Interview: Jerry Lee Lewis

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com

Back in 2010, I traveled down to Nesbit, Miss., for The Wall Street Journal to interview Jerry Lee Lewis at home. You can read that interview here. Last week I interviewed Jerry Lee again, this time by phone, for a career-spanning Q&A for today's Arena section of the paper (go here). Jerry Lee has a new album out and a new biography by Rick Bragg.

Jerry Lee, of course, is one of rock's originators—especially regarding rock's rebellious, independent attitude. Yes, the roots of rock date back to the late 1940s, Fats Domino gave the music a tremendous lift in the early 1950s and proto-rock R&B records were recorded prior to 1955. But once Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee dragged the music into the TV age in 1956 and '57, the music went visual and teen energy levels erupted.

Jerry Lee is a character. It comes with the territory, but in Jerry Lee's case, he's made attitude a fine art. Unlike Elvis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry or Little Richard, there was always something threatening about Jerry Lee—a smoldering cool mixed with an overheated boogie-woogie piano that could just as easily get you up on your feet or knock you off of them. What I learned this time around is that gospel played a big role in Jerry Lee's development. Preaching and assuming a possessed condition were part of his upbringing, which he incorporated into his piano playing. It wasn't enough to play well—you had to drive everyone wild, no matter how physical you had to get on stage. While Elvis appealed to women first and foremost, Jerry Lee was a guy's rocker, someone who could tap into male energy and pull the women along.

Here's Jerry Lee singing You Win Again—in 1964...

And here he is singing and playing the same song in the late 1970. Catch those hands...

Also in The Wall Street Journal, you can read my "Playlist" interview with Gerald "Major Dad" McRaney (go here) on his favorite song—Patsy Cline's Always—and my "House Call" interview with bestselling novelist Jodi Picoulton how a suburban New Yorker wound up loving rural New Hampshire (go here). [Photo above of Jodi Picoult at her home in Hanover, N.H. by Bob O'Connor for The Wall Street Journal]

Used with permission by Marc Myers