Jerry Lee Lewis was an American pianist, singer and songwriter.
67 Facts About Jerry Lee Lewis
2.
In 1968, Jerry Lee Lewis made a transition into country music and had hits with songs such as "Another Place, Another Time".
3.
Jerry Lee Lewis's successes continued throughout the decades, and he embraced his rock and roll past with songs such as a cover of The Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace" and Mack Vickery's "Rockin' My Life Away".
4.
Jerry Lee Lewis had a dozen gold records in rock and country.
5.
Jerry Lee Lewis won four Grammy awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and two Grammy Hall of Fame Awards.
6.
Jerry Lee Lewis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and his pioneering contribution to the genre was recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
7.
Jerry Lee Lewis was a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.
8.
Jerry Lee Lewis was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2022.
9.
Jerry Lee Lewis was the last surviving member of Sun Records' Million Dollar Quartet and the album Class of '55, which included Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley.
10.
Jerry Lee Lewis was born on September 29,1935, to Elmo Kidd Lewis Sr.
11.
Jerry Lee Lewis grew up in an impoverished farming family in Eastern Louisiana.
12.
Jerry Lee Lewis's parents mortgaged their farm to buy him a piano.
13.
Jerry Lee Lewis was influenced by a piano-playing older cousin, Carl McVoy, the radio, and the sounds from Haney's Big House, a black juke joint across the tracks.
14.
On November 19,1949, Jerry Lee Lewis made his first public performance of his career, playing with a country and western band at a car dealership in Ferriday.
15.
Jerry Lee Lewis's mother enrolled him at the Southwest Bible Institute in Waxahachie, Texas, so that he could sing evangelical songs exclusively.
16.
When Jerry Lee Lewis daringly played a boogie-woogie rendition of "My God Is Real" at a church assembly, it ended his association with the school the same night.
17.
Pearry Green, then president of the student body, related how during a talent show Jerry Lee Lewis played some "worldly" music.
18.
Jerry Lee Lewis covered Lefty Frizzell's "Don't Stay Away " and his own instrumental composition "Jerry's Boogie".
19.
In November 1956, Jerry Lee Lewis traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to audition for Sun Records.
20.
In December 1956, Jerry Lee Lewis began recording prolifically as a solo artist and as a session musician for other Sun artists, including Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash.
21.
On December 4,1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on Phillips to pay a social visit while Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks with Jerry Lee Lewis backing him on piano.
22.
Jerry Lee Lewis told the Pop Chronicles that kicking over the bench originally happened by accident, but when it got a favorable response, he kept it in the act.
23.
Jerry Lee Lewis's Sun recording contract ended in 1963, and he joined Smash Records, where he made several rock recordings that did not further his career.
24.
In June 1963, Jerry Lee Lewis returned to the UK for the first time since the scandal that nearly ended his career five years earlier, to headline a performance on the MV Royal Daffodil, for a cross-channel rock and roll cruise from Southend, Essex, to Boulogne, France.
25.
Frustrated by Smash's inability to score a hit, Jerry Lee Lewis was planning on leaving the label when promotions manager Eddie Kilroy called him and pitched the idea of cutting a pure country record in Nashville.
26.
Between 1968 and 1977, Jerry Lee Lewis had 17 Top 10 hit singles on the Billboard country chart, including four chart-toppers.
27.
Jerry Lee Lewis was so huge in 1970 that his former Smash producer Shelby Singleton, who purchased Sun Records from Sam Phillips in July 1969, wasted no time in repackaging many of Lewis's old country recordings with such effectiveness that many fans assumed they were recent releases.
28.
Jerry Lee Lewis played the Grand Ole Opry for the first and only time on January 20,1973.
29.
Jerry Lee Lewis didn't move there and didn't schmooze there.
30.
The Session was his highest pop charting album since 1964's Golden Hits of Jerry Lee Lewis, hitting number 37.
31.
In 1986, Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the inaugural inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
32.
In 1998, Jerry Lee Lewis toured Europe with Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
33.
In October 2008, as part of a successful European tour, Jerry Lee Lewis appeared at two London shows: a special private show at the 100 Club on October 25 and at the London Forum on October 28 with Wanda Jackson and his sister, Linda Gail Jerry Lee Lewis.
34.
On October 29,2009, Jerry Lee Lewis opened the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
35.
In May 2013, Jerry Lee Lewis opened a new club on Beale Street in Memphis.
