THE JERRY LEE LEWIS I'VE KNOWN FOR 47 YEARS
By Kyle Esplin's Webmaster - Graham Knight (click to e-mail graham)
first published in Wim de Boer's Fire-Ball Mail - the publication of the International Jerry Lee Lewis Fan Club
Whenever the name Jerry Lee Lewis is mentioned, many people's immediate reaction is to think of him as that crazy, controversial singer who married his 13 year old cousin Some think of the guy who was arrested waving a gun at the gates of Elvis's Graceland home. Others will immediately think of Jerry as the singer who recorded for Sam Phillip's Sun Records and had million sellers with Whole Lotta Shakin' and Great Balls of Fire. Some will recall his many court appearances and the fights with the IRS which cumulated in his multi-million dollar bankruptcy. Jerry Lee is certainly controversial but I have known him since 1962 but there is another side to his character, which never gets in the press. As many fans were not even born when I first met Jerry, I have asembled a scrapbook here on Kyle Esplin's website that contains hundreds of the photographs, contracts and newspaper cuttings that I have collected over the years. These web-pages will gradually expand as I scan more - I have thousands of Jerry Lee items. I first met Jerry at Newcastle in 1962 when he was on the opening night of a comeback tour after the 1958 debacle when he got all the bad publicity about his "child bride". That night in '62 was an important one for Jerry and came just a few days after the tragic death of his son Steve Allen. Many expected the tour to be cancelled but Jerry arrived on time and did the tour. I was nineteen then and a real Jerry fan. I quickly deduced that Cecil Harrelson was his road manager and, being an electronics engineer, helped him connect a green American amplifier that they had carried all the way from the States. I reset it for our higher voltage and the first show eventually started half an hour late. Needless to say Jerry was a great success and, through Cecil, I got to meet Jerry for the first time. He was kindness itself and interested that I had travelled from the North of Scotland to see him. Meeting Jerry Lee in 1962 changed my life completely. Since '62 I have met Jerry on hundreds of occasions in Europe and in America, have flown in his plane, stayed as a guest at Jerry's home in Memphis, been in the Recording Studio with him and attended countless TV shows and performances. Some of the most outstanding are detailed in the this scrapbook. For example in '68 I flew to Los Angeles to attend the first night of "Catch My Soul" in Los Angeles, earlier on in 1963 I had been on the famous "Rock Across the Channel" boat and I will never forget being in the recording studio when Jerry cut the "London Sessions". Back in the 60's I went to most of the UK shows and got to know him pretty well. Dedicated fans like Terry Adams, Dan Coffey and I often stayed in the same hotel and sometimes I would drive Jerry to the theatre in the "mini" car that I had back then. Jerry always thought the mini was fun and was amazed at how fast it could go. In 1966 I first Wim, who has published "The Fireball Mail" for over 40 years. Wim was at Bradford where Jerry was appearing for a week. I remember Wim being a bit surprised that I knew Jerry well enough to sit down and have dinner with him in the hotel and actually drove him to the gig. Click to read about Tom Jones attending this show and copying Jerry's arrangement of Green Green Grass of Home. In the sixties Jerry was working more than 300 days a year and often doing two shows a night. Despite all this work he was very easy going and not at all the crazed madman that the press makes him out to be. Back then he occasionally had just a sip of whisky but didn't ever take pills, or fool around with ladies. But he did love to smoke Cuban cigars that were readily available in the England but were banned in America. Later on I would get letters from Jerry asking me to mail him Cuban cigars and I would send them to his home which at that time was at 5042 East Shore Drive, Memphis. My friend Terry Adams would get letters asking him to send over leather boots made by Annello and David in London. In '68 I flew to Los Angeles to see Jerry perform in "Catch My Soul" - a rocked up version of Shakespeare's Othello written by Jack Good. By this time Jerry had been off the Sun label for five years and despite a prodigious output he had failed to get a hit on his new label Mercury and his contract was not going to be renewed. Cecil was talking about trying to get RCA interested. The opening night of "Catch My Soul" was a great success and Burt Bacharach, Andy Williams, Zsa Gabor and Tom Jones all queued up, trying to get inside the dressing room to congratulate Jerry.
