I Remember Jerry Lee Lewis  by Roy Hall

(Country Music Inquirer article July 83)
 

It was during the time of my life that I woefully refer to as The Alcoholic Period that I first met Jerry Lee Lewis in a nightclub that I owned in Nashville. I had moved to Nashville in early 1954 at the suggestion of Webb Pierce, then the number one country singer in the business with such hits as There Stands the Glass.

Before that I played one-nighters anywhere I could get booked. Those were rough years, fully in the tradition of the legends about itinerant entertainers. There were managers who didn't pay & more than once we were fleeing from irate fathers & husbands whose daughters & wives had been seduced. Add this all up & you have some idea of the hectic period these years were for us stars-to-be.

I was recording on small labels doing songs like DIRTY BOOGIE which were actually the forerunner of what later became Rock-a-Billy & then Rock & Roll. The early days in Nashville were mighty slim pickings & so I supplemented my meagre income by playing piano on sessions for Webb, Marty Robbins & Hawkshaw Hawkins. I even played the accordion on a lot of Red Foley Gospel records.

But the kind of music I enjoyed the most was what might have been called a cross between Country & Rhythm & Blues. There wasn't much of that in Nashville so I started spending a lot of time down in Memphis where there was a lot of it. Memphis in the early 50s was a wide-open, anything-goes River town. Among the people I became acquainted with were the Phillips Brothers—Sam & Jud—who owned & operated a little hole-in-the-wall studio called SUN at 706 Union Avenue, not too far from the Mississippi River. Every time I was down there, I would always drop by & visit with them.

They were originally from Northern Alabama, where Sam had been a radio announcer & engineer. In Memphis, he first operated a one-man portable recording service & then with his savings, built SUN. As I remember the building had previously been a radiator shop. Jud had earlier managed a Gospel quartet. Sam was President & producer. Jud was the promoter. He was a good one, responsible for the sale of millions of SUN records. Their personalities were a direct contrast: Jud was fun-loving & free-spending while Sam was mostly ultra-businesslike & ultra-conservative.
 
Back then SUN was recording only black artists & they had had several regional hits, the biggest of which was the original Just Walking In The Rain that later became a hit for Johnny Ray. Sam always thought that black music would eventually become accepted by the white population but that it would take a white singer to pull it off. He was obsessed with finding a white vocalist who could sound like a black man.  "If I could only find a white man who sings like a black, I'd make a billion dollars…music won't be segregated much longer. It's all gonna homogenize. I can see it coming ….
 
I'll admit that I didn't really believe him. After all I had been playing that kind of music for several years & getting nowhere. In fact it was an old black man who taught me to play the piano when I was a kid back in Stone Gap, Virginia. (He also taught me how to drink). But in those years, if a Black or Country singer got a hit, a big Pop singer would "cover" him on the song & get the big sales. Sam turned out to be quite a prophet. I've never forgotten that afternoon. Many times through the years we discussed my doing some records for SUN but it seemed I was always with another label. We never did get together but in the three decades since then, we have all remained good friends & t talk with them frequently. & about 5 years ago, I finally recorded an album in the old studio for a Chicago company.

I decided to go into the nightclub business & I leased a joint on Commerce Street in Nashville from a man who had been busted for bootlegging & was in jail (there was a lot of that going on). I liked it so well that two months later I opened up my own place two blocks down the street, & called it THE HIDEAWAY. At least now, I told myself, I had a steady playing & paying job. Many of the biggest names in country music were frequent customers. About a year later Webb began asking me to go out on the road with him to open shows & play piano. It sounded like a good deal so I was looking for someone to substitute for me when I was out of town.

Then one night in walked skinny, blonde wavy-haired, ferret-faced Jerry Lee Lewis. He was about 19 at the time & driving an old pick-up truck. Though he was not QUITE as wild as he later became, he was something else on that piano. I had never seen anything like it. He played everything that Moon Mullican & I did & then some more. Even then he was going to make his music HIS way, & you were going to have to accept him on his terms or not at all.

