by Rick Bragg
“H. E. L. L.,” Jerry Lee shouted.
“I don’t believe it,” said Sam Phillips.
“Great God a’mighty, great balls of fire,” chimed in one of the impatient session men.
“That’s it! That’s it! That’s it. It says, it says, Make merry! With the joy of God, only,” Jerry Lee shouted.
Sam Phillips looked at him in wonder, and in some fear. He and Jack Clement had tape set up and running in the studio and had hired session men to back Jerry Lee on what seemed a sure thing, a song written especially for him by the man who wrote all those hits for Elvis, the great Otis Blackwell. Everything was in place for another earth-trembling hit, but Jerry Lee had gone home. He was still standing there among them, all right, still inside the soundproofed walls with the drum sets and amplifiers and electric cords, but his heart and soul were someplace else—caught, as they had always been caught, between the smoke and grind of Haney’s Big House and the dire warning of Texas Street, between the might and thunder of faith and the secular sound of lust and greed. Jerry Lee was refusing to cut the record at all, because to do so would be to serve the devil.
“But when it comes to worldly music,” said Jerry Lee, “rock and roll . . .”
“Pluck it out,” said Billy Lee Riley.
“. . . anything like that,” continued Jerry Lee, unfazed, “you have done brought yourself into the world, and you’re in the world, and you hadn’t come from out of the world, and you’re still a sinner. And then you’re a sinner, and unless you be saved and borned again and be made as a little child, and walk before God and be holy . . . And brother, I mean you got to be so pure. No sin shall enter there. No sin. ’Cause it says no sin. It don’t just say just a little bit. It says no sin shall enter there. Brother, not one little bit. You got to walk and talk with God to go to heaven. You got to be so good.”
Riley gave him a hallelujah. As was sometimes the case in the studio, someone had opened a bottle of brown liquor, and it had already made the circuit a time or two among Phillips and the session men, rock and roll being one of those rare professions in which alcohol is as necessary as guitar picks.
Sam tried to argue that Jerry Lee could do good singing his music, lifting spirits.
“All right. Now look, Jerry. Religious conviction doesn’t mean anything resembling extremism. All right. You mean to tell me that you’re going to take the Bible, that you’re going to take God’s word, and that you’re going to revolutionize the whole universe? Now listen. Jesus Christ was sent here by God Almighty.”
“Right,” said Jerry Lee.
“Did He convince, did He save all of the people in the world?”
“Naw, but He tried to.”
“He sure did. Now wait just a minute. Jesus Christ came into this world. He tolerated man. He didn’t preach from one pulpit. He went around and did good.”
“That’s right. He preached everywhere.”
“Everywhere.”
“He preached it on land.”
“Everywhere. That’s right, that’s right.”
“He preached on the water.”
“That’s right, that’s exactly right. Now . . .”
“Man, he done everything. He healed.”
“Now, here, here’s the difference . . .”
“Are you followin’ those that heal? Like Jesus Christ did?”
“What do you mean? You . . . What? . . . I . . .” stammered Sam.
“Well, it’s happenin’ every day.”
“What do you mean?”
“The blinded eyes are opened. The lame are made to walk.”
“Jerry, Jesus Christ . . .”
“The crippled are made to walk.”
“Jesus Christ, in my opinion, is just as real today as He was when He came into this world,” said Sam.
“Right! Right! You’re so right you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“Now, I would say, more so . . .”
“Awww,” said Riley, interrupting, “let’s cut it.”
But Sam Phillips, who’d had just enough whiskey to get his back up, was well into his argument and was not quitting now.
“Never sell, man,” said someone else. “It’s not commercial.”
“Naw, we’ll be with you here in a minute. . . . But look . . . Now listen, I’m telling you out of my heart, and I have studied the Bible a little bit . . .”
“Well, I have, too,” shot back Jerry Lee. “I’ve studied it through and through and through and through and through, and I know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“Jerry, Jerry, if you think that you can’t do good and be a rock-and-roll exponent . . .”
