J&M Studio Lewis made his first recordings in 1952 at Cosimo Matassa's
J&M Recording Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana. He covered
Lefty Frizzell's "Don't Stay Away (Till Love Grows Cold)" and his own instrumental composition "Jerry's Boogie" ( "New Orleans Boogie"). This aspect of Lewis's character was depicted in
Waylon Payne's portrayal of Lewis in the 2005 film
Walk the Line, based on Cash's autobiographies. As part of his stage act, Lewis pounded the keys with his heel, kicked the
piano bench aside, and played standing, raking his hands up and down the keys, sat on the keyboard, and stood on the piano. He told
the Pop Chronicles that kicking over the bench originally happened by accident, but when it got a favorable response, he kept it in the act. His inaugural television appearance, in which he demonstrated some of these moves, was on
The Steve Allen Show on July 28, 1957, where he played "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On". His dynamic performance style can be seen in films such as
High School Confidential (he sang the title song from the back of a
flatbed truck), and
Jamboree.
Cub Koda called him "rock and roll's first great wild man" and also "rock and roll's first great eclectic". Classical composer
Michael Nyman has also cited Lewis's style as the progenitor of his own aesthetic. In 1960, Phillips opened a new state-of-the-art studio at 639 Madison Avenue in Memphis, abandoning the old Union Avenue studio where Phillips had recorded
B.B. King,
Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley,
Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Lewis, Johnny Cash, and others, and also opened a studio in Nashville. At the latter studio, Lewis recorded his only major hit during this period, a rendition of
Ray Charles's "
What'd I Say" in 1961. In Europe, other updated versions of "
Sweet Little Sixteen" (September 1962 UK) and "
Good Golly, Miss Molly" (March 1963) entered the
hit parade. On popular EPs, "Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes", "I've Been Twistin, "Money", and "Hello Josephine" also became turntable hits, especially in nascent
discothèques. Another recording of Lewis playing an instrumental boogie arrangement of the
Glenn Miller Orchestra's "
In the Mood" was issued on the
Phillips International label under the pseudonym "The Hawk".
Marriage controversy Lewis's turbulent personal life was hidden from the public until a May 1958 British tour where Ray Berry, a news agency reporter at London's
Heathrow Airport (the only journalist present), learned about Lewis's third wife, Myra Gale Brown. She is Lewis's cousin and was 13 years old when they married—though Lewis, who was 22 years old at the time, claimed she was actually 15. The publicity caused an uproar, and the tour was canceled after only three concerts.
Smash Records Lewis's Sun recording contract ended in 1963, and he joined
Smash Records, where he made several rock recordings that did not further his career. The team at Smash (a division of
Mercury Records) came up with "I'm on Fire", a song that they felt would be perfect for Lewis, and as
Colin Escott writes in the sleeve to the retrospective
A Half Century of Hits, "Mercury held the presses, thinking they had found Lewis's comeback hit, and it might have happened if
the Beatles hadn't arrived in America, changing radio playlists almost overnight. Mercury didn't really know what to do with Lewis after that." One of Smash's first decisions was to record a retread of his Sun hits,
Golden Hits of Jerry Lee Lewis, which was inspired by the continuing enthusiasm European fans had shown for Lewis's firebrand rock and roll. In June 1963, Lewis returned to the UK for the first time since the scandal that nearly ended his career five years earlier, to headline a performance on the
MV Royal Daffodil, for a
cross-channel rock-and-roll cruise from
Southend, Essex, to
Boulogne, France. For this performance, he was backed by
Ritchie Blackmore and
the Outlaws. None of Lewis's early Smash albums, including
The Return of Rock,
Memphis Beat, and
Soul My Way, were commercial successes.
Live at the Star Club, Hamburg One major success during these lost years was the concert album
Live at the Star Club, Hamburg, recorded with
the Nashville Teens in 1964, which is considered one of the greatest live albums ever. In
Joe Bonomo's book
Lost and Found, producer
Siggi Loch stated that the recording setup was uncomplicated, with microphones placed as close to the instruments as possible and a stereo microphone placed in the audience to capture the ambience. The results were sonically astonishing, with Bonomo observing, "Detractors complain of the album's crashing noisiness, the lack of subtlety with which Jerry Lee revisits the songs, the fact that the piano is mixed too loudly, but what is certain is that Siggi Loch on this spring evening captured something brutally honest about the Killer, about the primal and timeless centre of the very best rock & roll..." The album showcases Lewis's skills as a pianist and singer, honed by relentless touring. In a 5-out-of-5-stars review, Milo Miles wrote in
Rolling Stone that "
Live at the Star Club, Hamburg is not an album, it's a crime scene: Jerry Lee Lewis slaughters his rivals in a 13-song set that feels like one long convulsion."
