“That’d make the hair stand up on the back of your neck,” says Jerry Lee.
The one bleak spot was his marriage to Jane. She was still living back in Ferriday while he bunked with the Browns in Coro Lake, and sometimes he could forget he was married at all. He knew his boy was being cared for, there so close to his people, but Jane was sick of the distance between them and was insisting that she bring Jerry Lee Jr. to stay with him in Memphis. But Jerry Lee was still living with his cousin J. W. and his family and was in no hurry to live anywhere else. More and more, he was spending time with his cousin Myra, who didn’t look thirteen a bit, not to him. He believed she was of age, by all the customs and standards of his history, his experience, and, after a failed reunion with Jane in Memphis, he felt even less married than he ever had, and was becoming suspicious that she didn’t feel married, either. But she was no longer fighting, no longer hurling the whole world at him, and it all just died, what love there might have been, in a kind of indifference, and he knew that ducking was all there had ever been. But as always, he hated to drag the laws of man into his life, so he just let it be, as he disappeared into the studio for the crucial follow-up record to “Shakin’.”
The sky over Memphis was full of falling stars. He had seen Carl Perkins stall after one big hit, watched Roy Orbison and Billy Riley and the others grasp at straws, and he was determined to do better, recording and discarding song after song, never finding just the right thing. But “Shakin’” was far from done, and he had time, still, to relish it. People were already daring to say what he had known all along. In August, a story clattered across the United Press wire claiming that Jerry Lee Lewis was on his way to usurping Elvis Presley as the king of rock and roll.
He remembers, as “Shakin’” held strong on the charts, sitting with Johnny Cash in the studio at Sun. Cash and Perkins and Billy Lee Riley and the other Sun artists were still rankled over Jerry Lee’s New York trip, and Sam’s ongoing sponsorship of Jerry Lee to the exclusion of all else, so they just sat, sharing the silence. Jerry Lee was reading Superman.
“How many records have you sold?” Cash suddenly asked Jerry Lee.
Jerry Lee looked at the secretary, Regina.
“It’s sold about seven hundred thousand,” she said.
“How many has mine sold?” Johnny asked.
“About two hundred thousand,” she said.
Johnny, in that taciturn way he had, thought on that for a minute.
“Gee, whiz,” he said, in that baritone voice. “I wish I was a teen idol. It must be nice.”
Jerry Lee told him, yes, it was, and went back to his funny book.
Photographic Insert 1
With his parents, Elmo and Mamie Herron Lewis.
Courtesy of Jerry Lee Lewis
As a boy, at around the time his father took him out to the levee to see the party boats on the Mississippi. “That’ll be you on there someday,” Elmo told him. “That’ll be you.”
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The young conqueror loose on the streets.
The bar at Haney’s Big House, with proprietor, Will Haney, second from right. “I just introduced myself to the atmosphere,” says Jerry Lee.
Concordia Sentinel
With Sun Records founder Sam Phillips (above), who tried to convince Jerry Lee that he could save souls as a “rock-and-roll exponent,” and Sam’s brother Jud (below)
who served, at various times, as manager, drinking partner, and mentor.
Pictorial Press; Colin Escott
Jerry Lee with (left to right) Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash, around the piano at Sun, December 4, 1956: the afternoon jam session that went down in history as the Million Dollar Quartet. “I knew there was something special going on here,” Jerry Lee says.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Here he is, jumpin’ and joltin’: The Steve Allen Show, July 28, 1957.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Shining down from above: a mysterious Sun promotional photo.
Debuting “Great Balls of Fire” in the jukebox film Jamboree.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Signing autographs for fans at the Bell Auditorium, Augusta, Georgia.
Museum of Augusta
The Great Ball of Fire on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.
“I thought to myself, I don’t like the look in these girls’ eyes, and the cops couldn’t do nothing about it.”
ValdoSta, Georgia, probably early 1958.
Courtesy of Pierre Pennone
With fan club president Kay Martin and a fan backstage at the Loews Paradise Theater in the Bronx, New York, March 31, 1958.
