“If I’s 51, they’d have to hide the women.”—Pioneering
rock ‘n’ roll hellion Jerry Lee Lewis at age 76, quoted in Rick Bragg, Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story (2014)
Jerry Lee Lewis was born on this date 80 years ago in Ferriday,
Louisiana—within one year, in the same town as, cousins Mickey Gilley and Jimmy
Swaggart. That fact probably tells you that from the start, he would be involved in
a seesaw lifelong struggle between the sacred and the profane.
The women, the guns that are part of the not-so-private man of legend are all
there as told to Bragg. But any consideration of him starts with this legend at
the piano, as in this YouTube clip of Lewis in a live performance of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On,” where “Killer”
truly had “the bull by the horns.”
Lewis is now on his farewell tour--and I, for one, can't believe that he hasn't sold out his October appearance at B.B. King's in Manhattan yet. I can't imagine he won't leave the audience something to remember him by.
Lewis is now on his farewell tour--and I, for one, can't believe that he hasn't sold out his October appearance at B.B. King's in Manhattan yet. I can't imagine he won't leave the audience something to remember him by.
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