self-taught almost DIY mentality. And I wondered at the strong vocals which seemed to be relentlessly on-key and smothered with southern hokum. When he sang a sad song, he enthusiastically assumed the personae, but yet there was always a little smirk that gave the game away.
The fact that his giant hit “Great Balls of Fire” was performed with just a drummer accompanying him blew me away. Could any other rocker, then or now, deliver such a perfect track with just 2 musicians? I still say no. I studied the percussive solos, with the jagged almost non-musical swipes down the keyboards, the swift chords that were hammered so hard it hurt just to listen to them, the oddly expressive glissando swirls obviously swiped from gospel playing.
Okay, I needed more. I bought the second volume of Golden Hits. It didn’t have as many great cuts, but again I was fascinated. The studio version of “Mean Women Blues” and “Breakup” had these odd solos that even I could pretend to play along with, yet so many of these tracks had the feel of being tossed off on a spare afternoon without any great planning or practice. The slow and tender version of “I Could Never Be Ashamed Of You” featured a beautiful vocal and an unbelievable solo that sounded like it belonged in church. I started picking up more Sun Record albums and every time there would be at least a few great tracks (along with plenty of dross, to be sure). I became convinced, this guy was a true genius!
I quickly got filled in on his crazy personal life. He was obviously crazier than a roomful of squirrels but the scandal that laid him low (marrying his underage cousin) just made me sad more than anything else. While obviously a mistake, I passed on judging him; I was more interested in the music than anything else. Though I will confess the endless stories did make for great reading and retelling; I particularly loved the one about showing up at Graceland, drunk and claiming Elvis had told him to stop by. Allegedly he had pulled a gun out of the glove box and demanded to see Elvis, but I got the feeling the stories all grew in retelling.
In a nutshell, Jerry Lee Lewis was born and raised in Ferriday, Louisiana and, along with his also-famous cousins Reverend Jimmy Swaggart and Mickey Gilley, learned to tickle the ivories. Beside Sundays in the choir at the local house of worship, there was also competition from a relative who owned a hot spot of low repute. All 3 cousins plinked and plunked the piano as kids, but they say Jerry was “The Killer” who played the same at age twelve that he did at twenty. It reminds me of the legend of Keith Moon, of whom it was said took no drum lessons, but simply sat down behind the kit and played just marvelously from the beginning.
I picked up more Sun albums, with the risqué “Big Legged Woman,” being a highlight, but I also always dug the casual covers of hits. The twisting “Hound Dog” or a sparse “Jailhouse Rock” were shining examples of how Jerry Lee could perform a song and while not topping the original still use it as a spring board to provide yet another casual yet enthralling, now-familiar yet always different solo. So many of these tracks just featured him and a drummer (check out “Sick and Tired” for just one example) that the sheer talent was absolutely amazing; could any other performer really record such a huge consistently entertaining body of work with just one other person in the room and no over dubs?
I searched high and low for any straight ahead left handed boogie woogie lines like I heard the first night I saw him live; they were few and far between (“Old Black Joe” or “Rocking Little Angel” for example) but when I found one it would transport me back in time. On the records, I loved how nearly every take ended with the up-the-keyboard swipe after the final note, how frequently he told his excellent guitarist to take another solo (“Roland, boy!”), and how there was always another Sun album available in the bin. Back in the eighties Sun was a red headed step child of record labels and so the quality of the vinyl (an important issue then that is not so well known today) could suffer greatly. I picked up a 20 track album (immense for those times) and again found some great performances but the sound quality was lousy, almost unbearable.
Seemingly buried among second-rate material (that I quickly learned to sift through and ignore), I would find a riveting performance of “Pink Pedal Pushers” or “Milkshake Mademoiselle”. It was kind of weird, in a way. Has anyone else out there ever noticed that brilliant artists have a hard time realizing what works best for them? It’s as if they made incredible music, found success, and then went on to something else when we just want them to keep make great music! I came to the conclusion that Jerry Lee Lewis, and virtually everyone else that produced for him, was a poor judge of what worked best for the Ferriday Fireball. He recorded so much that you could easily just come across the second-rate stuff and thus conclude that he wasn’t so great.
Fortunately starting in the early eighties, Charly Records bought the Sun Studio catalogue and started releasing previously unreleased material, so more and more albums flowed out. It was a nearly inexhaustible source of wonderful music. I would make mix tapes to play on the cassette deck of my car and while I would love hearing the Sex Pistols or Hank Williams, when “Deep Elem Blues” came on I sang along at the top of my longs and pretended to play the piano. “Drinking Wine Spo-dee-o-de” was a revelation, with a great intro, 2 awesome solos, a kick ass guitar solo, and a spot on vocal. I felt so lucky that I appreciated his musical genius while so many of my compatriots missed the boat!
Great tracks kept popping up, like lava on mountain top. A live jam in the studio, with bystanders hooting and hollering, of “The Crawdad Song” was frenzied. While “You Win Again” was the more famous B side for “Great Balls of Fire,” I preferred “Cold, Cold Heart” for its oddly expressive solo; in fact nearly all of his solos seemed to be speaking to the listener, at least in setting a mood; they were either inventive, plaintive, determined, full of swagger, angry, or some infinite variation of emotion. It was like jazz but still rock and roll, never preplanned and rarely perfunctory.
In singing along while driving my 1977 Cutlass Supreme, I couldn’t help but find that while Jerry Lee might not match the grit of Elvis or the range of Roy Orbison, he was never off-key and unlike those 2 artists, seemed to do it effortlessly. I noticed how his vocals would almost always become more animated after the solo, as if he only had a minute left to bring it on home and convince the masses he was just the greatest of them all, dig? Oh, there were times he used a nasally effect (listen to the Sun version of “Money”) that really did not work, but overall he had a king-sized voice that could handle any material.
I started searching out books and magazine articles about him. I could scarcely believe that he had accomplished so much without more attention being paid to the body of work that existed. There were a couple of biographies available, and a photo collection or two. Nick Tosches’s book “Country” featured a lengthy chapter that probably had the best writing on him, hilarious stuff, but again it just seemed not to be in-depth or somehow meaningful enough. I wanted an analysis of his playing, someone to explain to me just how he learned those walking bass lines or who taught him those cool solos that endlessly leaped from his right hand. As near as I can tell, he did all by himself.
I also ascertained that there was plenty of material after he left Sun Records. I picked up a recently released (1978) album “Jerry Lee Lewis Keeps On Rocking,” which was relatively unimpressive but featured the awesome anthem “Rocking My Life Away” plus some almost psychedelic piano playing on “Number One Lovin’ Man”. While nothing ever topped the Sun sound, there were plenty of great performances to study in the later albums. “The Return of Rock” was a mid-60s album that had some great playing (“I Believe In You,” “Maybelline” (another great solo), “Flip Flop And Fly”, “Don't Let Go”, and “Roll Over Beethoven” to name a few). It was so cool that after losing all the fame and fortune from his scandal, he just kept on rocking! The solos stayed just as funky and original and while the voice grew a notch deeper and perhaps lost a bit of timbre, it was still very powerful.
I’d find genuine oddities here or there from these later recordings besides the Smash Label releases, including a roaring version of a weird song called “Meat Man”. Examples include a Pickwick album had buried on it a fierce styling of “Just Because,” or an almost bizarre “original” (i.e. songwriting credited to Jerry Lee) about the Kennedy assassination called “Lincoln Limousine” that showed up on the Phillips Label. I read an interview in a country music magazine where Jerry went on and on about how they shot the president in the middle of the street like he was a mad dog.
Jerry had a handful of songs, including, from that very first album I bought, “Move On Down The Line” and “Lewis Boogie” (which featured a great if simplistic intro featured in the Johnny Cash biopic ‘Walk The Line’) attributed to him as the author, but quite frankly I’ve always been skeptical that he had the patience to work out lyrics. Who knows?
In truth, it was a bit counter-intuitive that I developed such a love of the musical mayhem performed by The Killer. I liked guitars, not keyboards (still prefer their sound, in fact). And one of the big things about punk rock was that the songs were original, and I loved the lyrics of Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello. But Jerry Lee was just a different creature. He didn’t need to write anything; whatever he played, he made his own; he was a great singer and a greater piano player and easily one of the greatest live acts that ever strutted on the stage. ‘Nuff said.
