Rock ‘n’ Roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis is dead

(New York) One of the last great pioneers of rock and roll, American musician Jerry Lee Lewis, has died at the age of 87, his agent told AFP on Friday.

Associated for eternity with the song Great Balls of Firerenowned for his strong stage presence and dynamic piano style, rock legend from Louisiana (south), Jerry Lee Lewis died of natural causes, said the same source.

The last survivor of a generation of groundbreaking artists like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Lewis died at his home in Memphis, Tenn., his rep Zach Farnum said in a statement.

Of all the rock rebels who emerged in the 1950s, few captured the pull and danger of the new genre more unforgettable than the Louisiana-born pianist who called himself “The Killer.”

Tender ballads should be left to the elderly. Lewis, on the other hand, thought only of lust and satisfaction, with his lascivious tenor and demanding asides, his violent tempos and cheeky glissandi, his arrogant grin and his crazy blond hair. He was a one-man band that made fans scream and keyboards swear, his stage acting was so combustible that during a performance of Whole Lotta Shakin “Goin” On in 1957 on The Steve Allen Showchairs were thrown at him like buckets of water on a brazier.

“There was rockabilly. There was Elvis. But there was no pure rock ‘n’ roll until Jerry Lee Lewis kicked in the door,” an admirer of Lewis once remarked. That admirer was Jerry Lee Lewis.

But in his private life, he was raging in ways that could have ended his career today – and almost did then.

For a brief period in 1958, he was a contender to replace Presley as rock’s main hitmaker after Elvis was called up for the army. But while Lewis is on tour in England, the press learns three damaging things: he is married to 13-year-old (maybe even 12)-year-old Myra Gale Brown, she is his cousin, and he is still married to his previous wife. His tour is cancelled, he is blacklisted from the radio, and his income plummets overnight to virtually nothing.

“I probably would have rearranged my life a little differently, but I never hid anything from people,” Lewis told the wall street journal in 2014 when asked about marriage. “I just carried on with my life as usual. »

Over the next few decades, Lewis struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, legal litigation, and physical illness. Two of his many marriages ended with the early death of his wife. Brown herself divorced him in the early 1970s and later alleged physical and mental cruelty that nearly drove her to suicide.

“If I was still married to Jerry, I probably would be dead by now,” she told the magazine. People in 1989.

Lewis reinvented himself as a country artist in the 1960s, and the music industry eventually forgave him, long after he had stopped having hits. He’s won three Grammys and recorded with some of the biggest stars in the industry. In 2006, Lewis released Last Man Standing, with Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, BB King and George Jones. In 2010 Lewis tapped Jagger, Keith Richards, Sheryl Crow, Tim McGraw and others for the album Mean Old Man.

In The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Rollfirst published in 1975, he recalls how he convinced the animators to give him a second chance.

“This time I said, ‘Listen, man, let’s get together and put an end to this stuff – a peace treaty, you know,'” he explains. Lewis always played the old hits on stage, but on the radio he sang country.

Lewis was married seven times, and was rarely far from trouble or death. His fourth wife, Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, drowned in a swimming pool in 1982 while filing for divorce. His fifth wife, Shawn Stephens, 23 years his junior, died of an apparent drug overdose in 1983. A year later, Lewis married Kerrie McCarver, then 21. She filed for divorce in 1986, accusing him of physical violence and infidelity. He counterattacked, but both motions were eventually dropped. They finally divorced in 2005 after several years of separation. The couple had one child, Jerry Lee III.

“He is ready to go,” his wife Judith reportedly said shortly before his death, according to a statement.

Both friend and rival of King Elvis Presley himself, Jerry Lee Lewis had influenced a whole generation of musicians, like Bruce Springsteen who said about him in 1995: “He doesn’t play rock’n’roll, he’s rock’n’roll. »

He was as famous for his hits as for the dramas and scandals that marked his existence.

“There was rockabilly, there was Elvis. But real rock’n’roll didn’t exist before Jerry Lee Lewis came on the scene,” declared the man with blond curls who spoke of himself to his biographer in his strong Southern accent.

“When people think of me, I would like it not to be for my wives, even though I had a few, or for the villas and the money I had or spent. I would like to be remembered just for my music,” he said. Pure performer, he did not write his songs.

mortgaged farm

Born September 29, 1935 into a poor family in Ferriday, Louisiana, he discovered the piano at age 9 and his parents mortgaged the family farm to pay for his instrument.

Raised in a Pentecostal family, he was sent to a Christian institution in Texas to become a pastor, but was fired, according to him “for playing My God Is Real with boogie-woogie sauce”, which he already masters brilliantly.

In 1956, he left for Memphis (Tennessee), the mecca of new American music, and was one of the first to sign with the famous record label Sun Records. His meeting, that same year, with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins gave birth to a legendary recording session known as the Million Dollar Quartet.

In 1957, his first title, Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ onalready bears the mark of his disheveled style.

While rock is still in its infancy, crowds flock to see him pounding the keyboard fiercely with his fingers, elbows or feet, his hair swinging furiously to the frantic rhythm as he sends his stool waltzing in a wild dance step .

“If I go to hell, I’ll go playing the piano”, liked to say this eternal rebel, provocative to the point of setting fire to his piano at the end of a concert, reinforcing his reputation as the “bad boy” of rock. .

Some months later, Great Balls of Firewhich will also be the title of a docu-drama on his life in 1989, propels him into the top of sales and makes him one of the most adored stars of the moment.

Scandal and boycott

He is ready to conquer Europe when the press discovers that his third wife, Myra Gale Brown, is his 13-year-old first cousin.

The news caused a scandal in Great Britain and American radio stations decided to boycott the singer, who fell out of favor for half a dozen years before resurfacing by abandoning rock for country music.

The next two decades were marked by his divorce from Myra, the brutal deaths of his 3-year-old (drowning) and 19-year-old (car accident) sons, and his fourth (found dead in his piano-shaped swimming pool) and fifth. (overdose, according to police) wives.

Fanciful and sometimes violent, alcohol and drugs have earned him serious health problems and as many problems with the police. In 1976, he was arrested in the middle of the night, drunk and armed, after breaking through the gate of Graceland, the property of Elvis Presley in Memphis.

But the legend does not weaken, on the contrary, and he is one of the first musicians inducted into the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” (museum and pantheon of rock, in Cleveland, Ohio), when it was created in 1986.

In 2006, he recorded a critically acclaimed new album, Last Man Standingfeaturing the Stones, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, then Mean Old Man in 2010, with Eric Clapton and Springsteen.

He spent part of his last years on his ranch in Nesbit, Mississippi, with his seventh wife, and was still performing in early 2019. But, following a minor stroke in May of that year, he canceled concerts.