October 28th saw the death of one of rock’n’roll’s most beloved trailblazers: Jerry Lee Lewis. Known for hits such as “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On” and “Great Balls of Fire”, the Louisianan rocker would become one of the biggest and most eccentric performers of his time. Yet there was a lot going on below the surface, with a much darker side to the pioneering pianist when examining his personal life – these are some of the stories from the troublesome personal life of Jerry Lee Lewis.
Marrying His 13-Year-Old Cousin
To start, we cover with perhaps the most infamous detail, one that killed any momentum Lewis had dead in its tracks.
By 1958, JLL had the chance to be the biggest rock’n’roll star on the planet when Elvis was conscripted into the military draft. Yet controversy erupted during a British tour for Lewis when his marriage to 13-year-old cousin Myra Gale Brown, a marriage eerily similar to that of Edgar Allen Poe’s with his 13-year-old cousin Virginia over a century earlier, and Elvis’s relationship with a 14-year-old Priscilla. The mood was best summed up by The Evening Star which ran with the headline: “Teen-Age [sic.] Marriage Arouses British Ire.”
Lewis had told some she was 15, which was more socially acceptable at the time. He was also warned about bringing her on tour but insisted, or else would refuse to do so. When it was discovered that the girl was 13, or 12 by some records, Lewis felt the full force of British hostility, which followed him back home to the US.
The effects were swift and deadly. Myra later noted that the tour was not pulled directly due to press backlash but as Jerry and his band could not be assured safety for the performers. The New York Post noted that: “The ensuing scandal led to boycotts of his music, blacklisting at venues, and appearance fees that plummeted from $10,000 a night to $250.” One newspaper called for Lewis to be deported as his records saw airplay sharply decline. Missing the point, Lewis remarked: “I plumb married the girl, didn’t I?”
This scandal was not aided by Jerry’s tone-deaf follow-up single, the unrelated “High School Confidential”.
The age and relation was still not the only issue with Jerry still not divorced from his second wife; his second marriage was when he was still not divorced from his first wife.
The effective end of his career at its prime, Lewis’s downfall was also the signal of the rock’n’roll tsunami in which the musical genre saw its popularity flounder. Elvis: was drafted into the army, Lewis: was ruined by scandal, Buddy Holly: was killed in the infamous ‘Day The Music Died’ plane crash in 1959 (as were The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens), Chuck Berry: was convicted in 1960 of transporting a minor across state lines, Eddie Cochran: died in a car crash in 1960. By the time of a return to ‘normalcy’, the ‘British Invasion’ of the early-mid to late 1960s further made American rock’n’roll a baron and passe wasteland.
In 1970, Myra divorced from JLL, citing being “subject to every type of physical and mental abuse imaginable,” with The Irish Independent documenting that she would allege “cruelty that nearly drove her to suicide.”
She later told The Los Angeles Times: “When I look back on it, how can you defend yourself when you’re 13 years old? I mean there’s no excuse good enough for that to be okay.”
Yet this was not Jerry’s own marital controversy…
Alleged and Attempted Murder
Now, I would like to preface the following point by stating that the following event is unproven, open to a certain amount of interpretation, and in no way outright stated facts of the events.
Yet, some allege that Lewis’s marital issues are more than polygamy, with claims that he may have really lived up to his “The Killer” nickname, murdering one – perhaps even multiple – of his wives. Whilst his fourth wife died in mysterious circumstances in a swimming pool shortly before a divorce, the most famous is his fifth wife: Shawn Stephens.
The Rolling Stone’s Richard Ben Cramer covered the incident with great detail in a 16,000-word piece on the subject and it is through his work we owe a great debt to, with his piece giving many of the details of the incident.
After 77 days, she was found dead in her made bed from a perceived drug overdose. Contradicting this was blood that the first paramedic reported on the walls, carpets, and Lewis’s own slippers and robe – something that should be absent from an overdose. More suspect was the smashed glass and distinct red marks on the body of not only Shawn but Jerry as well.
Reportedly, Jerry murmured: “We need to find out who killed,” before stopping himself and continuing, “we need to find out how she died.”
The night before her death, she made a phone call to her mother telling her she was leaving Jerry but he would not let her. A second phone call, one directed at her old crush making arrangements with her sisters to help take her away, ended with the phone going dead mid-conservation.