Country comeback ,
Johnny Cash, and
Carl Perkins on
The Johnny Cash Christmas Special in November 1977 Frustrated by Smash's inability to score a hit, Lewis was planning on leaving the label when promotions manager
Eddie Kilroy pitched the idea of cutting a pure country record in Nashville. With nothing to lose, Lewis agreed to record the
Jerry Chesnut song "
Another Place, Another Time", which was released as a single on March 9, 1968, and, to everyone's amazement, shot up the country charts. At the time of the release, Lewis had been playing
Iago in a rock-and-roll adaptation of
Othello called
Catch My Soul in Los Angeles, but was soon rushed back to Nashville to record another batch of songs with producer
Jerry Kennedy. What followed was a string of hits that no one could have predicted, although country music always remained a major part of Lewis's repertoire. As Colin Escott observes in the sleeve to the 1995 compilation
Killer Country, the conversion to country music in 1968 "looked at the time like a radical shift, but it was neither as abrupt nor as unexpected as it seemed. Jerry had always recorded country music, and his country breakthrough 'Another Place, Another Time' had been preceded by countless country records starting with his first, '
Crazy Arms', in 1956." The last time Lewis had had a song on the country charts was with "Pen and Paper" in 1964, which had reached number 36, but "Another Place, Another Time" went all the way to number four and remained on the charts for 17 weeks. Between 1968 and 1977, Lewis had 17 top-10 hit singles on the
Billboard country chart, including four chart toppers. Hits include "What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)", "To Make Love Sweeter for You", "She Still Comes Around (To Love What's Left of Me)", "Since I Met You, Baby", "Once More With Feeling", "One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)", and "Sometimes a Memory Ain't Enough". The production on his early country albums, such as
Another Place, Another Time and
She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye, was sparse, quite different from the slick "
Nashville sound" that was predominant on country radio at the time, and also expressed a full commitment by Lewis to a country audience. The songs still featured Lewis's inimitable piano flourishes, but critics were most taken aback by the rock-and-roll pioneer's effortlessly soulful vocals, which possessed an emotional resonance on par with the most respected country singers of the time, such as
George Jones and
Merle Haggard. In his book
Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story, biographer Rick Bragg notes that the songs Lewis was recording "were of the kind they were starting to call 'hard country', not because it had a rock beat or crossed over into rock in a real way, but because it was more substantial than the cloying, overproduced mess out there on country radio". In a remarkable turnaround, Lewis became the most bankable country star in the world. He was so huge in 1970 that his former Smash producer
Shelby Singleton, who purchased
Sun Records from
Sam Phillips in July 1969, wasted no time in repackaging many of Lewis's old country recordings with such effectiveness that many fans assumed they were recent releases. One of his later unreleased Sun recordings, "
One Minute Past Eternity", was issued as a single and soared to number two on the country chart, following Lewis's recent
Mercury hit "She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye". Singleton would milk these unreleased recordings for years, following
The Golden Cream of the Country with
A Taste of Country later in 1970.
Grand Ole Opry appearance Lewis played the
Grand Ole Opry only once, on January 20, 1973. As Colin Escott writes in the liner notes to
A Half Century of Hits, he had maintained an ambivalence to
Music City ever since he was turned away as an aspiring musician before his glory days at Sun Records: "It was 18 years since he had left Nashville broke and disheartened... Lewis was never truly accepted in Nashville. He didn't move there and didn't
schmooze there. He didn't fit in with the family-values crowd. Lewis family values weren't necessarily worse, but they were different."
The Session and Southern Roots Lewis returned to the pop charts with "
Me and Bobby McGee" in 1971 and "
Chantilly Lace" in 1972, and this, coupled with a revitalized public interest in vintage
rock and roll, inspired Mercury to fly Lewis to London in 1973 to record with a cadre of British and Irish musicians, including
Rory Gallagher,
Kenney Jones, and Albert Lee. By all accounts, the sessions were tense. The remake of Lewis's old Sun cut "Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee" was the album's hit single, reaching number 20 on the
Billboard country chart and peaking at number 41 on the pop chart.