“You can do good, Mr. Phillips. Don’t get me wrong.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, listen. I mean, I say, ‘Do good . . .’”
“You can have a kind heart.”
“I don’t mean, I don’t mean just . . .”
“You can help people.”
“You can save souls!”
“No! NO! NO! NO!”
“You had it,” said that other voice. “You’ll never make it.”
“How can—how can the devil save souls? What are you talkin’ about?”
“Listen, listen . . .”
“Man, I got the devil in me. If I didn’t have, I’d be a Christian.”
“Well, you may have it . . .”
“Jesus!” Jerry Lee almost screamed, and thumped his heart. “Heal this man! He cast the devil out. The devil says, ‘Where can I go?’ He says, ‘Can I go into this swine down here?’ He says, ‘Yeah, go into him.’ Didn’t he go into him?”
“Jerry, the point I’m trying to make is, if you believe what you’re saying, you’ve got no alternative whatsoever, out of—listen!—out of . . .”
“Mr. Phillips, I don’t care. It ain’t what you believe. It’s what’s written in the Bible!”
“Well, wait a minute . . .”
“It’s what’s there, Mr. Phillips.”
“Naw, naw . . .”
“It ain’t what you believe, it’s just what’s there.”
“No, by gosh, if it’s not what you believe, then how do you interpret the Bible? Huh? How do you interpret the Bible if it’s not what you believe?
“Well, I mean, there’s some people, you just can’t tell ’em,” Jerry Lee mused.
“Let’s cut it, man!” moaned Billy Lee Riley.
“No, here’s the thing . . .”
“You can talk,” said Jerry Lee. “You can talk, and you can talk.” The faith Jerry Lee was raised in does not yield to argument, is not open to interpretation. There had been and would be many moments when he was at war with himself this way. This one just happened to have been captured on tape in the Sun studio, and would be proof that the conflict inside Jerry Lee was not a thing of books and movie scripts but a real, wounding thing. He knows he is not special this way, and that most human hearts are at war with themselves, but his battle was more public because fame simply insisted on it. But it is a matter of history that, sometime while the great city of Memphis had mostly gone to bed, the men in the cramped studio finished their whiskey and finally began to play a rock-and-roll song, which became not just another record but another musical landmark.
Jerry Lee, as always, played it the way he thought it sounded best, regardless of how some songwriter or lyricist said it should be played. When the bass player had a hard time following Jerry Lee’s piano lead, “he propped hisself on top of the piano, and he was just layin’ there, he was watchin’ my hands . . . followin’ my fingers. And he was right on it. The drummer was right on it.”
You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain
Too much love drives a man insane
You broke my will, but what a thrill
Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!
“I never will forget seeing Sam Phillips lookin’ at me through that window with one finger in the air—number one.”
It was not the usual tandem of Janes a
nd Van Eaton who played on that historic record, but a couple of session men who happened to be nearby when needed. “Only had a bass, piano, and drums—that’s all we had on it.” He did not even know the drummer’s name. “I knew Sidney Stokes,” the bass player up on top of his piano, “but I didn’t know him that well, either. And I don’t know what happened to them people. That’s the last time I ever seen ’em. That’s strange, isn’t it?” But it was the nature of the business, or so he would discover: people just fell away. Only the sound, stamped in that black wax, was forever.
Like “Shakin’,” the song had lyrics that could be seen as salacious, but only if you used your imagination. Sam Phillips did not release the song to the nation right away, with “Whole Lotta Shakin’” still holding strong. First, Jerry Lee went Hollywood—well, actually, he went back to New York—for his first movie role, as himself. Otis Blackwell, who wrote “Great Balls of Fire” after buying the catchy title from a New York songwriter called Jack Hammer, was putting together music for a low-budget rock-and-roll movie called Jamboree, a kind of tribute to disc jockeys that was slated to include the influential Alan Freed as himself, until he walked away because of a contract dispute. To replace him, the producers brought in disc jockeys from all over the country to introduce the music, and it was the music—not a thin plot based on two young singers in love—that people came to see.
