The news arrived that Jerry Lee Lewis died at the age of 87 today. He was a bigamist when he was 18. With 22 a world star, a year later a persona non grata. After he became well known during a tour in England that his third wife, Myra Gale Brown, was his cousin and just 13 years old, the world turned away from him. Before that she had willingly received his songs like "Whole Lotta Shakin 'Going On," "Great Balls of Fire," "Breathless" or "High School Confidential." These were lustful manifestos in the dress of the rock 'n' roll conquering the world, whose craziest tailor he was: Jerry Lee Lewis, whom they called the killer. One of the first to live rock'n'roll and who hasn't cared about anything (and I'm sure I'm not going to call everything he's done good). One of the great ones from the early days of music has left us.
Rest well Killer
3 Kommentare:
By all accounts he was a very unpleasant man, but there's no denying his influence on rock & roll.
One of the last men standing from his era. I was surprised he was only 87... in my head, he was much older.
I echo the above comments. My dad is/was a fan of that era (although admittedly preferred Fats Domino and Chuck Berry to Jerry Lee) so I grew up listening to The Killer's music. When the biopic Great Balls Of Fire came out in 1989, he appeared very old then - hard to believe he was barely mid-50s. Some great music, but I won't miss the man.
A sign of markedly different times and attitudes that Sun Records saw fit to release novelty song The Return Of Jerry Lee in June 1958, following his disastrous and truncated UK tour.
https://youtu.be/h3c_RmViTfw
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