Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story

Straight from the first page, Rick Bragg’s writing style dreamily pulls you into this autobiography of the famous rock ‘n roller, Jerry Lee Lewis."The passengers were well-off people, mostly, the officer class home from Europe and the Pacific and tourists from the Peabody, Roosevelt, and Monteleone, clinking glasses with planters and oil men who had always found riches in the dirt the poorer men could not see. Weary of the austerity of war, of rationing and victory gardens, of coastal blackouts and U-boats that hung like sharks at the river mouth, they wanted to raise a racket, spend some money, and light up the river and the entire dull, sleeping land. They floated drunk and singing past sandbars where gentlemen of Natchez once settled affairs of honor with smoothbore pistols and good claret, and around snags and whirlpools where river pirates had lured travelers to their doom."The story follows Jerry Lee from early childhood through his rising career, several marriages, family deaths, remade career and homecoming. Whether you love the legend or despise him, the story of Jerry Lee makes a great book.Unless you are a die-hard Jerry Lee Lewis fan, you may drown out the details of every piano kicking performance. But despite the lengthy details, I stayed fascinated with the story, mainly to see how far things with Jerry Lee would plummet.And oh yes, it’s filled with all the juicy details a classic rockstar story should include: sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.This book joins the ranks of all of Bragg’s stellar books. Bragg is one of my favorite authors, and this book did not disappoint.

Perhaps I have an advantage: I've known Jerry Lee Lewis since 1956. He is a cherished friend I dearly love. I've had the opportunity to be in his company on-the-stage and off-the-stage dozens of times. I've been a disk-jockey for over 6 decades, have also served time as a TV host, columnist, songwriter (won a Grammy!) and emcee for dozens of different performers as they "did their thing" in honky-tonks, big performance halls and showrooms. After stating my credentials, I must admit ... I've never known an entertainer so diversified, so talented as Jerry Lee. Yes, that's quite a statement and, as an afterthought, I consider it an "understatement"! Known as "Th' Killer" by most of his friends and fans, he managed to achieve an unbelievable collection of true-believers in himself and his music. Jerry Lee Lewis shared the "stable-of-stars" at the old classic Sun Records studio in Memphis, Tennessee. This is the label that instigated the careers of such powerhouse super-stars as Elvis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and others who were destined to make their gigantic marks in music. All of the names mentioned are no longer with us, but Th' Killer is still doing his thing! I'm certain his life is more calm now, thanks to his loving wife, Judith ... and the fact he's been blessed with an outstanding amount of years. There were periods of time when those accumulated years could have been rapidly shortened, as you'll discover in the pages of "Jerry Lee Lewis --- His Own Story".In this excellent book consisting of almost 5-hundred pages ... without a single "dull moment" ... Rick Bragg has given the reader the opportunity to know this brilliant, though highly unpredictable "showman" as never before. Rick's one-on-one approach to the subject makes this magnificent work of art so much more than a book! To me, and several others who have studied the pages, it provides an atmosphere where you actually feel as though you were sitting in a small room witnessing monumental moments as Jerry Lee Lewis allows his feelings toward so many happenings in his oh-so-active life as an entertainer to be heard! It serves as a perfect reminder of how the complex entertainment scene has changed since the '40s as Th' Killer and those other genuine performers shared time with him while "doing their thing" in order to satisfy their millions of adoring fans in all sections of the planet. During that magic era, it wasn't constantly accommodating for the "stars" to present their wares on stage or in front of the ancient television cameras, but they made every effort to fulfill their commitments. To those who had the opportunity to attend the performances and view the activity on small television screens ... in "living black-and white" (remember, this was before "color-TV" was available) during that special era ... it seemed more enjoyable. Those who entertained us appeared to be more personal! These pages will bring back so many memories to you. If you weren't with us back then, the book will serve as an important and historical implement that you'll truly enjoy. However, don't expect it to be a mellow, casual reading venture. I must warn you: The many pages will seem much shorter because Jerry Lee Lewis holds nothing back! His life has not been filled with constant mellowness! Utilizing any and all words necessary to put many points across, he tells-it-like-it-is --- and was --- during his lifetime as that "wild man at the piano"! He did his thing ... on and off the stage ... his way, and there was plenty of action that other entertainers and many of his loving friends found "daring, shocking and unbelievable"! This isn't a book you'll find easy to put down as you turn off the lights for some needed sleep! Rick Bragg, blessed with his extraordinary talent as a best-selling author, managed to capture "Th' Killer" in an excellent manner, although it was most likely one of his most challenging assignments.Great job, Rick! Thank's "Killer" for the many years of authentic showmanship! You're one-of-a-kind, always will be!

Parts were a little boring. Didnt go in detail bout some of his person life just touched on it. Found out more online. Parts were good. Talked about alot about his gigs that got boring

This is an amazing story told by a true poet; you feel each line he writes. It took me awhile to read because I’d stop to Google photos of the characters. YouTube was a great help, too; much of the music (in context) has been posted. Thoroughly entertaining, this book gets next to everything I only surmised about the great Jerry Lee Lewis.

