Jerry Lee Lewis -- "His Own Story" | Eastern NC Now

    My reading preferences fall mainly into the biographical and factual historical genre. Early on, in life, I enjoyed the James Bond and Tom Clancy novels but as I have aged, I have gravitated toward trying to find out what motivated people. It makes no difference to me about the politics or belief system, I enjoy finding out what makes people strive to reach a goal, regardless of the goal. Like almost everything else I do, I go for a month or two without reading any books and then dive back in and consume books like a paper shredder.

Here is the story of Jerry Lee Lewis His Own Story by Rick Bragg


The left is the paperback version: The right the more thoughtful hardback version for the squeamish.
Both are the same book.

    Jerry Lee Lewis turned 81 on September 29, 2016. It is a miracle that he is even alive. If they ever have a poster child for excess, it will have Jerry Lee Lewis's picture front and center. Depending on your perspective, it could give Pianos a bad name. He did not live by any rules that anyone made, including his own.

    I just finished reading his autobiography and I must say, that even thought I have know he was a wild man, I had no idea how wild. No one ever thought that he was a role model unless it was for all the things that you should NOT DO. His life is an example of living outside the boundaries that most humans live within. He was married seven times (often overlapping) and wrecked multiple cars including one into the Gates of Graceland when he says he was just going to visit Elvis.

    He was present at the birth of Rock and Roll in Memphis along with Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash. Like Elvis he was raised in the very confining rules of the Assembly of God church. Both spent a lifetime worried about going to heaven after singing the "DEVIL'S MUSIC" Elvis cultivated an acceptable image of a simple country boy made good. Jerry Lee did not give a damn about his image and seemed to go out of his way to rebel against his upbringing while at the same time knowing he may be bound for hell. But both remained deeply religious and fought a battle within themselves over their spiritual training and their human frailties.

    I highly recommend the book to anyone who wants to read about a life lived on a long and winding road in a vehicle that had no governor nor a driver who even looked for street signs, much less obey them.

    I also found a new author that I had never heard of or read any of his books.  Rick Bragg  is a professor of writing at the University of Alabama and has written multiple books about the south. He is also a wordsmith extraordinaire. Below are some quotes from the book which have caused me to order several of his books.

    The book may be about Jerry Lee but Rick turns a phrase like no Bubba you ever met. Here are a few from the book.

   

    1. Some men outgrow their boyish devilment. Others just polish it.

    2. "No use in even going, if you don't enjoy the Ride." He had seen what life did to men who didn't. He saw them. Fresh scrubbed and upstanding on the outside but dead inside, like an old cornstalk or a burned sugar cane field.

    3. He again tried manual labor, on to rediscover that it required manual labor.

    4. He knows it was '1951 because he had a '41 Ford, and like many Southerners, he keeps track of time and events through the lineage of his cars.

    5. He was like a tick on a leather sofa, it feels like home, but there just isn't much profit in it.

    6. Elmo drove his new Lincoln into something that did not move, so Jerry Lee bought him another one.

    7. Southern boys have a problem with success, just like an oddly shaped man has trouble finding a suit that does not, cut bind or itch.(214)

    8. Someone opened a bottle of brown liquid and it has already made the circuit a time or two. Rock and Roll is one of those rare professions in which alcohol is as necessary as guitar picks.

    9. In a way "Great Balls of Fire" was a love song, but a twenty-one-yar-old Jerry Lee Lewis love song, a love song going a hundred miles an hour, not a moonlit drive by the beach but a man and woman fleeing the police and the entire disapproving world. Not everybody considers things from all sides or to any depth. Some people make lifetime decisions in the white heat of one moment, at least people like Jerry Lee do. The people who never have, he feels sorry for. (225)

    10. So Jerry Lee put the gun on the dash, in front of God and everybody, and - holding the champagne bottle by the neck -drove toward Graceland. He didn't bring the cork; it was a bottle whithout a future.

    11. Well, I overshot my runway.

    12. Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Lee sinned and prayed for forgiveness, too - not so different, when you think about it, except for the arithmetic - and danced and boogied down his own twisting fork, always hoping that a faith founded in redemption, the two divergent paths that might somehow lead to the same destination. (433)

   As always, I must add my personal connection to this story. My brother graduated from high school in 1957 and I have written about his Jerry Lee Lewis imitation.  My brother and Jerry Lee Lewis  I also have met one of Jerry's wives, Myrna. She Married Jerry in 1958 and caused quite a stir when it was revealed that she was under age and his cousin. In the late 1970's or early 1980's I served on Jury Duty with Myrna in Dekalb County Georgia. She was then and I think now a Real Estate agent. Before I knew who she was she asked me what I knew about Jerry Lee Lewis. By that time he was in his banished years playing small clubs around the country. He was currently playing at "Mama's Country Showplace' in Decatur. I told her he was probably the wildest piano player I have ever heard and my brother did a great imitation of him on the piano. She then told me who she was and what I thought about her marriage to him. I told here that I only had a vague memory of that (I was twelve years old when it happened) but I knew it caused quite a stir. I then asked her is he was a wild as his image was portrayed. She laughed and said, "WILDER." She also told me that it was no act, that was just Jerry Lee. He had two children with Myrna. His son drowned at four and his daughter Phoebe dedicated her life to taking care of Jerry. Myrna told me underneath it all he was a sweet man and devoted father who just could not control his demons. Whenever he played in Atlanta, he left her tickets at the "will call" booth. I have had some experience with those demons and I know they don't fight fair. On the right is a picture from the book, and I think he may have at least fought those demons to a draw.