In 1981, in the middle of my fascination, the Killer keeled over and nearly died. He collapsed from a hole in his stomach caused by his massive consumption of whiskey and pills. Lying on his bathroom floor, later he said “I started praying real quick.” After undergoing emergency surgery he pulled out of it. Of course, he was not the same but I followed his “comeback” appearances avidly. I talked my roommate into taping Jerry’s HBO special to a cassette which I listened to over and over, and watched him on Tom Snyder.
I quickly snatched up front row seats when he returned to the Little Nashville Opry in 1983. While it was still a thrill, he was obviously not the same performer I first saw live; he couldn’t be with only half a stomach in him, so I focused more on the seemingly endless stream of albums.
I cadged a copy of “The London Sessions” from a coworker who happened to be playing it at work one night. Recorded in the mid-1970s in England and featuring an all star lineup, it had almost bizarre performances and spoken asides that I dearly loved, including “No Headstone On My Grave,” which had been the first song I had ever heard him perform. I particularly dug the solo on “Sea Cruise” and the intro to “Johnny B. Goode”. While the remakes of his earlier material were almost pointless, there were the convincing vocals on “Music To The Man” and yet another wonderful, totally different version of the old stand by “Drinking Wine Spo-de-o-de,” that seemed older and boozier but yet more dangerous than his original stellar recording. Again, it was the little touches and the big hits that made it all worthwhile and showed that he, unlike so many manufactured pop stars, was purely and simply a musician playing and singing with abandon to his hearts content.
Perhaps he had no choice. I once read that Jerry Lee Lewis only had a seventh grade education, married for the first time at fifteen, and had no real understanding or feel for money. When the money came in buckets he spent it, and when it dried up he shrugged his shoulders and kept rocking. When personal tragedies and mishaps followed his footsteps, he didn’t find a therapist; he found the nearest piano; a questionable choice, perhaps, but what guts!
I started being more vocal to my friends about my new found hero; many were bemused and thought I was crackers. I remember one night hanging with a friend to watch James Brown appear on David Letterman. My friend made clear he thought Jerry Lee was just a dumb southerner while he adored The Hardest Working Man In Show Business. Imagine my astonishment when the Godfather of Soul announced that one of his concert favorites was Jerry Lee Lewis. When I looked over at my friend in triumph he had a disgusted expression on his face like he had just seen a fat man in a speedo.
I remember on my birthday in 1983, some close friends of mine bought me a 4 album boxed set of Jerry Lee as a gift; how nice is that? My aunt told me how she had traveled to Paris and while visiting some French guy’s apartment, found herself watching endless television tapes of Jerry Lee Lewis that he had collected; another fan! And I started collecting stories from people who had encountered the man, the myth, the legend. There wasn’t much. A friend of mine had an aunt that rode in an elevator with him once; she said he had the filthiest mouth of anyone she ever met. At a party I ran into someone who said they saw him play in a Holiday Inn bar once back in the mid-seventies; Jerry Lee played a boring 20 minute set and walked off. Ouch.
I took a couple of night classes at Indiana University, and in my creative writing class for my final project wrote a short story on a wild piano player who wrecks everything he touches but just keeps on playing. Unbelievably, my hard-nosed teacher returned it with an A+ on it and had scrawled “A whole lotta shakin’ on this one!” It turned out he was a huge Jerry Lee Lewis fan and had been collecting his records for years!
At one point (roughly 1968) in his career the Killer and his coterie, desperate for a hit, decided to tackle country and western music. I scoped out these early country albums, and while the Killer would be somewhat restrained, he did absolutely beautiful vocal work on “Another Place, Another Time,” and “She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye.” Again on all these first few country albums (avoid the later ones), you could still find a jewel, some track where the legend becomes engaged and nails the singing part or rips out a perfect solo, seemingly in-between rounds of pool and Jack Daniels. I particularly dug his rendition of the mundane weeper “One Has My Name, The Other Has My Heart,” where he sings the second verse in a moaning, crying fashion.
On a 1972 album, “The Killer Rocks On,” he stomps “Chantilly Lace” and “Don’t Be Cruel” like they were cockroaches on the bathroom floor, and absolutely lays down ferocious track after track, 16 years after first hitting the charts. The 2 live albums on the Smash label were real finds, perhaps a tad bit restrained but filled with excellent rockers and that version of “Who Will The Next Fool Be” easily surpassed the later studio take.