The Session was his highest pop charting album since 1964's
Golden Hits of Jerry Lee Lewis, hitting number 37. It did far better on the country albums chart, rising to number four. Later that year, he went to Memphis and recorded
Southern Roots: Back Home to Memphis, a soul-infused rock album produced by Huey Meaux. According to Rick Bragg's authorized 2014 biography, "the Killer" was in a foul mood when he showed up at Trans Maximus Studios in Memphis to record: "During these sessions, he insulted the producer, threatened to kill a photographer, and drank and medicated his way into but not out of a fog." During one exchange that can be heard on the 2013 reissue
Southern Roots: The Original Sessions, Meaux asks Lewis, "Do you wanna try one?", meaning a take, to which Lewis replies, "If you got enough fuckin' sense to cut it." Lewis was still pumping out country albums, although the hits were beginning to dry up. His last big hit with Mercury was "Middle Age Crazy", which made it to number four in 1977.
Later career In 1979, Lewis switched to the
Elektra label, and produced the critically acclaimed
Jerry Lee Lewis, although sales were disappointing. In 1986, Lewis was one of the inaugural inductees into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Although looking frail after several hospitalizations due to stomach problems, Lewis was responsible for beginning an unplanned jam at the end of the evening, which was incorporated into all future events. That year, he returned to Sun Studio in Memphis to team up with Orbison, Cash, and Perkins along with longtime admirers including
John Fogerty to create the album ''
Class of '55''. In 1989, a major motion picture based on his early life in rock and roll,
Great Balls of Fire!, brought him back into the public eye, especially when he decided to re-record all his songs for the movie soundtrack. The film was based on the book by Lewis's ex-wife, Myra Gale Lewis, and starred
Dennis Quaid as Lewis,
Winona Ryder as Myra, and
Alec Baldwin as Jimmy Swaggart. The movie focuses on Lewis's early career and his relationship with Myra, and ends with the scandal of the late 1950s. A year later, Lewis made minor news when a new song he recorded called "It Was the Whiskey Talkin' (Not Me)" was included in the soundtrack to the hit movie
Dick Tracy. The song is also heard in the movie, playing on the radio. The public downfall of his cousin,
televangelist Jimmy Swaggart around the same time, resulted in more adverse publicity to a troubled family. Swaggart is also a piano player, as is another cousin, country music star
Mickey Gilley. All three listened to the same music in their youth, and frequented Haney's Big House, the Ferriday club that featured Black blues acts. Lewis and Swaggart had a complex relationship over the years. , England, in 2006 In 1998, Lewis toured Europe with
Chuck Berry and
Little Richard. On February 12, 2005, he was given a
Lifetime Achievement Award by
the Recording Academy. In August 2009, in advance of his new album, a single entitled "
Mean Old Man" was released for download. It was written by
Kris Kristofferson. An EP featuring this song and four more was also released on November 11. On October 29, 2009, Lewis opened the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary concert at
Madison Square Garden in New York City. In May 2013, Lewis opened a new club on Beale Street in Memphis. Lewis was still considered actively performing in concert, though he had to cancel all shows following his February 28, 2019, stroke, waiting for his doctors' go-ahead. In 2017, Lewis had a personal presence at The Country Music Television
Skyville Live show. It was a specially recorded performance featuring a whole array of artists paying tribute to the music of Lewis. In March 2020, Lewis, together with producer
T-Bone Burnett and guitarist
James Burton, were announced as recording a new album of gospel covers. It was the first time he entered a recording studio following his stroke. , how much progress was made with this gospel album, or if it was ever completed is unknown, as nothing from these sessions has been released; Lewis later recorded another gospel album with cousin Jimmy Swaggart that was unrelated to the 2020 project with Burnett and Burton. On October 27, 2020, to celebrate Lewis's 85th birthday, a livestream aired on YouTube, Facebook, and his official website. The livestream special, ''Whole Lotta Celebratin' Goin' On'', featured appearances and performances by
Willie Nelson,
Elton John,
Mike Love,
Priscilla Presley,
Joe Walsh, and others.
John Stamos served as the host.
Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind is a documentary on Lewis, released in 2022 and directed by
Ethan Coen. That same year, Lewis and his cousin Jimmy Swaggart collaborated on and released a gospel album, called
The Boys from Ferriday. ==Artistry==