Courtesy of Kay Martin/Pierre Pennone
At the Granada Theatre in Tooting, South London: his last concert before leaving England, May 26, 1958.
Pierre Pennone
“Why don’t we leave our personal questions out of this, sir?” Greeting the press with Myra upon his return from England, Idlewild Airport, New York City, 1958.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Steve Allen Lewis, who died before his fourth birthday.
Kevin Horan/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
With Don Everly (center) and Buddy Holly (right), who asked him for marriage advice. Jerry Lee remembers Holly as “a real champion” and “a true gentleman.”
Pictorial Press
With his parents, Mamie and Elmo, 1959.
Bettmann/Corbis
At El Monte Stadium, Los Angeles, with DJ Art Leboe, June 20, 1958.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
REX USA / Devo Hoffmann
The conqueror returns to Europe, early 1960s.
Marion Schweitzer/REX USA
7
TOO HOT TO ROCK
Memphis
1957
He spent money like a Rockefeller, on cars and motorcycles and rock-and-roll clothes, and he had more pretty women chasing him than a Palm Beach Kennedy, but it is a fact of history that poor Southern boys have a problem in success just as an oddly shaped man has trouble finding a suit of clothes that does not cut, bind, and itch, till it is maddening, those clothes, and you want to tear them from you and run for home.
“H. E. L. L.,” Jerry Lee shouted.
“I don’t believe it,” said Sam Phillips.
“Great God a’mighty, great balls of fire,” chimed in one of the impatient session men.
“That’s it! That’s it! That’s it. It says, it says, Make merry! With the joy of God, only,” Jerry Lee shouted.
Sam Phillips looked at him in wonder, and in some fear. He and Jack Clement had tape set up and running in the studio and had hired session men to back Jerry Lee on what seemed a sure thing, a song written especially for him by the man who wrote all those hits for Elvis, the great Otis Blackwell. Everything was in place for another earth-trembling hit, but Jerry Lee had gone home. He was still standing there among them, all right, still inside the soundproofed walls with the drum sets and amplifiers and electric cords, but his heart and soul were someplace else—caught, as they had always been caught, between the smoke and grind of Haney’s Big House and the dire warning of Texas Street, between the might and thunder of faith and the secular sound of lust and greed. Jerry Lee was refusing to cut the record at all, because to do so would be to serve the devil.
“But when it comes to worldly music,” said Jerry Lee, “rock and roll . . .”
“Pluck it out,” said Billy Lee Riley.
“. . . anything like that,” continued Jerry Lee, unfazed, “you have done brought yourself into the world, and you’re in the world, and you hadn’t come from out of the world, and you’re still a sinner. And then you’re a sinner, and unless you be saved and borned again and be made as a little child, and walk before God and be holy . . . And brother, I mean you got to be so pure. No sin shall enter there. No sin. ’Cause it says no sin. It don’t just say just a little bit. It says no sin shall enter there. Brother, not one little bit. You got to walk and talk with God to go to heaven. You got to be so good.”
Riley gave him a hallelujah. As was sometimes the case in the studio, someone had opened a bottle of brown liquor, and it had already made the circuit a time or two among Phillips and the session men, rock and roll being one of those rare professions in which alcohol is as necessary as guitar picks.
Sam tried to argue that Jerry Lee could do good singing his music, lifting spirits.
“All right. Now look, Jerry. Religious conviction doesn’t mean anything resembling extremism. All right. You mean to tell me that you’re going to take the Bible, that you’re going to take God’s word, and that you’re going to revolutionize the whole universe? Now listen. Jesus Christ was sent here by God Almighty.”
“Right,” said Jerry Lee.
“Did He convince, did He save all of the people in the world?”
“Naw, but He tried to.”
“He sure did. Now wait just a minute. Jesus Christ came into this world. He tolerated man. He didn’t preach from one pulpit. He went around and did good.”
“That’s right. He preached everywhere.”
“Everywhere.”