It was mostly music, anyway, that movie. Fats Domino did “Wait and See.” Carl Perkins was in it, and Frankie Avalon, with Connie Francis, The Four Coins, Jimmy Bowen, Jodie Sands, Lewis Lymon, and even Slim Whitman, who had told Jerry Lee, “Don’t call us. . . .” There were eighteen acts in all, but of course it was Jerry Lee, a late addition to the cast because of the phenomenon of “Whole Lotta Shakin’,” who stole the show, again, with “Great Balls of Fire.” But it felt all wrong as the cameras focused on him, because the microphone was muted, and the piano was just a prop, anyway, an empty box, its ivory nothing more than a row of shiny dead teeth.
“This piano ain’t got no notes,” he shouted, and the director told him of course it didn’t, this was show business, told him to just pretend he was playing it and mouth the words like he was singing it for real. And while he saw that as an abomination unto his craft and every honest sound that some man had ever coaxed out of a piano or a guitar or even a comb and tissue paper, he got through it, because the pretending he was doing was for the movies, and he loved movies. At least he finally understood how Gene Autry had sung all those cowboy songs while riding his horse, Champion, how he sang without sounding like he was hiccuping or biting his tongue clean off. “Ooohhhh, I said to myself, so that’s how he did it.” If it was good enough for Gene Autry, it was good enough for him.
It was not a good movie, but Sam Phillips knew it would mean night after night of free publicity on the big screen, and for fans of rock and roll, fans who might never make a show to see a Fats Domino or a Jerry Lee Lewis, it was a godsend. It would run for years in places like Birmingham and Atlanta and Knoxville, and on TV shows like Dialing for Dollars, which played old movies sandwiched between Rawhide and reruns of I Love Lucy.
At home in Ferriday, his personal life had taken an even grimmer turn. Jane had given him a second son, but he looked at the child and could not see himself in his face, and claimed Jane had taken up with another man while he was on the road. In September he filed for divorce, accusing Jane of adultery and other acts of lewdness and wildness, including excessive drinking and public profanity. Jane responded in a cross-claim that it was all untrue and asked for a divorce on grounds of nonsupport, inhuman treatment, and abandonment. She alleged that Jerry Lee had left them with no money and little to eat and that the baby was too his progeny, which led Jerry Lee, through his own lawyers, to say that was a crock, and the unhappy and violent marriage would eventually be dissolved—but, as was Jerry Lee’s habit, not in time.
But the messy divorce, miraculously, remained mostly an intensely local matter and did not torpedo his rise at the time, and he did rise, and rise again. Sam was so filled with the promise of Jerry Lee that he bought a full-page ad in Billboard, touting him and Jamboree. Jerry Lee took on a manager named Oscar Davis, a genteel old flack who had worked with his idol, Hank Williams, back in the day and had been a front man for Colonel Tom Parker, who handled Elvis.
He was not afraid of being handled right out of his natural self, as the Colonel had handled Elvis, handling him until he had wrung just about all the rock and roll out of his soul.
“Don’t nobody—nobody—manage Jerry Lee,” he says. “Don’t nobody handle Jerry Lee. I can’t be handled.”
But so far, he liked what was happening to him at Sun and in his career in general. The money kept getting better and better, and Jud had stayed on in his usual, vaguely defined role, to help guide the bookings. It was Jud, the gambler, who decided to wrench Jerry Lee from the stigma of hillbilly music altogether. It was not that he would not play country and western again—in fact, for the B side of “Great Balls of Fire,” he was about to record one of the greatest, most enduring country hits of his career—but Sam and Jud believed, as did the national magazines, that he was becoming the face of rock and roll. As if to seal the matter for good, they decided to send him to a place where no hillbilly would tread. They sent him to 253 West 125th Street, on the island of Manhattan. They sent him to Harlem.
“They sent me,” Jerry Lee said, “to the Apollo.”
“This boy can play anywhere,” said Jud to the theater’s promoters.
Then he crossed his fingers and had a tall drink.
