At 87 years old, Jerry Lee Lewis, well known for his flamboyant piano playing and many marriages, passed away on October 28, 2022. I don't know a whole lot about Jerry Lee Lewis, but of course I couldn't escape hearing his music. He was well known for his boogie piano inflected rock n'roll hits from the 50s and beyond.
Jerry Lee Lewis suffered a temporary career setback when he married his 13 year old first cousin, once removed, Myra Gale Brown. She wasn't even his first wife, although since their marriage lasted about twelve years, it was one of his longest matrimonial unions. Myra was wife number 3 out of 7 wives. Because Lewis was not yet legally divorced from his second wife, Jane Mitchum, when Lewis and Brown married on December 12, 1957 (16 days before my parents' marriage), he married her again on June 4, 1958. They had two children, a boy named Steven and a girl named Phoebe. Sadly, Steven died in a pool accident when he was 3 years old.
Jerry Lee Lewis's shortest marriage lasted only 77 days. In June 1983, he married Shawn Stephens. By August, they had split. Lewis had a total of six children. He went to a Bible college in Texas for awhile, but was thrown out due to his penchant for playing "wordly" music. However, he reportedly didn't want to record what was probably his most famous hit, "Great Balls of Fire", because he considered it blasphemous. Both Lewis and Elvis Presley were raised in the Assembly of God church, and were supposedly friends.
Goodness gracious!
Jerry Lee Lewis had a very colorful and interesting life, and there was no denying his prodigious musical talent. But not only was he controversial because of his many wives and bigamous relationships; he was also quite fond of playing with guns. In 1976, he fired his pistol at a Coke bottle in his bedroom. The bullet ricocheted and his his bass player, Butch Owens, in the chest. Fortunately, Owens survived.
In November of 1976, Lewis was arrested outside of Graceland for allegedly trying to shoot Elvis Presley. Presley had asked him to come over to Graceland, but Lewis was trying to get his father out of the Tunica (Mississippi) jail for driving while intoxicated. Later, while he was drinking Champagne at a Memphis bar, Lewis remembered Presley had wanted to see him. Someone gave him a gun, and he took it and a bottle of Champagne to Elvis's mansion. There, he ran into the gates at Graceland, then tried to hurl the bottle of Champagne out the window, which was closed. The bottle and the window both smashed, and the police were called. Lewis claimed he hadn't meant to do any harm to his old friend, Elvis. Elvis, of course, famously died anyway, nine months later.
