BREAKINGNEWS: Jerry Lee Lewis, 'Great Balls of Fire' singer, has died at age 87, his publicist confirmed to CBSLA.
Lewis scored a major hit in 1957 with his rendition of"Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." He followed that up in the same year with"Great Balls of Fire," which reached number 2 on the Billboard charts. The song lent its title to the 1989 biopic, starring Dennis Quad as Lewis.
Rock and roll star Jerry Lee Lewis with his third wife, Myra, who is also his cousin, in 1958. The couple married when Myra was 13 years old."I probably would have rearranged my life a little bit different, but I never did hide anything from people," Lewis told the Wall Street Journal in 2014 when asked about the marriage."I just went on with my life as usual."
Lewis had a run of top 10 country hits between 1967-70, and hardly mellowed at all. He performed drinking songs such as"What's Made Milwaukee Famous ", the roving eye confessions of"She Still Comes Around" and a dry-eyed cover of a classic ballad of abandonment,"She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye." He had remained popular in Europe and a 1964 album,"Live at the Star Club, Hamburg," is widely regarded as one of the greatest concert records.
Another son by a previous marriage, Steve Allen Lewis, 3, drowned in a swimming pool in 1962, and son Jerry Lee Jr. died in a traffic accident at 19 in 1973. Lewis also had two daughters, Phoebe and Lori Leigh, and his survived by his wife Judith. He took to the piano immediately, and began sneaking off to Black juke joints and absorbing everything from gospel to boogie-woogie. Conflicted early on between secular and scared music, he quit school at 16, with plans of becoming a piano-playing preacher. Lewis briefly attended Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas, a fundamentalist Bible college, but was expelled, reportedly, for playing the"wrong" kind of music.
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