The movie focuses on Lewis's early career and his relationship with Myra and ends with the scandal of the late 1950s. The livestream special, Whole Lotta Celebratin' Goin' On, featured appearances and performances by Willie Nelson, Elton John, Mike Love, Priscilla Presley, Joe Walsh, and others. My dad collected George Shearing records, but this was the first time I heard someone beat the shit out of a piano. However, the next year, the IRS seized property from Lewis ranch in Nesbit, Mississippi. His 1964 live album Live at the Star Club, Hamburg is regarded by music journalists and fans as one of the wildest and greatest live rock albums ever. [57], Along with Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison, Lewis received the first Grammy Award in the spoken-word category for the very rare album of interviews released with some early copies of the Class of '55 album in 1986. During the famous Million Dollar Quartet jam involving Lewis, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash, they performed several gospel songs. By all accounts the sessions were tense. [Part 2]", "Jerry Lee Lewis Online Wild One's Clubhouse: The Largest Jerry Lee Lewis Homepage on the Internet! On February 10, 2008, he appeared with John Fogerty and Little Richard on the 50th Grammy Awards, performing "Great Balls of Fire" in a medley with "Good Golly Miss Molly". On November 5, 2007, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, honored Lewis with six days of conferences, interviews, a DVD premiere and film clips, dedicated to him and entitled The Life And Music of Jerry Lee Lewis. During one exchange that can be heard on the 2013 reissue Southern Roots: The Original Sessions, Meaux asks Lewis, "Do you wanna try one? In 2005, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" was selected for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. [77], In 1993, Lewis moved to Ireland with his family in what was suggested (but denied) to be a move to avoid issues with the Internal Revenue Service. The four then started an impromptu jam session and Phillips left the tape running. He didn't move there and didn't schmooze there. It was at the latter studio that Lewis recorded his only major hit during this period, a rendition of Ray Charles's "What'd I Say" in 1961. Hits include "What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made A Loser Out of Me)", "To Make Love Sweeter For You", "She Still Comes Around (To Love What's Left of Me)", "Since I Met You Baby", "Once More With Feeling", "One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)", and "Sometimes A Memory Ain't Enough". Are you sanctified? [76], His sixth marriage, to Kerrie McCarver, lasted 21 years from April 1984 to June 2005. He was also a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame. At the time of the release, Lewis had been playing Iago in a rock and roll adaptation of Othello called Catch My Soul in Los Angeles but was soon rushed back to Nashville to record another batch of songs with producer Jerry Kennedy. [71] In 1970, Brown filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery and abuse,[71] charging that she had been "subject to every type of physical and mental abuse imaginable. Lewis's Sun recording contract ended in 1963, and he joined Smash Records, where he made several rock recordings that did not further his career. [26] Although almost entirely self-taught, Lewis conceded to biographer Rich Bragg in 2014 that Paul Whitehead, a blind pianist from Meadville, Mississippi, was another key influence on him in his earliest days playing clubs. The team at Smash (a division of Mercury Records) came up with "I'm on Fire", a song that they felt would be perfect for Lewis and, as Colin Escott writes in the sleeve to the retrospective A Half Century of Hits, "Mercury held the presses, thinking they had found Lewis's comeback hit, and it might have happened if the Beatles hadn't arrived in America, changing radio playlists almost overnight. In 1979, Lewis switched to Elektra and produced the critically acclaimed Jerry Lee Lewis, although sales were disappointing. All three listened to the same music in their youth and frequented Haney's Big House, the Ferriday club that featured black blues acts. [65], Although Lewis's piano playing is commonly labeled boogie-woogie, gospel music was another major influence in the formation of his technique. [70] However, his divorce from Jane Mitchum was not finalized before the ceremony took place, so he remarried Brown on June 4, 1958. An EP featuring this song and four more was also released on November 11. 1963). In Joe Bonomo's 2009 book Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found, Memphis producer and musician Jim Dickinson calls Lewis's occasional penchant for interrupting the standard boogie woogie left-hand progression by omitting the seventh and repeating the fifth and sixth, creating a repetitive, driving, quasi-menacing momentum, "revolutionary, almost inexplicable. In 1998, Lewis toured Europe with Chuck Berry and Little Richard. The last time Lewis had a song on the country charts was with "Pen and Paper" in 1964, which had reached number 36, but "Another Place, Another Time" would go all the way to number 4 and remain on the charts for 17 weeks. He didn't fit in with the family values crowd. In very different ways, they all have left a lasting impact on the industry and generations of fans alike. Lewis was influenced by a