“He preached it on land.”
“Everywhere. That’s right, that’s right.”
“He preached on the water.”
“That’s right, that’s exactly right. Now . . .”
“Man, he done everything. He healed.”
“Now, here, here’s the difference . . .”
“Are you followin’ those that heal? Like Jesus Christ did?”
“What do you mean? You . . . What? . . . I . . .” stammered Sam.
“Well, it’s happenin’ every day.”
“What do you mean?”
“The blinded eyes are opened. The lame are made to walk.”
“Jerry, Jesus Christ . . .”
“The crippled are made to walk.”
“Jesus Christ, in my opinion, is just as real today as He was when He came into this world,” said Sam.
“Right! Right! You’re so right you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“Now, I would say, more so . . .”
“Awww,” said Riley, interrupting, “let’s cut it.”
But Sam Phillips, who’d had just enough whiskey to get his back up, was well into his argument and was not quitting now.
“Never sell, man,” said someone else. “It’s not commercial.”
“Naw, we’ll be with you here in a minute. . . . But look . . . Now listen, I’m telling you out of my heart, and I have studied the Bible a little bit . . .”
“Well, I have, too,” shot back Jerry Lee. “I’ve studied it through and through and through and through and through, and I know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“Jerry, Jerry, if you think that you can’t do good and be a rock-and-roll exponent . . .”
“You can do good, Mr. Phillips. Don’t get me wrong.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, listen. I mean, I say, ‘Do good . . .’”
“You can have a kind heart.”
“I don’t mean, I don’t mean just . . .”
“You can help people.”
“You can save souls!”
“No! NO! NO! NO!”
“You had it,” said that other voice. “You’ll never make it.”
“How can—how can the devil save souls? What are you talkin’ about?”
“Listen, listen . . .”
“Man, I got the devil in me. If I didn’t have, I’d be a Christian.”
“Well, you may have it . . .”
“Jesus!” Jerry Lee almost screamed, and thumped his heart. “Heal this man! He cast the devil out. The devil says, ‘Where can I go?’ He says, ‘Can I go into this swine down here?’ He says, ‘Yeah, go into him.’ Didn’t he go into him?”
“Jerry, the point I’m trying to make is, if you believe what you’re saying, you’ve got no alternative whatsoever, out of—listen!—out of . . .”
“Mr. Phillips, I don’t care. It ain’t what you believe. It’s what’s written in the Bible!”
“Well, wait a minute . . .”
“It’s what’s there, Mr. Phillips.”
“Naw, naw . . .”
“It ain’t what you believe, it’s just what’s there.”
“No, by gosh, if it’s not what you believe, then how do you interpret the Bible? Huh? How do you interpret the Bible if it’s not what you believe?
“Well, I mean, there’s some people, you just can’t tell ’em,” Jerry Lee mused.
“Let’s cut it, man!” moaned Billy Lee Riley.
“No, here’s the thing . . .”
“You can talk,” said Jerry Lee. “You can talk, and you can talk.” The faith Jerry Lee was raised in does not yield to argument, is not open to interpretation. There had been and would be many moments when he was at war with himself this way. This one just happened to have been captured on tape in the Sun studio, and would be proof that the conflict inside Jerry Lee was not a thing of books and movie scripts but a real, wounding thing. He knows he is not special this way, and that most human hearts are at war with themselves, but his battle was more public because fame simply insisted on it. But it is a matter of history that, sometime while the great city of Memphis had mostly gone to bed, the men in the cramped studio finished their whiskey and finally began to play a rock-and-roll song, which became not just another record but another musical landmark.
Jerry Lee, as always, played it the way he thought it sounded best, regardless of how some songwriter or lyricist said it should be played. When the bass player had a hard time following Jerry Lee’s piano lead, “he propped hisself on top of the piano, and he was just layin’ there, he was watchin’ my hands . . . followin’ my fingers. And he was right on it. The drummer was right on it.”
You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain
Too much love drives a man insane
You broke my will, but what a thrill
Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!