Jerry Lee Lewis is forever immortalized as one of rock and roll’s most influential pioneers. Like Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, Lewis’ career was both wildly successful and fraught with controversy, but one particularly outlandish scandal in his early days shocked the world and promised to end his rockstar status overnight – until it didn’t.
Lewis was born a troublemaker
Lewis was born on September 29, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana to a poor farming family. By the time he was nine years old, Lewis began playing the piano – a pastime he loved so much that his parents mortgaged their farm to buy him a piano. The investment would ultimately pay off. Like other rock and roll legends of his time, Lewis drew musical inspiration from the gospel music he heard at church and combined it with the rhythm and blues sound of Black musicians who passed through town.
He made his first public performance in 1949, but soon after, his mother enrolled him in an evangelical bible school so he could focus on singing religious music. His stint at the school was short-lived after Lewis performed a “boogie-woogie” rendition of the evangelical song “My God is Real” at a school assembly. Lewis was expelled the same night and made his way to Nashville to pursue his music career full-time.
In 1952 Lewis recorded his first songs in New Orleans, a cover of Lefty Frizzell’s “Don’t Stay Away (Till Love Grows Cold)” and an original piece titled “Jerry’s Boogie.” By 1956, the performer had garnered enough attention to land a contract with Sun Records. But just as his career was taking off, a shocking controversy would threaten everything Lewis had worked for.
The story that rocked Lewis’ career
In 1958 it was revealed that Lewis, 22, had married his first cousin once removed – Myra Gale Brown, who was only 13 at the time. Even more mind-boggling was the fact that Myra wasn’t even Lewis’ first wife, she was in fact his third – and his second marriage wasn’t even terminated by the time he married for the third time!
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