Jerry Lee Lewis Died Last Week

Someone asked if I was going to write about Jerry Lee Lewis last week. I wasn't planning to, but decided I'd take a stab at it.

Here are two excerpts from a Bill Wyman piece in Vulture.

Jerry Lee Lewis was known as the Killer, and it wasn’t a casual sobriquet — a schoolmate called him that after he tried to strangle a teacher. He once shot his bass player in the chest; just about all of his seven wives, including one who was a child, said he beat them; and there’s a lingering suspicion that he murdered wife No. 5. He was the very model of a high-functioning sociopath and somehow defied hard living, drug and alcohol abuse, and serious health problems to make it well into his ninth decade.

He was a thief, a bigamist, an adulterer, a sexual predator, a family abandoner, and a liar, and felt — knew — society’s rules didn’t apply to him to such an extent that he acknowledged the fact flatly.

Source: Jerry Lee Lewis Was an SOB Right to the End

Jerry Lee Lewis @ New Orleans Jazz Fest

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When Jerry Lee married his 13-year-old cousin it shocked people. Had he not been famous, however, nobody would have even noticed. There has been more of this than you might imagine in certain rural parts. 

I will say that on numerous occasions I've sung "Great Balls O' Fire" at karaoke nights and it was always fun.

If you have a minute, read Jim Lundstrom's piece in Duluth's Reader Weekly: The Night Jerry Lee Lewis didn't show.

Here's a YouTube clip of Jerry Lee Lewis on the Steve Allen Show:
A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On. 

Jerry Lee Lewis, R.I.P.

Photos courtesy Gary Firstenberg
www.firstinphoto.smugmug.com