R.I.P. Jerry Lee Lewis

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain

Too much love drives a man insane

You broke my will

But what a thrill

Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!

Jerry Lee Lewis, the enfant terrible of Rock ‘n Roll, one of Sun Records’ million-dollar quartet, the rocker whose career was momentarily cancelled when it was revealed his third wife, Myra, was thirteen years old and was his cousin, has died age 87.

Jerry Lee Lewis was, as he would surely have been the first to tell you, one of the greatest entertainers and one of the great vocal stylists of Rock. He could take any song, his or someone else’s, and fill it with menace, joy, and sexual innuendo. A cousin of preacher Jimmy Swaggart, Lewis also felt himself torn between God and the Devil. The Devil won out quite a few times, with Lewis suffering from alcoholism, drugs, and the misuse of firearms those indulgences sometimes entailed.

But to see him in concert was something else. He pounded the piano, his long blond locks flying. When he stood to pound the piano even more the bench flew backwards, and often one foot would come up to smash the keys. Lewis at time climbed on top of the piano to perform, and before Jimi Hendrix got into the pyromaniac business, Lewis would set his piano on fire — literally.

“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” was meant to rock the house, but listen to him sing, “What’s made Milwaukee Famous,” or “Middle Age Crazy” or “She even woke me up to say Goodbye” to hear the richness of his voice and his impeccable delivery. No matter who wrote the song, when Jerry Lee Lewis, or “The Killer” as he was affectionately called, sang it, the song became his own.

When Rock abandoned him first due to scandal, and then the British invasion, he found a home in country music using his velvet voice to croon heartache like no one else. But the crazy didn’t leave him. In the 70s, Lewis, often gun in hand, fired at TVs and bandmates, and drove his car into the gates of Graceland, demanding to see Elvis.

By the 1980s, the physical toll on Lewis’ body resulted in a number of hospital stays and surgeries, from which he emerged ready to rock and roll. The superb and highly readable 1982 bio of Lewis by Nick Tosches, “Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story” helped return him to the public consciousness.

In his later years Lewis continued to perform and to release strong albums including, “Last Man Standing” (2006), “Mean Old Man” (2010) and “Rock & Roll Time” (2014).

Just before the pandemic, Lewis made a gospel record that’s yet to be released. Lewis was probably just waiting to see who he was going to play it for first, the man above, or the Devil below.