The Charly Label kept putting out more unreleased tracks, so much so that it appeared to resemble an all-you-can-listen-to musical buffet. The demo versions of “Lucky Old Sun” and “Come What May” (rare recordings of Jerry Lee Lewis performing by himself) were some of the most riveting cuts I had ever found. I still have the feeling that the only way any of those original recordings could have been improved upon would be if they got rid of all the other musicians and no one else but Jerry Lee Lewis was playing.
Finally Charly through the Bear Family label announced they were releasing ALL of the Sun recordings, a 12 album(!) boxed set with literally everything Jerry Lee ever recorded at the famed Memphis studio. It inspired an article in Time Magazine, mostly because of a famous recorded debate between Sun owner Sam Philips and Jerry Lee about whether one could go to heaven playing pop music. “I have the devil in me!” exclaims the Ferriday Louisiana piano player to the bemused label owner and that pretty much sums it up. I ordered it from the local record store; they promised it within 4 weeks but when it finally came in it was 3 months later, I was too broke to buy it. I lingered over the extensive liner notes but lost my chance to own it.
Then came a bootleg entitled “The Million Dollar Quartet” which I first heard when visiting friends and acquaintances in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was strange listening to it for the first time in a tiny apartment in the big city with those famous voices drifting out of the speakers like ghosts. Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis are all featured in a photograph on the cover as the Quartet. Jerry was playing with Carl at a recording session (before he was a star and Carl was the one having hit records) when Elvis stopped by. Johnny Cash was just hanging out (and soon left to do his laundry), but the three of them did a jam session starting off with gospel covers. The first 4 songs were the best, and again my boy shines. On “I Shall Not Be Moved” he steps up at the end and brings the song home after Elvis had diddled around for a couple of verses. Both Carl and Elvis take turns and do fine, but props to Jerry; at the time a complete unknown, he showed that he could hang with the big boys.
Later on a fairly cool album called “The Survivors” came to light. It was a concert from Germany where Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and the Killer take turns playing their biggest hits and then jamming together again on those old gospel numbers as a sort of sequel to the million dollar quartet. It was recorded right before Jerry Lee had collapsed from his partially dissolved stomach; I loved it; would it be too obvious to say that again I thought Jerry stole the show? I admit I suffer from the blindness of being a fan, but then again I might be right!
In the mid-80s, I traveled to Paoli, Indiana to see Jerry Lee play at a high school gymnasium on a lovely Sunday afternoon. The crowd was small, the performance was restrained but afterwards I dashed to the back of the building and finally got my chance to see the man in the flesh, up close. There he was leaning up against a white Cadillac, not saying much. I froze, goggle-eyed. I stood about 5 feet away, awe-struck. Finally, after he stared at me obviously waiting for me to ask for an autograph, he shrugged and got into the car and drove away.
Then I came across THE album, “Live at the Star Club.” Finally, here was a live album that captured all the intensity of his concerts. The opening cut was so perfect it was frightening. The studio version of “Mean Woman Blues” from his Sun period was decent, with 2 lovely solos, but it didn’t top Roy Orbison’s version by any means. But on the live album, Jerry must have sampled some good German pharmaceuticals as this version was practically demented; the section where he actually plays a little solo on the bass end finally captured what I had seen in concert, and the version of “What’d I Say” was just wonderful. Multiple reviewers [Rolling Stone, Q Magazine, Mojo Magazine, etc.] call this one of the greatest live records ever (and you can find them on the web through Wikipedia) and they’re quite correct.
In 1987, an acquaintance asked me if I would help drive while he sold bootleg video tapes at record conventions. While there I discovered a super-duper intense live show from British television on VHS that I instantly purchased and thought was just damn near the greatest live performance on tape that I had seen from any artist (but you knew that already, didn’t you?). At about 6 songs, it shows a puffy eyed Killer leering into the cameras in an illegal state of mind, yet totally in control. He attacks the piano as if it were an argumentative barroom denizen, contemptuous in the knowledge that he will prevail and walk away victorious. It was yet another highlight in my intense research into his career; you can find the segments on Youtube and they’re well worth watching.