He told us that he was from a little town in Southern Louisiana & that he had studied to be a minister. He also said that he had just come from Memphis where he had gone to audition for SUN but that Sam had been out of town. He wasn't discouraged. He was heading back down there shortly & there was no doubt whatsoever that he would get a record contract & that he would be bigger than Elvis. But for now he needed a job. I offered him $15 a night (which he gladly accepted) to fill in for me while I was out of town.

Jerry Lee wasn't exactly what you would call arrogant but he had a way about him that didn't go down just right with a lot of people. I guess "cocky" is the word I'm looking for. He was cocky. He was good & he knew it & the rest of the world had better know it too. Even at 19 he had the ability to captivate an audience. He wasn't Gary Grant handsome but the girls (and women) were wild about him & believe me, he liked them too, although at that time he was married & had a young child. & could he ever sing. To this day, I consider him one of the all-time greats in both Rock & Country.

Well Jerry Lee did go back to Memphis & he cut his first record in February 1956. It was the old Gene Autry 1930s standard YOU'RE THE ONLY STAR IN MY BLUE HEAVEN. He always loved country music, regardless of what anybody says about him being a Johnny-come-lately. His first hit as a matter of fact was a cover version of Ray Price's million-selling CRAZY ARMS. Jerry's version sold nearly a quarter of a million, primarily in the South. & all of the B-sides of his big hits were country songs such as YOU WIN AGAIN, I COULD NEVER BE ASHAMED OF YOU, & I'LL MAKE IT ALL UP TO YOU. One I especially liked was FOOLS LIKE ME.

Jerry Lee was a big fan of Hank Williams and though most country fans don't like to admit it, Hank was rocking & rolling just a little himself. His MOVE IT ON OVER was almost the identical melody as ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK.

Sam & Jud were both very enthusiastic about Jerry Lee in 1956. Sam had just sold Elvis to RCA in one of the very few foolish moves he ever made in his entire life & Carl Perkins had just had a bad car accident which threatened to seriously destroy his blossoming career (he had just had a million seller with BLUE SUEDE SHOES) & Johnny Cash was simply too country for the teenagers. So they were grooming Jerry Lee to take away King Elvis' crown.

It was nearly a year later before he got his first million seller with WHOLE LOTTA SHAKING GOING ON in the Summer of 1957. & that's when I became a big part of the Jerry Lee Lewis legend in a very special way. Sometime in late 1954, myself & a black musician named Dave Williams had gone down to Florida to the swamps on a "snake milking" adventure. Mostly we were drinking wine. But during that trip, we wrote WHOLE LOTTA SHAKING GOING ON. The following year in September, I signed a contract with DECCA & recorded it. Although Billboard gave it a good review, nothing happened. But I did sing it a lot in my club. Jerry Lee always loved it & told me many times he was going to record it someday. Well he finally did & HIS version sold nearly 10 million copies.

After all these years, it is still his masterpiece—the song for which he is most remembered—and for that, I am very proud. It has been one of the biggest songs of all time & even my recording of it on Decca is a collector's item & sells for $100 —if you can find It.

To tell the truth, I was trying to get out of paying the IRS any money, so I wrote it under the name of Sonny David. I might as well not have gone to the trouble. An ex-wife collected all of the royalties in a divorce settlement.

I sold THE-HIDEAWAY in 1957 & then worked on the road pretty regularly with Webb for the next six years but I followed Jerry Lee's career closely. 1 was tremendously disappointed when he didn't record another song I wrote especially for him called MY FRIEND & YOUR FRIEND ARE THE SAME. (Are you listening, brother?)

SUN was where it was happening in those Eisenhower years. I remember being down there & seeing kids lined up outside the studio as early as 6:00 A.M. just hoping for a chance to sing a song for Sam. Overnight he became a millionaire & there was even talk at one time of his running for the Governor of Tennessee.

Those were good days for Sam & Jud. But there were problems. They were constantly fighting—mostly about money. They were both hard-driving, self-centered men who wanted & expected complete loyalty from the FAMILY. I remember one day when they were recording the late Bill Justis & Sam & Jud were arguing over the song's lyrics. Finally Sam exercised his authority as President & told the band to do it as just an instrumental. That song was RAUNCHY & it ended up selling over a million copies.