The critics loved the show and it was about to go to New York when Jerry had an unexpected country hit with "Another Place Another Time". This led to Smash renewing his recording contract. Jerry never got to do Shakespeare on Broadway but he did have great success throughout the seventies.
|
When I visited the US in 1970 Jerry was flying high, had huge chart success and even had his own DC3 plane, two pilots and a road crew of 17 people. Later on he would buy a Lear Jet. Just as I had driven him to shows in England, Jerry invited me fly to shows on his plane and I was lucky enough to stay at his house in Memphis. I remember one time flying back from Raleigh NC and arriving at Memphis at 3am. Despite the late hour Jerry jumped into a Corvette and nearly scared me to death by driving at great speed under his plane - just missing the wing. Jerry of course knew there was a little clearance but I didn't! Then we would go to Hernando's night club and eventually get back to his home at East Shore Drive as the kids were going to school. Then I would check the itinerary and discover that Jerry was doing a show in Waco Texas that day and he hadn't even been to bed yet. No wonder Jerry's been known to take a few pills now and again! Even in those heady days of big money shows in the seventies, I could already see signs of the financial problems that were to cause Jerry such difficulty in the 80's and 90's. When Jerry did eventually go into Chapter XI bankruptcy in the eighties, he owed the IRS and sundry creditors millions. His defence was that he didn't understand how to handle business. This didn't surprise me.
I remember times when we would stay up to all hours in Jerry's "Den" at the Memphis house. This was the place where he played his beloved Jimmy Rodgers and Hank Williams records and drank whisky till the early hours. He would chat for hours to anyone daft enough to answer his middle of the night phone calls. This was also the place where he kept all his contracts and bills. There were always plenty of outstanding bills! This small room had a shelf full of hatboxes, each of which was filled with a particular year's performance contracts. One night he opened a box and showed me the contents. As someone who by this time was a self-employed businessman, I was amazed at the way Jerry conducted his business. Most of the contracts were simple one sheet affairs that stipulated a time and place for a performance. There was usually an advance fee of a thousand dollars and often they would pick up the balance on the night of the show. Jerry's road manager would collect this money and then write on the foot of the contract the amount paid to each band member, record seller, aircraft pilot, gopher etc. It was a very simple way of doing business and took no account of travel or hotel expenses. No wonder Jerry ended up in a real financial mess. Some of the contracts were ridiculous. Shows that Jerry did for 3,000 dollars were televised and are still being sold on video today. None of the contracts I saw ever mentioned anything extra for TV rights. Over the last 45 years I have seen hundreds of Jerry Lee Lewis shows and I am quite certain that he is the greatest entertainer in the World. I have seen Jerry Lee perform when he has been stone cold sober, absolutely drunk, strung out on pills, and very, very ill - but I have never seen him give a bad show. And I have also never seen the same show twice. Each performance is a unique event. I do remember some really great times with other Jerry - the Jerry the press never sees. Whenever I read some of these reports that say Jerry is unreliable, I always doubt them. Are they really writing about the same person that I have known for so long? The person who, in the old days, would drive me to search for old Sun records at the late Tom Phillip's shop in Memphis and who I knew would definitely come back and pick me up when the shop closed. These days Jerry is still as wild as ever and he is still the greatest entertainer in the world. Back in 1957 Jerry was laying the foundations of his career in the tiny Sun studio at 706 Union Avenue. 50 years later Jerry is still doing the "Greatest live Show On Earth" and is still playing to fans at shows all over the world. No one can play the piano or excite an audience like Jerry Lee. He has no equal. He was rocking when I first met him in 1962 and he is still rocking today. The late Glenn Sutton, the famous songwriter who composed five songs for Jerry including "What's Made Milwaukee Famous" summed it all up when he told me, "When Jerry Lee records a song - he makes it his own. Jerry Lee can be summed up in one small sentence: "Jerry Lee Lewis is the greatest of them all." . |
Return to Jerry Lee scrapbook index 1950 -2006
Return to view more of Jerry in the 60's
RETURN TO START OF KYLE ESPLIN
The Jerry Lee Lewis I've known for over 40 years - Kyle Esplin's ROCK 'N' ROLL SCRAPBOOK