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I am an american by jerry stanley6/19/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Like so many other southern boys, he was blown away by Elvis Presley, and spotted an opportunity. Musically, he was colour-blind aged 14 he would sneak into a nightclub in the black part of Ferriday called Haney’s Big House, then hide behind the bar, and hear people like BB King, Muddy Waters and his favourite, Ray Charles. The first song he mastered was Silent Night, in a boogie-woogie style. When he first showed a keen interest in his uncle’s piano at the age of eight, his father Elmo had to mortgage the family’s shack to buy Jerry Lee an upright Starck. His life story would provide rich enough material for two extremely strong biographies.īorn in Ferriday, Louisiana, Jerry Lee Lewis’s family was very poor. “If you are lukewarm, the Lord will spew you forth from his mouth.” He would spend much of his life wrestling with his southern upbringing and his conscience, torn between his piano and the pulpit he had outlived two wives and two children by the time he was 60. “You are either hot or cold,” he would say. ![]() He considered himself a “stylist” – not just a musician but a complete package, fully formed from his very first record. Given that he spent his life so close to the edge that he was usually dangling over it, it was always going to be tricky to separate the myths and legends of a man nicknamed “the Killer” from bare Top 40 statistics. Jerry Lee Lewis always hoped that his music was what he would be remembered for. ![]()
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