I also studied his Austin City Limits performance, the 1982 Knoxville, Tennessee World’s Fair TV appearance, and whatever else I came across. I even managed to find a showing at an “art” cinema of “High School Confidential,” a truly bad teen film that was only partially redeemed by the footage of Jerry Lee playing the title track from the bed of a pick up truck. Again, while obviously not immune to criticism from an artistic point of view, I was rarely disappointed when I viewed live footage. I even liked his appearance on Hee-Haw! Jerry Lee Lewis was truly the real deal.
At around this point in time, Jerry Lee’s 6th wife died under alleged controversial circumstances. Rolling Stone magazine and Geraldo Riviera both pursued exposes on “The Killer” and while I had no idea if he had anything to do with the death, it surely was unfortunate to have attention focused on this instead of the mountain of music. In 2007, the magazine published an extensive article where they essentially said there was no evidence of his involvement.
One of the most bizarre and entertaining recordings I ever had come across fell into my lap. I no longer own it but it was released on the odd “Black Tulip” label, and it was a live concert featuring weird takes of oft-covered songs where Jerry Lee would ramble on about his philosophy towards life. “Show me a man that ain’t a man and I’ll show you a hard tale. Show me a woman that ain’t a woman and I’ll show you a man that don’t act right. Think about that,” was one improvised verse from an old Hank Williams song he had played a million times before. The rest of the tape was just as loopy and while it wasn’t exactly stellar, I still dug it.
I saw him one last time at the Little Nashville Opry in the late 80s, where it had all began. His lead guitarist was so drunk that the bass player would reach up and grab his shoulder to stop him from falling off the stage. Jerry Lee Lewis was, again, somewhat restrained about all the craziness around him. It was fun enough, but it wasn’t the same. I only saw the first show that day; at the second show he allegedly smashed up the piano and ended up being banned from ever playing there again.
Finally, the energy that I had devoted to my hero started to wane. I kept up the interest and followed his career, but I had finally felt I had come close to finding and hearing everything that I needed. Oh, I had not heard absolutely everything worth hearing, but it would be difficult, in the final analysis, to do just that. There was just too much material. And as far as his recordings went, there were thin pickings or worse, just second rate releases after the 1970s. My gut told me that while he was the most vital museum piece that would walk on the stage, the truth was his best days were behind him. I stopped buying the albums, attending the concerts, and chasing after snippets on TV.
I still dearly loved him and the music he provided for decades and I watched carefully whenever he popped up in the news. I remember when the movie “Diner” came on and how Mickey Rourke resembled Jerry Lee. When they announced the making of the movie “Great Balls of Fire: I was very excited. Unfortunately they didn’t get Mickey Rourke for the part and I hated the actor that did take his place. Oh, the film was okay for what it was but it focused on the scandal and weirdly used Jerry’s singing from the current time, so that when a supposed 20 year old Jerry Lee was singing in the movie you heard a real 50 year old Jerry Lee coming out of the speakers.
Well, anyway, I had hoped for better but with any luck it put some money in the Killer’s pocket. He deserved it. Like a driver talking on a cell phone, I kept one eye on Jerry’s career; he put out a couple of blasé albums, then seemingly disappeared in the 90s. I used to search for him on the internet but found nothing. I did find quite a few cool clips on Youtube that were really fun, and then he finally resurfaced with “Last Man Standing,” his latest effort where he teams up with big names (Jagger, Springsteen, Clapton, etc.) and received a large article in Rolling Stone. Cool for you, Jerry Lee Lewis, I’m glad you have rejoined the game and got some recognition. And, yes, I do think it amazing that you turned out to be the one who survived from that original Million Dollar Quartet.
While I grant that he might not be the greatest musician ever on the planet, I make it clear that I have no second thoughts about so avidly pursuing the career of Louisiana master of those 88 black and white keys. He created an enormous body of work and stayed on the road for literally decades, suffering too many personal blows to list here. His talent was breathtaking for someone unschooled and untaught. He was raw, egotistical, and self-destructive, but damn, he was g-o-o-o-d at what he did! Two minutes of Jerry Lee Lewis playing some rock and roll on a baby grand means more than 98% of all the other music ever made, period. And for that I thank him. Here’s to you, Killer. May you finally get to play a boogie woogie version of “My God Is Real” to the Big Man Upstairs someday.