piano-playing older cousin, Carl McVoy (who later recorded with Bill Black's Combo), the radio, and the sounds from Haney's Big House, a black juke joint across the tracks. Singleton would milk these unreleased recordings for years, following The Golden Cream of the Country with A Taste of Country later in 1970. [26], His mother enrolled him at the Southwest Bible Institute in Waxahachie, Texas, so that he could sing evangelical songs exclusively. The auction amassed $91,382, less than a third of the debt. His last big hit with Mercury was "Middle Age Crazy", which made it to number 4 in 1977. [53][54], On October 27, 2020, to celebrate Lewis' 85th birthday, a livestream aired on YouTube, Facebook and his official website. In 1989, a major motion picture based on his early life in rock and roll, Great Balls of Fire!, brought him back into the public eye, especially when he decided to re-record all his songs for the movie soundtrack. "[72] They had two children: Steve Allen Lewis (19591962) and Phoebe Allen Lewis (b. [73] They had one daughter, Lori Lee Lewis (b. [66] The next day, Lewis severed business ties with his daughter Phoebe Lewis-Loftin who was his manager and revoked her power of attorney. The film was based on the book by Lewis's ex-wife, Myra Gale Lewis, and starred Dennis Quaid as Lewis, Winona Ryder as Myra, and Alec Baldwin as Jimmy Swaggart. [29] His first TV appearance, in which he demonstrated some of these moves, was on The Steve Allen Show on July 28, 1957, where he played "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On". Lewis was present to accept the American Music Masters Award and closed his own tribute show with a rendition of "Over the Rainbow". It was written by Kris Kristofferson. To be scared of me knowin' me the way he did was ridiculous." [15] On September 26, 2006, a new album titled Last Man Standing was released, featuring many of rock and roll's elite as guest stars. In 1962, his son Steve Allen Lewis drowned in a swimming pool accident at age three, and in 1973, Jerry Lee Lewis Jr. died at the age of 19[67][68] when he overturned the Jeep he was driving. Pate drowned in a swimming pool at the home of a friend with whom she was staying, several weeks before divorce proceedings could be finalized. What followed was a string of hits that no one could have ever predicted, although country music always remained a major part of Lewis's repertoire. This was followed by Mean Old Man in 2010, which has received some of the best sales of Lewis's career. Music critic Robert Christgau has said of Lewis: "His drive, his timing, his offhand vocal power, his unmistakable boogie-plus piano, and his absolute confidence in the face of the void make Jerry Lee the quintessential rock and roller. Lewis played the Grand Ole Opry for the first and only time on January 20, 1973. It was a specially recorded performance featuring a whole array of artists paying tribute to the music of Lewis. ", meaning a take, to which Lewis replies, "If you got enough fuckin' sense to cut it. See, I was a good preacher, I know my Bible? In October 2008, as part of a successful European tour, Lewis appeared at two London shows a special private show at the 100 Club on October 25 and at the London Forum on October 28 with Wanda Jackson and his sister, Linda Gail Lewis. The Greatest Live Show on Earth". [18] In 2004, they ranked him No. This was astonishing to me, that people could do that. In December 1956, Lewis began recording prolifically as a solo artist and as a session musician for other Sun artists, including Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Checksfield, Peter (1995). [87] Lewis almost killed his own bass player, Butch Owens, on September 29, 1976 (Lewis's 41st birthday) when a .357 Magnum accidentally went off in his hand. As Colin Escott writes in the liner notes to A Half Century of Hits, Lewis had always maintained ambivalent feelings towards Music City ever since he'd been turned away as an aspiring musician before his glory days at Sun Records: "It was 18 years since he had left Nashville broke and disheartened Lewis was never truly accepted in Nashville. ", Lewis has been married seven times, including bigamous marriages and a marriage with his underage cousin. [92], In 1988, Lewis filed for bankruptcy, petitioning that he was more than $3 million in debt, including $2 million he owed to the IRS. [33] Classical composer Michael Nyman has also cited Lewis's style as the progenitor of his own aesthetic. 1987). Jerry Lee, Keith, and Joe each found their musical callings early in life and displayed a strong-minded and fierce passion for music making. The songs still featured Lewis's inimitable piano flourishes, but critics were most taken aback by the rock and roll pioneer's effortlessly soulful vocals, which possessed an emotional resonance on par with the most respected country singers of the time, such as George Jones and Merle Haggard. She is Lewis's first cousin once removed[35][36] and was 13 years old (even though Lewis said that she was 15) while Lewis was 22 years old. [60] On November 10, the week culminated with a tribute concert compered by Kris Kristofferson. According to Rick Bragg's authorized 2014 biography, "the Killer" was in a foul mood when he showed up at Trans Maximus Studios in Memphis to record: "During these sessions, he insulted the producer, threatened to kill a photographer, and drank and medicated his way into but not out of a fog."