He was nicknamed "The Killer," and his hits included "Complete Lotta Shakin' Goin On" and "Nice Balls of Fireplace."
Jerry Lee Lewis, the flamboyant rock ‘n’ roll founding father, swaggering nation shouter and 2005 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award honoree, died Friday. He was 87.
Lewis died at his dwelling in DeSoto County, Mississippi, his publicist, Zach Farnum of 117 Group, instructed The Hollywood Reporter.
Nicknamed “The Killer,” Lewis was an electrical performer who was nonetheless performing into his late 80s. Identified for such rock requirements as “Complete Lotta Shakin’ Goin On,” “Nice Balls of Fireplace,” “Child Child Bye Bye,” “Breathless” and “Excessive College Confidential,” he accrued 10 gold data throughout his profession, together with his largest, the 2006 all-star duets launch Final Man Standing, promoting greater than a half-million items worldwide.
As a piano participant — and unabashed rock star — Lewis blended rockabilly, gospel, blues and nation as he feverishly pounded the upper keys together with his proper hand. Along with his lengthy blond hair flying round, he usually stood on high of the piano, knocking over the bench and the rest that was on the stage.
A forerunner of The Who and Jimi Hendrix, Lewis even set fireplace to his instrument, making it inconceivable for anybody to upstage him. “Nobody needed to comply with Jerry Lee,” Johnny Money as soon as mentioned, “not even Elvis.”
Elected to the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame within the inaugural class of 1986, Lewis was known as “probably the greatest American voices ever” by his someday collaborator, Kris Kristofferson. A documentary about his life, Jerry Lee Lewis: Hassle in Thoughts, directed by Ethan Coen, bowed at Cannes this 12 months.
Lewis was born on Sept. 19, 1935, in East Louisiana to poor indigent mother and father Elmo and Mamie Lewis. He was introduced up Christian and raised on a household farm in Ferriday that “produced extra well-known folks per sq. mile than another American small city,” he as soon as mentioned.
Lewis taught himself to play piano by age 8 and sung gospel music in church. His two cousins, Mickey Gilley, who turned a profitable nation singer, and Jimmy Swaggart, ultimately a famend TV evangelist, shared related musical pursuits. His formative influences included listening to Grand Ole Opry’s radio broadcasts that featured the likes of Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and Moon Mullican.
Lewis moved to Memphis in 1956 to audition for Sam Phillips, the proprietor of Solar Information and the person who first recorded Elvis Presley, Johnny Money and Carl Perkins. Phillips wasn’t there when Lewis arrived, so producer Jack Clement recorded Lewis’ debut single, a rockabilly model of Ray Worth’s “Loopy Arms.”
Lewis went on to work on the studio as a session musician, enjoying piano on quite a few recordings by Money, Billy Lee Riley (“Flyin’ Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll”) and Perkins (“You Can Do No Flawed,” “Your True Love”), amongst others. The Million Greenback Quartet classes at Solar, recorded by Phillips, was the results of a spontaneous jam session, that includes many gospel songs, involving Presley, Money, Perkins and Lewis.
(Lewis later was a part of the legendary Presley tribute Class of ’55 album with Money, Perkins and Roy Orbison.)
Lewis’ rockabilly model of “Complete Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” first recorded by Large Maybelle, hit No. 1 on the nation and R&B charts and No. 3 on the pop charts in 1957. “I knew it was successful once I lower it,” Lewis mentioned, “however Sam Phillips thought it was too risque.”
Wrote Memphis critic Robert Gordon: “Jerry Lee started to indicate that on this new rising style known as rock ‘n’ roll, not all people was going to face there with a guitar.”
“Nice Balls of Fireplace,” which additionally premiered in 1957, introduced Jerry simple worldwide fame and “Breathless” adopted in 1958, each crashing the Prime 10 on the pop charts at No. 2 and No. 7, respectively.
Nevertheless, he would undergo a media backlash, led by British journalist Ray Berry, when it was revealed that Lewis had secretly made his 13-year-old cousin, Myra Gale Brown, his third spouse, in December 1957. He was 22 on the time.
Radio stations stopped enjoying his data, and Dick Clark canceled his appearances on American Bandstand. Earlier than his marriage, venues paid him practically $10,000 an evening; the scandal lowered his asking worth to a rock-bottom $250 per engagement.
He was nonetheless below contract to Solar Information, although, and a subsequent recording of Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” skilled some success. His contract with Solar resulted in 1963 and he went on to launch different songs with Smash Information, however nothing hit the crossover peaks of these first releases, even when he did proceed to do nicely on the Nation charts. His Dwell on the Star Membership, Hamburg album in 1964 is taken into account probably the most spectacular stay live performance discs ever launched.
In 1968, Lewis recorded a Prime 10 nation hit, “One other Place, One other Time,” adopted by the No. 1 single “To Make Love Sweeter for You,” and he had different hits together with “What’s Made Milwaukee Well-known (Has Made a Loser Out of Me),” “As soon as Extra With Feeling,” “There Should Be Extra to Love Than This” and “Me & Bobby McGee.”
He recorded “Thirty-9 and Holding” on Elektra Information in 1981 after which signed with MCA Information.
He returned to the limelight in 1989 with the film Nice Balls of Fireplace!, starring Dennis Quaid as Lewis and Winona Ryder as Myra Gale and primarily based on Myra Lewis’ e book. (Lewis recorded the songs for the soundtrack.)
Uncooked live performance footage was put collectively within the companion DVD to his Final Man Standing album, Final Man Standing Dwell, which turned his tenth gold disk. It featured duets with Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart and Jimmy Web page, amongst others.
He teamed with Eric Clapton, Merle Haggard, Web page and others on Imply Outdated Man in 2010 and three years later opened Jerry Lee Lewis’ Cafe & Honky Tonk on Beale Avenue in Memphis.
He launched Rock & Roll Time, his third album of the last decade and first for Vanguard, in 2014; Lewis’ model of the title monitor, initially co-written and recorded by Kristofferson, featured guitarists Doyle Bramhall, Jon Brion and Kenny Lovelace together with vocalists Vonda Shepard and Bernard Fowler.
“This can be a rock ‘n’ roll report,” he instructed Rolling Stone. “That’s simply the best way it got here out.”
The remainder of the album was solid with many artists he impressed, together with Keith Richards, Ron Wooden, Neil Younger, Robbie Robertson, Nils Lofgren and Shelby Lynne. It included covers of songs by Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Paul Rodgers and outdated pal Money (“Folsom Jail Blues”), certainly one of two songs on which he performed guitar.
Jerry Lee Lewis: His Personal Story, a biography written by Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg, was printed in 2015.
Lewis had six youngsters by seven totally different wives, and his private life was marred by a number of tragedies, beginning when his older brother, Elmo Jr., was killed when Lewis was 3.
He married Dorothy Barton in 1952 when he was simply 14. They divorced in ’53, one month earlier than he wed Jane Mitchum, with whom he had two youngsters, Jerry Lee Jr. and Ronnie Man. (Jerry Jr. died at 19 in a automotive accident in 1973.)
Lewis had two youngsters with Brown: Steve — who drowned when he was 3 in 1962 — and Phoebe.
His fourth spouse, Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pete, gave delivery to their daughter, Lori Lee, earlier than dying in a buddy’s swimming pool earlier than their divorce was ultimate. He married Shawn Stephens in ’83, and she or he died three months after they have been wed.
His sixth marriage, to Kerrie McCarver, lasted from 1984-2004 and produced a son, Jerry Lee Lewis III. He married his seventh spouse, Judith Brown, in 2012, they usually lived on a ranch in Nesbit, Mississippi.