Jerry Lee Lewis – His Own StoryBy Rick BraggI have just finished reading this 500 page book by Professor Rick Bragg. Thanks to Amazon’s excellent service the book arrived yesterday morning at 11am and it now 3pm on the following day and it has taken me almost every hour since to read it. You have heard of books you can’t put down – well this one stopped me going to sleep.As Jerry himself would say, there have been a “flock” of books about him but none are anything like as good as this one.I must confess here at the outset of this review to being an avid Jerry Lee fan and I have known him personally for over 52 years and been fortunate enough to fly with him in his private plane and to stay as a guest in Jerry’s home. As such I can vouch for the veracity and truthfulness of the way Jerry and Rick describe many of the events I attended. Absolutely nothing has been glossed over. This is not a sugar-coated biography.It is an unusual book in as much as it is more than a just a biography as the author recalls past events and jogs Jerry’s memory into commenting on them. Frequently the actions described are quite shocking and this book is definitely unsuitable for maiden aunts and anyone of a nervous disposition.The book tells how Jerry was delivered into this world by his father as the doctor was lying drunk beside the bed. It was a breach birth and Jerry says, “I was born feet first and I have been jumping ever since.” Jerry’s father Elmo played an important part in Jerry’s life and the wild streak that runs throughout the Lewis family meant that sometimes Elmo would be serving time in the dreaded Angola prison for “bootlegging liquor.”Jerry’s mother Mamie did her best in very difficult circumstances and the book details their dirt poor existence in the south of Louisiana. It wasn’t until Jerry was 21 and checked into a cheap hotel in Memphis that he was in a place that had a sink and running water.The book is excellent on Jerry’s upbringing in the small town of Ferriday and how he was constantly competing with his cousins, Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Lee Swaggart. Jerry talks honestly about how he and Jimmy Lee stole goods from shops and he also tells of stealing a pistol. In fact one of the constant themes of the book is Jerry’s many run-ins with the law, the Inland Revenue, and his multitude of court cases.Author Rick Bragg is already well known for his books and essays on the South and he writes eloquently on Jerry’s religious upbringing and the torments he still suffers today in his eightieth year as he tries to atone for all his misdeeds in the hope that he will make it to Heaven.Surprisingly Jerry names some of his old girlfriends and recalls how he got naked by a riverbank with one 16 year old when he was just 13. However, in his mind he heard some Scripture and as he half expected a bolt of lightning at any second, they put their clothes back on. Jerry tells how he did not have sex until he was married at 16 and then he was disappointed and immediately decided he had married too young. Jerry eventually grew to like marriage as he eventually married seven different ladies – sometimes in a bit of a rush and with the precaution of divorcing the previous one. In the book Jerry details this unusual attitude to marriage in a very factual manner that will surprise many.Jerry talks very frankly about his early years as a musician and how he was inspired by hearing Elvis’s early records on the radio. He had read in magazines how Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun records had made star out of Elvis and the book gives Jerry’s first hand account of how he got started at Sun and his elation at hearing Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips play his first record on the radio.There is a good description of the Million Dollar Quartet session where Jerry, Elvis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash were all photographed together in the Sun studio in December 1956. That jam session became history and Jerry is now the sole survivor as his three colleagues are now no longer with us.Jerry is also extremely truthful about his lifetime dependence on a mixture of alcohol and drugs. And by drugs Jerry does not just mean a few uppers, he lists a complete range of pharmaceuticals that he either swallowed or injected. He certainly doesn’t recommend that way of life and the book will serve as a wake up call to many musicians who think it is fun to dabble in drugs – only Jerry didn’t dabble.Above all the sensational stories the book chronicles his great success as a musician. No other singer pianist has enjoyed such a long career. He has cut records across all the fields of popular music and has sold millions and millions of records from gold discs like Great Balls of Fire and Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On in the fifties to being a star with millions of downloads on YouTube and I-Tunes.Despite being a consistent seller for over 58 years, from rock’n’roll to country to gospel, Jerry maintains in the book that he has never been paid properly for most of them. Yet he has never sued anyone for what is rightfully his.They have tried making films of his life and various articles and books have also attempted to capture the essence of Jerry Lee Lewis but until now all have failed.In the words of my late friend Glenn Sutton, who wrote 5 songs for him,“Jerry Lee Lewis can take any song and make it his own, he is the greatest entertainer in the World, always has been and always will be.”I thoroughly recommend this book and every aspiring musician should read it all and learn from it.Graham Knight from Aberdeen, [email protected]