36.
Jerry Lee Lewis was still considered actively performing in concert, though he had to cancel all shows following his February 28,2019, stroke, waiting for his doctors' go-ahead.
37.
In 2017 Jerry Lee Lewis had a personal presence at The Country Music Television Skyville Live show.
38.
Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind is a documentary on Lewis released in 2022 and directed by Ethan Coen.
39.
The original Sun cut of "Great Balls of Fire" was elected to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, and Jerry Lee Lewis's Sun recording of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" received this honor in 1999.
40.
On February 12,2005, Jerry Lee Lewis received the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award the day before the Recording Academy's main Grammy Awards ceremony, which he attended.
41.
In June 1989, Jerry Lee Lewis was honored for his contribution to the recording industry with a star along Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
42.
On October 10,2007, Jerry Lee Lewis received the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's American Music Masters Award.
43.
Jerry Lee Lewis was present to accept the American Music Masters Award and closed his own tribute show with a rendition of "Over the Rainbow".
44.
In December 2019, Jerry Lee Lewis was honored with a Mississippi Country Music Trail marker at his ranch in Nesbit, Mississippi to celebrate his contributions to country music.
45.
In May 2022, Jerry Lee Lewis was announced as a member-elect to the Country Music Hall of Fame, to be inducted in October 2022.
46.
Jerry Lee Lewis was an incendiary showman who often played with his fists, elbows, feet, and backside, sometimes climbing on top of the piano during gigs and even apocryphally setting it on fire.
47.
Jerry Lee Lewis was married seven times, including bigamous marriages and a marriage with his underage cousin.
48.
When Jerry Lee Lewis was 16, he married Dorothy Barton, the daughter of a preacher.
49.
In 1962, Steve Allen Jerry Lee Lewis drowned in a swimming pool accident at the age of 3.
50.
In 1993, Jerry Lee Lewis moved to Ireland with his family in what was suggested to be a move to avoid issues with the Internal Revenue Service.
51.
Jerry Lee Lewis lived in a rented house on Westminster Road in Foxrock, Dublin, and during his time there was sued by the German company Neue Constantin Film Production GmbH for failure to appear at a concert in Munich in 1993.
52.
Jerry Lee Lewis returned to the US in 1997 after his tax issues had been resolved by Irish promoter Kieran Cavanagh.
53.
Jerry Lee Lewis lived on a ranch in Nesbit, Mississippi, with his family.
54.
Jerry Lee Lewis married his seventh wife Judith Jerry Lee Lewis on March 9,2012.
55.
The next day, Jerry Lee Lewis severed business ties with his daughter, Phoebe Jerry Lee Lewis-Loftin, who was his manager, and revoked her power of attorney.
56.
In 2017, Jerry Lee Lewis sued his daughter and her husband Zeke Loftin, claiming that she owed him "substantial sums of money".
57.
Lewis-Loftin and her husband counter-sued, claiming Judith Lewis and Jerry Lee Lewis III interfered in the business relationship.
58.
Lewis's biographer Rick Bragg explains that part of the reason the recording only features Lewis and Elvis singing is because "only Elvis and Jerry Lee [were] raised in the Assembly of God", and 'Johnny and Carl didn't really know the words.
59.
On November 23,1976, Jerry Lee Lewis was arrested outside Elvis Presley's Graceland home for allegedly intending to shoot him.
60.
Later that night, Jerry Lee Lewis was at a Memphis nightclub called the Vapors drinking champagne when he was given a gun.
61.
Jerry Lee Lewis suddenly remembered that Elvis wanted to see him and, climbing aboard his new Lincoln Continental with the loaded pistol on the dash and a bottle of champagne under his arm, tore off for Graceland.
62.
Just before three o'clock in the morning, Jerry Lee Lewis accidentally smashed into the famous Graceland gates.
63.
The Memphis police found the gun in the car and put Jerry Lee Lewis, protesting, hollering, threatening them, away in handcuffs.
64.
In 1984, Jerry Lee Lewis was found innocent of evading taxes, but he still owed the IRS money.
65.
Jerry Lee Lewis had a minor stroke in Memphis on February 28,2019.
66.
Jerry Lee Lewis died at his home on October 28,2022, in Nesbit, Mississippi, at the age of 87.
67.
Jerry Lee Lewis' funeral was held on November 5,2022, in his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana.