Jerry Lee Lewis, one of the pioneers of rock’n’roll, died at the age of 87, announced his press secretary Zach Farnum in a statement on Friday October 28. The artist died at his home in Memphis, Tennessee. The American rocker was particularly known for his title Great Balls of Fire.
Nicknamed “The Killer”, Jerry Lee Lewis was rknown for his strong stage presence and dynamic style on the piano. Born in 1935 in Ferriday, Louisiana, into a poor family, young Jerry discovered himself at the age of 9 year a passion for this instrument, which will never leave him. At 15, Jerry Lee Lewis briefly joins the benches from Southwestern Bible University in Texas, before dropping out to devote himself fully to his music.
It was in 1956 that his career took off. Jerry Lee Lewis leaves for Memphis (Tennessee), the mecca of new American music, and is one of the first to sign with the famous 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” (“The Million Dollar Quartet”).
In 1957, his first title, Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ on, already 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 .
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.
A scandal erupts when the press discovers that his third wife, Myra Gale Brown, is his 13-year-old first cousin. 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.
Alcohol and drugs have earned this whimsical and sometimes violent artist serious health problems and just as many problems with the police. 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” (rock hall of fame and museum, in Cleveland, Ohio), when it was founded in 1986.