Lincoln Continental parked outside of Graceland, brand new pistol gleaming on the dash, The Killer sat unblinking, thinking about Presley, Perkins, Phillips and Cash, The guard on the gate looked out warily and he stroked his black moustache, 'The King ain't home right now', he said, 'He's at some million dollar bash!'Thirty three dozen eggs collected and inspected and taken to market to be sold, To pay for a trip to Memphis, Tennessee to turn natural talent into musical gold, Eighty eight piano keys being pounded into submission with St Elmo's fire, And church every Sunday with the Lewis family singing in the Louisiana choir (Brian O'Connell 2014)As a child in the Nineteen Thirties, Hank Williams learnt about how to please an audience from Rufus Payne, who was known ironically as 'Tee-Tot' because he liked to drink moonshine whisky and tea from a flask. From this book by Rick Bragg in Chapter Four I learnt that Jerry Lee Lewis also had a musical 'mentor' named 'Mr Paul' Whitehead, a blind piano player and multi instrumentalist who The Killer saw in the early Fifties in the local clubs. 'Mr Paul' played his piano through an amplifier and 'knew just about every song in the world'. Jerry Lee is quoted as saying that 'Mr Paul's' lesson was worth a billion dollars to him. I think this shows why Jerry Lee himself has such a wide repertoire of songs and why he can put his own unique stamp onto something you may have heard a hundred times before by someone else.The chapter about 'Catch my soul' the Jack Good produced play based on Othello is also of great interest to me personally. Shakespeare meets The Killer to a rock'n'roll beat is something that should have been captured on film, though there are two songs on the Internet if you care to search them out. 'The lust of the blood' once heard is unlikely to be forgotten!This is, for me, the best musical book I have bought this year and as such is highly recommended. Cheers, Brian O'Connell

Recently there’s been a succession of outstanding books about country music and the South, Robert Hilburn’s “Cash”, Bobby Braddock’s “Music Row” and Peter Guralnick’s “Sam Phillips”. Here’s another.Pulitzer Prize author Rick Bragg hails from Alabama and he brings the soul of the region into his writing. Hence he’s perfect to write about Jerry Lee Lewis, not only biographically but also the religion and culture that shaped his life. As the author reveals, having spent some two years in the company of his subject, Lewis never doubted that he’d be a star and, from the age of four when he first discovered a piano, he knew his destiny. Similar belief was shared by his bootlegging, occasional jailbird father Elmo who mortgaged the family farm in order to buy his son a piano and, by the age of ten, the youngster was hiding under a table in a black joint named Haney’s Big House. There he listened to the blues, a place where the “devil’s music” thrived amidst drink, fights and gambling. He earned his first money ($14.00) at 14 and then, fearing for his soul, began training for the ministry though was quickly expelled.He signed with Sun Records, hit the charts with “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls Of Fire” and, for a moment, was bigger than Elvis. Then his career derailed in Britain when it was revealed that his wife was his 13 year old cousin Myra Brown. And so it was throughout his career, a series of ups and downs, successes and failures: he scored success as a country singer before ventures into other musical realms; his appearance as Iago in a rock version of Othello (titled “Catch My Soul”); and induction into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. All were offset by such as his dependency on drugs and alcohol, the IRS and bankruptcy, conflicts with the law, the marriages (some, even, just a little too quickly) and court appearances. Never the quitter he battled on, playing the round of beer joint and honky-tonks for pittances in order to kickstart his career, before returning to the spotlight with national tours and tv appearances.Probably no one could better tell Jerry Lee’s story than Rick Bragg, blending his career with the fervour and arrogance that came naturally, alongside fine passages on Hank Williams (one of his great influences, as well as Al Jolson and Jimmy Rodgers), Sam Phillips, the Million Dollar Quartet recording, the family relationships and cousins country singer Mickey Gilley and preacher Jimmy Swaggart, the latter publically condemning Jerry Lee and his music though always on best of terms whenever they met. There’s also the incident that led to his “Killer” nickname when, during his schooling years, he tried to strangle his teacher.Throughout the story is told with honesty and though, sometimes, the recollections are a little blurry and the energy quietened, the spirit of the man remains. Now, with 80 years behind him, faith – rather than music – is upmost in his thoughts. A magnificent biography by an author who knows his territory well.

I would never have read the life of Jerry Lee Lewis had another writer done it. Even as I read it I knew it was the flow of Bragg's writing that pulled me upriver, like a paddle wheeler on the Mississippi rolling upstream to Memphis from lowlife Ferriday, Louisiana where the wild rock and roller grew up. At times I wanted to give up, but Bragg eased me along, and now I feel like I know more about the life-destroying world of rocking rollers than necessary. Whatever Bragg writes I will read, however, for his use of the English language sparkles with imagery and beauty.

I have been a fan of The Killer since the mid 50s and had tickets to see him in Birmingham (England) in 1958. Unfortunately the British Press were hounding him out of the country and it was some 40 years later that I got to see him in Liverpool along with Little Richard and Chuck Berry. So I had to have this biography and what a fabulous read it is. From the history of the area before he was born through all the struggles and the determination to succeed to the glorious career he forged. Every page was devoured and what great story telling too by Rick Bragg. It is a must have for every fan of the great man.