Madrigal

This guy here, Jerry Lee Lewis,

some of you may have a problem with.

Many people have, actually.

There are reasons not to like him.

For example, he once slammed his car

into the gates of Graceland with a gun on the dashboard

and may have threatened to kill Elvis Presley.

And then there was the time he fired a machine gun

over the heads of a bunch of people

to get them to wake up and party with him.

But there are also plenty of reasons to like him,

so let's try to keep this positive.

He was, after all, one of the founding fathers of rock and roll.

Thank you very, very much.

One thing you may not know is that the Killer,

which is what he called himself,

quit rock and roll and went on to become

one of country music's greatest singers.

The Killer. You know, if you look at Jerry Lee long enough,

that nickname takes on a whole new meaning

The Killer, he loved to perform.

Mike: Morris "Tarp" Tarrant spent about 15 years

on the road with Jerry Lee, playing drums

and occasionally pouring the drinks.

From 1961 up to '76,

when I caught that armed robbery charge.

If that hadn't happened, I'd have still been with him today.

I remember a time we was coming from Fort Worth, Texas,

going to Oklahoma City.

We were 90 miles out

and had a flat tire on that Lincoln limousine.

We didn't have a jack or a new tire,

so he told Cecil, our manager, "Get behind the wheel

"and drive this son of a bitch just as fast as it'll go

all the way to Oklahoma City."

Cecil said, "Killer, I can't do that.

It'll burn up the rim. It'll, like, catch the car on fire."

Jerry said, "I don't give a goddamn

if it blows the whole car up. We got a show to make."

This is when we was making $200-$300 a night, you know.

"All right, any of you motherfuckers that want to go with me, do this show,

"better get your ass in the car,

'cause I'm fixing to take this Lincoln to Oklahoma City."

- (engine starts) - Well, he cranked it up.

He said, "Tarp, get over there and pour drinks."

I said, "Okay," and he drove that car

just as fast as it would go.

And sparks was flying. You could smell it smoking.

And when we got there,

the club owner called the fire department

to spray the car down because it was so red hot.

And there was no rim there.

There was hardly... There wasn't no axle there.

It was pretty crazy, actually, but he made his show.

Jerry Lee: Let me tell you something about Jerry Lee Lewis,

ladies and gentlemen.

I am a... rock and rolling,

country and western, rhythm and blues singing mother.

He just, uh, knew he was the greatest, man,

and he actually could back it up.

My dad would even tell you that he was one

of the most phenomenal piano players

that there ever was.

Mike: Jerry Phillips' dad, Sam Phillips,

signed Elvis Presley at Sun Records.

He also signed Jerry Lee when he was just 21.

I mean, Elvis was a great entertainer,

and I think he, you know, will always be the King,

but there's no doubt had he not married his 13-year-old second cousin,

he would probably have been the king of rock and roll.

Mike: There's that. Might as well get to it now.

I was the 13-year-old child bride

who was married to the wild,

crazy man, Jerry Lee Lewis.

My daddy, J.W. Brown,

he played bass with Jerry, and Daddy's Jerry's first cousin.

We survived it. That's about the way it was.

Daddy was probably one of like 60 or 70 first cousins.

Mike: Three of the cousins actually became pretty big names...

Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley...

and Jimmy Swaggart.

I have sinned against you, my Lord.

The three cousins, they set on front porches

and played guitars and mandolins

and whatever instrument they had.

He lived down on Black River.

There was an old rented house down there his uncle had.

Man, you wouldn't believe it.

Sometimes snakes would fall out of the ceiling.

But somehow, they got a hold of a piano,

and that's how he learned to play.

Mike: They grew up

in Ferriday, Louisiana,

a dirt-poor town along the Mississippi Delta.

We were very poor.

We didn't even have a bathroom

on the inside of the house.

Mike: Linda Gail Lewis,

also a singer and performer,

was born 12 years after her brother, Jerry Lee.

Jerry would sneak off and go down to Haney's Big House

and listen to all those great blues players coming down

from Memphis, on their way to New Orleans,

and they called it the chitlin' circuit.

And Jerry was definitely influenced by that.

Mike: He was torn from the get-go

between the forbidden world of rock and roll

and the word of God.

Jerry was out of a Pentecostal background.

Mike: J.M. Van Eaton was also a drummer for Jerry Lee.

Another J.W., J.W. Whitten, managed the Killer for decades.

Jerry was going to... What's it called?

- Bible college. - Bible college.

And, uh, he was playing piano

and "My God Is Real."

And Jerry said, "Don't you think it sounds better like this?"

Up-tempo it, played boogie-woogie.

Well, the, uh, music director slapped him.

Mike: Jerry Lee put his Bible down,

left school, and set his sights

on Memphis to break into rock and roll.

He told his daddy... he said, "Daddy, I want to go to Memphis.

"This guy, Elvis Presley, went to Sun Records,

"and... and stormin' with a song on the radio.

I want to go there and cut me a song."

Now, we didn't have money for the trip,

so me and my momma and daddy went in the henhouse

and gathered as many eggs as we could.

And they sold 33 dozen eggs and came to Memphis.

Mike: Jerry Lee moved to Memphis for good.

Luckily, his cousin, J.W. Brown, already lived there

with his 12-year-old daughter, Myra.

The first time I met Jerry,

he was really kind of a funny-looking guy.

He had one tooth smaller than the other.

His hair was cut way too short.

His ears were kind of sticking out a lot,

and he just sort of looked like a good ol' goofy country boy to me.

It was like, "Oh, hi there." (laughs)

And Jerry meandered over to Daddy's piano.

And I thought, "Oh my God."

Mike: Jerry Lee moved pretty fast in Memphis, on all fronts.

He and J.W. started a band,

and the very first day they set foot in Sun Records,

they turned out results.

Before we got out of the studio that day,

we had cut his first release, "Crazy Arms."

Cut it one time, never dreamed it would be a release,

but that was his first record.

Back then, we had a show on radio called Red Hot & Blue.

And I heard it and, of course, I started screaming.

And everybody in the house ran to my bedroom,

and we all knew, this is it.

And it was just like a rocket about to take off.

So here is the jolting, jamboreeing, jumping Jerry Lee Lewis!

("Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" playing)

Mike: The Killer played the kind of music

you'd hear in Haney's Big House,

with an evangelical conviction that was hard to resist.

Linda Gail: "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" is a naughty song.

It's a song about... making love,

or as the kids nowadays say, having sex,

which to me sounds... absolutely horrible.

Just, you know, it drove those girls wild.

You know, it was dangerous, man.

He was a dangerous cat, and that came off on stage.

"This guy is dangerous.

"This is the guy you probably don't want

your daughter to be... hanging around."

It changed all of our lives.

We were holding our breath,

just waiting for the next thing to happen.

Linda Gail: In the early years, he was really torn

between wanting to go church and just do gospel music.

He felt like it was wrong for him to do songs

like "Great Balls of Fire" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On."

He was fighting that back and forth every day.

Mike: Despite Jerry's very real fear of eternal damnation,

"Great Balls of Fire" sold a million copies in 10 days.

He celebrated by sweeping young Myra off her feet.

He comes home and here it is, and I looked at it.

It said, "Jerry Lee Lewis and Myra Gale Brown."

It had "Marriage License" at the top.