Jerry Lee Lewis: last of the original rock and rollers

 

This is where it all began: the church in the Mississippi Delta town of Ferriday, Louisiana, where Jerry Lee Lewis - who has died aged 87 - first experienced the thrill of performing to an audience.

I took this photo in 2012 while gathering information for my book A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis. The humble building on Texas Avenue was a Pentecostalist Assembly of God church when Lewis began playing piano and singing for the congregation in about 1945, but it later became the Latter Rain Revival Tabernacle (make of that name what you will).

It was a whites-only church but black families would gather outside during Sunday services to hear the music. The young Lewis was sometimes joined by his cousins Mickey Gilley - later a country star in his own right - and Jimmy Swaggart, of televangelism infamy. They would perform gospel songs such as Blessed Jesus, Hold My Hand and He Was Nailed to the Cross for Me.

All this seems incongruous considering Lewis's reputation in later life as the original wild man of rock and roll, but as I wrote in my book: "Some of the most wayward debauchees in show business (Johnny Cash was another) came from the Bible Belt and learned their chops giving praise to God." Lewis's biographer Rick Bragg wrote that he went through life alternating between world-class sinner and penitent - "sometimes in the space of a single song".

I was a great fan of Lewis from the time I first heard Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On when I was six years old. As I recalled in my book, my teenage brother Justin brought the record home and played it for hours on end, occasionally flipping it over to the B-side, It’ll Be Me. (To this day I think It’ll Be Me was as good as the A-side. Have a listen.)

I interviewed the man himself at Wellington Airport when he toured with his band in about 1971 and my main memory is that for someone known as the Killer, he was almost disappointingly courteous and obliging.

Lewis was one of the three singers who introduced me to rock and roll. The others were Elvis Presley and Fats Domino and now they're all gone. Pat Boone (aged 88) is the only survivor from the first wave of rock and roll and he'd probably be the first to admit he's not quite in the same league.