Sam approached producing with a combination of mathematical precision & a dedication to practicality. Nearly all of his records were inexpensively made & wound up in the black. He always kept the costs firmly in check. Sam was as tight as "Dick's hatband." Even when it came to buying whiskey for several people at a session, he would only buy a quart at a time (and I could drink that much myself) regardless of how many trips to the liquor store became necessary. That's the primary reason he lost every star he created when their contracts with him expired. They were all lured to a major label by fat advances & big promises.

Sam & Jerry just didn't get along at all. Their personalities were 180° apart. But it certainly didn't hamper or hurt their professional success. In addition to WHOLE LOTTA SHAKING, there was GREAT BALLS OF FIRE, BREATHLESS & HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL in 1958. All million sellers. CONFIDENTIAL was also the title song of one of Jerry's movies.

As Jerry Lee's fame grew, so did his ego. "I played on them" he yelled to one interviewer who had simply asked him the names of the musicians who had played on his records. "What else do you need to know?"  

And his stage performance became wilder than ever. Toward the end of his act, he would actually climb up on top of the piano. No matter how frantic he became, though, he was always in control of his voice.

Jerry was selling records, as fast as SUN could press them. Then the bottom fell out. It happened in 1958 while he was touring in England. For some reason he revealed to the staid British press that he had married his cousin Myra & that she was only 13 or so & that this was his third marriage. An older generation the world over who hated R&R anyhow was just waiting for something like this to happen to prove their contention that the music was evil. Jerry became the nation's whipping boy. Even the timing of it seemed ironic. Elvis had just gone into the Army & the path was clear for Jerry to become the biggest Rock star ever. When Jerry Lee came back to the United States, Sam refused to help him in any way—financially, promotionally or morally. I think Jerry Lee always held that against him.

There were to be a lot of lean years for Jerry Lee. He couldn't get a record played outside of the South where surprisingly his popularity never diminished. Can you believe that? The conservative SOUTH? Everything ended for SUN too as the fifties melted into the sixties. Jud left the company for the last time & Sam fired producers Bill Justis & Jack Clement on the same day—Bill for insubordination & Jack for laughing so hard about it. But Sam sure didn't lose his Midas touch. He became one of the original & major stockholders in Holiday Inn & he is today VERY wealthy. Rumors have it he is worth over $100 million.

But just like the phoenix, Jerry Lee too rose from the ashes. He signed with Smash/Mercury in the mid-sixties & he started doing strictly country songs, such as ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE, & WHAT MADE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS. There were a long string of top 10 country songs like ONE HAS MY NAME, SHE EVEN WOKE ME UP TO SAY GOODBYE & ONCE MORE WITH FEELING. SUN even dusted off some of their old unreleased masters like I CAN'T SEEM TO SAY GOODBYE, ONE MINUTE PAST ETERNITY & INVITATION TO YOUR PARTY & scored with top 10 records. There was even a top 10 recording of DON'T LET ME CROSS OVER with his sister, Linda Gail.

But there were a tot of tragedies too. Everything bad that could have happened—did. He lost his father & mother (he was especially close to her) as well as two of his children. I knew both of his parents & they were beautiful people. & he certainly received more than his share of bad publicity. But I don't think he ever missed a show date & when he's sober & straight, there just isn't a nicer man.

In the seventies, I stopped drinking altogether so I didn't see Jerry Lee as much as I previously had. But he kept on getting a lot of big hits. He also kept right on partying at the same pace. He always did abuse his body too much {as most entertainers do) & the pills & booze finally caught up with him a couple of years ago, & he nearly paid for it with his life. But he bounced back from things that might have felled a lesser man.

Summing it all up, he was & is a musical genius. If he had been a songwriter, his influence would have been even greater since most of the great R&R stars were great songwriters too. So what if he's slightly flawed. Who isn't? He might be "cold" professionally at the moment but I wouldn't bet even a nickel against him having another string of hits or even a million seller. He is just that good — and unpredictable. But most importantly of all to me, Jerry Lee Lewis is my friend.