UNITED STATES: Jerry Lee Lewis, a pioneer of rock ‘n’ roll and one of the most notorious figures in popular music, has passed away at the age of 87, according to his publicist.
Jerry Lee Lewis passed away at his home in DeSoto County, Mississippi of natural causes. Lewis died with Judith, his seventh wife, by his side, according to a statement. “He told her, in his final days, that he welcomed the hereafter and that he was not afraid.”
Lewis’s enthusiastic performances of songs like Great Balls of Fire contributed to rock ‘n’ roll becoming the 1950s’ de facto American pop music.
The son of a struggling farming family who had to take out a mortgage on their house to purchase Lewis’s first piano, he was born in Louisiana in 1935.
He was expelled from an evangelical school where he was studying and learning the instrument because he gave an inappropriate performance of My God is Real in boogie-woogie.
He stopped going to school and started playing music; his first appearance was at the opening of a car dealership when he was 14 years old. He started performing at Sun Studios in Memphis, first as a studio musician and subsequently as a solo performer, developing a dramatic, raucous style that fit with the energy of the budding rock ‘n’ roll culture.
Some of his earliest recordings were produced in 1956 with the Million Dollar Quartet, which later included Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley.
Cash and Presley just so happened to be visiting the studio separately, where Lewis was providing piano support for Perkins, at the time of the unplanned session.
The next year, Lewis had his breakthrough with the piano-driven rock ‘n’ roll single Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On. He gained widespread recognition for his distinctive playing technique when he played it live on television for The Steve Allen Show. He would kick over his piano stool and play while standing up, accentuating tunes with cascading streams of notes.
His biggest hit, Great Balls of Fire, which peaked at No. 2 on the US charts and became one of the iconic songs of the rock and roll period, came after that Top 3 single.
At the height of his celebrity in 1958, while on tour in the UK, it was discovered that he had married his 13-year-old cousin Myra Brown, beginning the third of his seven marriages. His remaining tour dates were cancelled as a result of the outcry in the British media.
His fame declined as a result of being blacklisted by US radio stations and event organizers. He did not have another US Top 20 hit.
Despite the controversy, he managed to make the transition from rock and roll to country music as the scene died down and earned a number of songs on the US country charts, including his rendition of the classic Chantilly Lace.
After years of abusing prescription drugs, he underwent surgery to remove a third of his stomach in 1984 after developing a series of perforated ulcers.
He pulled through the procedure, and in 1986, he joined Presley, Chuck Berry, and other pioneering musicians as one of the first 10 performers to be inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.
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