It was not just the Apollo. It was the Apollo in the time of the Little Rock Nine. On September 4, 1957, members of the 101st Airborne Division walked nine black students into Little Rock’s Central High School as mobs outside screamed racial slurs and threatened murder in one of the ugliest public displays of racism in United States history. The South had shown its true self in Little Rock, thought black citizens around the country.
It was in this climate that Jerry Lee Lewis and his little band took off for New York.
“I walked out on that stage, me and J. W. and Russ, and there was not one white face in the whole crowd.” Their footsteps boomed in the place, as if the stage was a drumskin stretched tight across all the rich history here. “They looked,” Jerry Lee recalls now, “like they wanted to kill me.” No one yelled or booed; it was oddly quiet. Rock and roll might have been a bridge for the races, but right now the very sound of a Southern accent was shorthand for meanness and racism and even murder, and no one sounded more Southern then in modern music, perhaps, than Jerry Lee Lewis.
The old theater had been built in the Harlem Renaissance, as blacks in the Northern cities regained their footing in the wake of Jim Crow and World War I. Ella Fitzgerald sang here when she was seventeen. Billie Holliday sang here. Cab Calloway shouted here in his white tuxedo, great jazz combos arrived from Kansas City and Chicago and Paris, and big bands and orchestras made it the nation’s jewel of black music and music in general—a jewel that newer performers, Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson and Chuck Berry, could only polish.
Jerry Lee took his seat at the grand piano, a piano played by some of the greatest musical talents the world had ever known. When he said hello, his voice with its Louisiana accent filled the place. Confronted with the anomaly, he made a snap decision: rather than try to hide it, he decided to exaggerate it. He felt threatened, and a strutting rooster does not run out of the barnyard; he crows louder and scratches the ground. He says he meant no disrespect, but did not see how being apologetic of his Southernness would in any way help the tension. He decided to make himself and his band even more Southern, more unlikable. Most people would not have done such a thing, but they do not think with his head.
“I’m happy to be here at the Apollo Theater with my boys,” he drawled, marbles in his mouth and sorghum on his tongue. “This here on drums is Russ Smith, from Newport, Arkansas,” he lied. Russ, taken aback, began to slightly shake
his head; he wasn’t from dad-gum Arkansas but Biloxi, Mississippi. “And this here, on bass, is J. W. Brown. He’s from Little Rock, Arkansas, where’s it’s too hot to rock,” and J. W. did a double-take of his own, because he knew he was from Louisiana even if no one else did.
“Figured I’d just take the bull by the horns,” Jerry Lee says now. If they were going to be run off the stage and out of Harlem and out of New York, better get it over with. There was, for a moment, a deathly quiet. “But there was this big, fat feller sitting right down in the front row,” who got the joke, even if it was not a very good one, “and he just laughed out loud,” says Jerry Lee. He laughed at the guts it took, at these boys coming to play here straight out of the heart of darkness of the segregated and violent South. And that made people in the crowd smile, some even to laugh out loud themselves, and the tension just deflated, recalls Jerry Lee. Then he launched into his set, not into a blues song, which would have been expected, maybe, but into his boogied-up “Crazy Arms,” a country song this white boy had remade as a blues. The crowd clapped, politely, and then he hit the first few keys of “Mean Woman Blues,” and they started to move. “I knew what they were waitin’ on. I knew what they wanted,” and he gave them the new song, stabbing, beating.
I laughed at love ’cause I thought it was funny
But you came along and mooooved me, honey
I’ve changed my mind
This love is fine
Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!
“And real quick, they got with it, and they started dancing.”
They came up out of their seats and out into the aisles.
He combed his blond hair at the piano stool and finished with the “Shakin’” song as hard as he had ever played it, and when he kicked back the stool, he tried to knock it halfway down to Amsterdam Avenue. Critics would say, of that show, he was an uncouth hillbilly with a certain animal vigor, but as he walked offstage, the crowd was clapping and screaming and stomping the floor, and the pretty girls were looking at him with that look, and he left the historic Apollo in a great storm of noise.