LITMIR.BIZ

      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

       With his parents, Elmo and Mamie Herron Lewis.

       As a boy, at around the time his father took him out to the levee to see the party boats on the Mississippi. “That’ll be you on there someday,” Elmo told him. “That’ll be you.”

       The young conqueror loose on the streets.

       The bar at Haney’s Big House, with proprietor, Will Haney, second from right. “I just introduced myself to the atmosphere,” says Jerry Lee.

       With Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, who tried to convince Jerry Lee that he could save souls as a “rock-and-roll exponent,”.

       Sam’s brother Jud, who served, at various times, as manager, drinking partner, and mentor.

       Jerry Lee with (left to right) Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash, around the piano at Sun, December 4, 1956: the afternoon jam session that went down in history as the Million Dollar Quartet. “I knew there was something special going on here,” Jerry Lee says.

       Here he is, jumpin’ and joltin’: The Steve Allen Show, July 28, 1957.

       Shining down from above: a mysterious Sun promotional photo.

       Debuting “Great Balls of Fire” in the jukebox film Jamboree.

       Signing autographs for fans at the Bell Auditorium, Augusta, Georgia.

       The Great Ball of Fire on Dick Clark’s

       “I thought to myself, I don’t like the look in these girls’ eyes, and the cops couldn’t do nothing about it.”

       Valdosta, Georgia, probably early 1958.

       With fan club president Kay Martin (upper right) and a fan backstage at the Loews Paradise Theater in the Bronx, New York, March 31, 1958.

       At the Granada Theatre in Tooting, South London: his last concert before leaving England, May 26, 1958.

       “Why don’t we leave our personal questions out of this, sir?” Greeting the press with Myra upon his return from England, Idlewild Airport, New York City, 1958.

       Steve Allen Lewis, who died before his fourth birthday.

       With Don Everly (center) and Buddy Holly (right), who asked him for marriage advice. Jerry Lee remembers Holly as “a real champion” and “a true gentleman.”

       With his parents, Mamie and Elmo, 1959.

       At El Monte Stadium, Los Angeles, with DJ Art Leboe, June 20, 1958.

       REX USA / Devo Hoffmann

       The conqueror returns to Europe, early 1960s.

       The finale of his triumphant appearance in Granada TV’s Don’t Knock the Rock, March 19, 1964.

       In May 1963, he did a weeklong stint at the Star-Club, a raucous joint on the infamous Reeperbahn where the Beatles had lately cut their teeth.

       On April 5 of the following year, he returned to record one of the greatest live albums of all time.

       In the studio for Smash, 1965.

       A Chicago live date captured for the cover of the Smash album Memphis Beat.

       The wild man reborn as a seasoned country star.

       “No, never shall my soul be satisfied!” As Iago in Catch My Soul, 1968.

       Backstage at the London Palladium, 1972.

       At the London Rock and Roll Show, the first concert ever held in Wembley Stadium, 1972.

       Bananafish Garden, Brooklyn, New York, 1973.

       “Where’s Daddy at? Is he still cussin’?” With Elmo in Texas, 1970s.

       After pulling into the gates of Graceland, early morning, November 23, 1976.

       In his private plane, 1970s.

       Onstage with Linda Gail.

       With Mick Fleetwood and Keith Richards for Salute!, a Dick Clark TV special, July 1983.

       The boys of Ferriday, Louisiana: with Mickey Gilley (left) and Jimmy Lee Swaggart.

       With his fourth wife, Jaren Pate, in 1978.

       At his wedding to Shawn Stephens, June 7, 1983.

       After Shawn’s death, on April 24, 1984, he married Kerrie McCarver.

       Getting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. With him is Dennis Quaid, who played Jerry Lee in the 1989 motion picture Great Balls of Fire.

       At home in Nesbit, Mississippi, with his Sun gold records.

       With Chuck Berry and Ray Charles at the first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, January 23, 1986.

       At the Great Balls of Fire premiere party, at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, 1989.

       Back at the Hall of Fame, 1995.

       Onstage with Levi Kreis at Million Dollar Quartet, 2010.

       Frankie Jean.

       Linda Gail.

       With Judith, 2014.

      INTRODUCTION

      JOLSON IN THE RIVER

       The Black River, and the Mississippi

       1945

      The party boats churned up the big river from New Orleans and down from Memphis and Vicksburg, awash in good liquor and listing with revelers who dined and drank and danced to tied-down pianos and whole brass bands, as their captains skirted Concordia Parish on the way to someplace brighter. The passengers were well-off people, mostly, the officer class home from Europe and the Pacific and tourists from the Peabody, Roosevelt, and Monteleone, clinking glasses with planters and oil men who had always found riches in the dirt the poorer men could not see. Weary of the austerity of war, of rationing and victory gardens, of coastal blackouts and U-boats that hung like sharks at the river mouth, they wanted to raise a racket, spend some money, and light up the river and the entire dull, sleeping land. They floated drunk and singing past sandbars where gentlemen of Natchez once settled affairs of honor with smoothbore pistols and good claret, and around snags and whirlpools where river pirates had lured travelers to their doom.

      The country people, in worn-through overalls and faded flour-sack dresses, watched from the banks of the Mississippi and Black rivers the same way they looked through the windows of a store. In the war years, they had traded the lives of their young men for better times, but they had seen too much bad luck and broke-down history to overcome with just one big war. Reconstruction, the Great Depression, and named storms and unnamed

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