Pioneering rock ’n’ roll icon lived life upended by scandal
Jerry Lee Lewis, the untamable rock ’n’ roll pioneer whose outrageous talent, energy and ego collided on such definitive records as “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and sustained a career otherwise upended by personal scandal, died Friday morning at 87.
The last survivor of a generation of groundbreaking performers that included Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Lewis died at home in DeSoto County, Mississippi, near Memphis, Tennessee, representative Zach Farnum said in a release.
Of all the rock rebels to emerge in the 1950s, few captured the new genre’s attraction and danger as unforgettably as the Louisiana-born piano player who called himself “the Killer.”
Tender ballads were best left to the old folks. Lewis was all about lust and gratification, with his leering tenor and demanding asides, violent tempos and brash glissandi, cocky sneer and crazy blond hair. He was a one-man stampede who made fans scream and the keyboards swear, his live act so combustible that during a 1957 performance of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” on “The Steve Allen Show,” chairs were thrown at him like buckets of water on an inferno.
But in his private life, he raged in ways that might have ended his career today — and nearly did back then.
For a brief time, in 1958, he was a contender to replace Presley as rock’s prime hit-maker after Elvis was drafted into the Army. But while Lewis toured in England, the press learned three things: He was married
to 13-year-old (possibly even 12-year-old) Myra Gale Brown, she was his cousin, and he was still married to his previous wife. His tour was canceled, he was blacklisted from radio and his earnings dropped to virtually nothing.
“I probably would have rearranged my life a little bit different, but I never did hide anything from people,” Lewis told The Wall Street Journal in 2014.
Over the following decades, Lewis struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, legal disputes and physical illness. Two of his seven marriages ended in his wife’s early death. Brown herself divorced him in the early 1970s and would later allege physical and mental cruelty that nearly drove her to suicide.
Lewis reinvented himself as a country performer in the 1960s, won three Grammys and recorded with some of the industry’s greatest stars. In 2006, Lewis came out with “Last Man Standing,” featuring Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, B.B.
King and George Jones. In 2010, Lewis brought in Jagger, Keith Richards, Sheryl Crow, Tim McGraw and others for the album “Mean Old Man.”
The son of one-time bootlegger Elmo Lewis and the cousin of TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and country star Mickey Gilley, Lewis was born Sept. 29, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana.
Lewis was rarely far from trouble or death. His fourth wife, Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, drowned in a swimming pool in 1982 while suing for divorce. His fifth wife, Shawn Stephens, died of an apparent drug overdose in 1983. Within a year, Lewis had married Kerrie McCarver, then 21. They finally divorced in 2005 after several years of separation. The couple had one child, Jerry Lee III.
Another son by a previous marriage, Steve Allen Lewis, 3, drowned in a swimming pool in 1962, and son Jerry Lee Jr. died in a traffic accident at 19 in 1973. Lewis also had two daughters, Phoebe and Lori Leigh, and is survived by his wife, Judith.