The events after the death were perhaps the greatest injustice and circus of all. The deputy sheriff had an hour private conversation with Lewis, never divulging the contents of the talk. The mortician found traces of blood on the corpse’s fingernails and hair but his dad talked him down on following up on the medical detail for the sake of the firm’s reputation in the community. Moreover, the death was rushed through a county grand jury before the details of the investigation were known or followed up on.
Now without jumping to conclusions, it is clear the details will never truly be known but the most repugnant thing is surely Jerry Lee Lewis’s behavior in the aftermath.
Cramer’s initial piece reveals one of Shawn’s sisters even quoted Lee Lewis as saying: “Your sister’s dead and she was a bad girl.” Furthermore, he celebrated his 48th birthday with friends only four days after the grand jury session. The next day after the funeral, he was back in Memphis with two strip joint dangers, smiling, and singing: “Ah tol’ her when she lef’ me… Ah’d have anothuh in her bed….” This was supposed to be the woman he devoted his life to at the altar, one he claimed he loved dearly, and within a few weeks of the events, out of sight and out if mind.
Lewis also threatened Elvis at his Graceland residence waving a gun around – later expressing glee over Presley’s death – and also accidentally shot his bass player while dicking around with a .357 magnum, hitting him twice in the chest and although Lee Lewis accepted no responsibility, paid out $125,000.
Jerry Lee Lewis and his Troubling Family Issues
It was not just his wives that caused issues for Jerry.
Lewis tried to even sue his own daughter. Despite the shady actions of her daughter, it seems extremely harsh to sue your own daughter.
Lewis’s son was tragically killed in a car accident when only 19 yet the experience did little too humble Lewis. A story talks of how, seeing a horse whilst driving at about 80 MPH, Lewis ducked instead of swerving. Killing the horse and totaling the car, Jerry Lee Lewis later claimed: “I drove faster.”
Sabotaging Chuck Berry
Perhaps the single greatest rock’n’roll musician of all time was Chuck Berry, something that irked Lewis.
Orchestrated by Alan Freed, the show pitted Berry, a man of colour, as the headliner over Jerry Lee with his status as the closing performer part of Berry’s contract.
It was at Brooklyn, New York’s Paramount Theater that Lewis performed his regular hits before, feeling annoyed at his position on the bill, he lived up to his wildman status. Out of a Coke bottle, Lewis poured gasoline onto his piano before “he doused the keyboard in petrol and played on through the flames,” described The Irish Independent.
This naturally would ruin any chance for Chuck to follow up with Lee Lewis remarking: “Follow that, n****r!” to “The Father of Rock’n’Roll”. The horribly offensive racial term was the cherry on the cake for a self-aggrandising, egotist.
Lewis later told GQ, “Yeah, that piano burned like a house on fire. The fire department was there with them as and them rubber suits on, and boy, they got on my case.”
Weirdly, Lewis has both confirmed and denied the story on multiple occasions. Medium notes that: “The only caution is that there’s an excellent chance the whole thing never happened. While it is usually said to have played out during a May 1958 Freed show at the Brooklyn Paramount, no one in the audience at the well-attended show ever seems to have spoken about it. There are no photos or written references. Members of Lewis’s band have said it never happened. The late Berry never mentioned it.”
Despite this, Lewis’s own boastful reminiscing should demonstrate the man behind the piano’s true character.
Punching Janis Joplin
A meeting between Jerry Lee Lewis and Janis Joplin seems an oddity and due to their unhinged personas, something seemed bound to happen.
It was at Joplin’s ten-year high school reunion that Joplin, having a crush on Lewis’s bassist, introduced herself and her sister to the band. Lewis told her sister: “You wouldn’t be bad looking if you weren’t trying to look like your sister,” at this slight at her, Joplin struck Lewis.
Jerry Lee hit back, slugging her in the face remarking: “If you’re gonna act like a man, I’m gonna treat you like one!”
No matter the context, it is always controversial putting your hand on a woman. Physical assault may have been more prevalent and accepted at the time but that should be little excuse.
Via The Guardian, Lewis later covered Joplin’s popular single “Me and Bobby McGee” – why?, as it gave him a chance to “show that damn woman how it should be done!”