Jerry Lee Lewis The One and Only Last of the Line

i.
Forewarned is Four Eyed

This blog was posted just a few days before Jerry Lee's passing. This timing was just by chance or something more weird. I do remember thinking he was the last of a line and was still alive. I was thunderstruck by the intensity of his performance on a less than minor hit of his: Papercup. With his leaving, leaves the last king of rocknroll. 

I had also posted to Facebook, and that incurred some kickback. One of my friends who worked in the music business and had to deal with the Golden Haired Louisianan's Inflated Sense of Destined Self took this as an irritant. I sure don't blame him on that. He wrote: 'I’m sorry, but I can’t even watch. Based on personal experience on two occasions, he’s the biggest jerk in the business. He doesn’t deserve attention or accolades.'

ii.
With Poet Friend Jeff DeMark

My friend Jeff DM as I recall had written a poem about Jerry Lee’s ranch. A guy he met had been up there. Was high or drunk and described the place – the storyline of everyone’s epic – like Eden, with everything you want and need. Jerry Lee coming originally from a place with no running water, a shack, no electricity.  And riding his music to fortune and infamy. Jeff does not recall this. 

So I took it upon myself to visit the same myth. Like a poets’ dare. I will again write the story - I thought to myself at the time -- and it will gain resonance by that mere fact. The notion of mythmaking around pop figures was still new at the time, and Jerry Lee's and Elvis's Myths were swirling in the tabloids at the time. About the poem that came out of it: Like Jeff’s memory of poem, this one is lost to the winds. I don’t feel like I lost it. ‘You can never lose a thing if it belongs to you.’ [As Abbie Lincoln sang.]

iii.
Lonesome Death of Jerry Lee Lewis

So, how did this poem/story get away? This was the 1970s. I will tell you more about it. But, first, who is it we are speaking of? The Oct 28, 2022 headline was front-page New York Times when he died, and the lead described the fundamental elements:

Jerry Lee Lewis, the hard-driving rockabilly artist whose pounding boogie-woogie piano and bluesy, country-influenced vocals helped define the sound of rock ’n’ roll on hits like “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire,” and whose incendiary performing style expressed the essence of rock rebellion, died on Friday at his home in DeSoto County, Miss., south of Memphis. He was 87.

Yes, he was hard-driving rockabilly with pounding boogie-woogie piano and country-influenced vocals Yes, his incendiary performing style expressed the essence of rock rebellion. As show in his English Shindig appearance above. 

And unique he was in the Pantheon [Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, BoDiddley, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee] in his focus on hell raising. There is wildness and pain beyond the others. Thumping every page and screaming every crazy slash from an upside-down Bible. And this was to become a pillar aspect of what became rocknroll. The map for singers to hang between heaven and hell, and wrench their souls in exploration. Punk Rock especially owes its house to Jerry Lee. Okay, by way of Iggy.

iv.
With Ed Sanders, Boston, 1977

Back in the 1970s, I watched and read the news as now -- clamorously. Jerry Lee Lewis was in the news a whole bunch of times. On one of them, he got drunk and he went to Elvis his mansion crashed his car into the gate. brandishing a gun. 

I thought, you know, there was a poem there. Sounded like a drama. Right. And so I did something I don't recall. But I will try to reconstruct some variant thereof with a news release and the Cut-Up Machine.

In Memphis, he called on Elvis
He had totaled his Rolls
been arrested and sprung

In the liquored lounge he got a .38 Derringer
his mind on the run reckless bent for Hades

To Graceland To Elvis
Imprisoned in the Colonel’s tower
With the sappy savant bodyguards

Carrying redemption somewhere between heaven and hell comes Jerry Lee

Crashes a Lincoln into the grate-posts
Shooting the pistol and the other hand bourbon brandished

Cmon out Elvis!
Let’s record

          I’m here to see Elvis

I’m Jerry Lee Lewis
And Im sure fire drunk

There are no accidents
Come on out Elvis or you’ll be dead in a month.

Repeating that this is an imagined recreation and the original is lost.*

So when when Ed Sanders was in town and this is years ago, and he was doing a poetry reading sponsored by Jack Powers' StoneSoup Poets, and with my buddy I got to the party afterwards. I am a young poet hoping for blessing from old poet. And I have a poem in my pocket.  I want to lay it on him. And so I do, at the portal between the hall and kitchen. Many others milling similarly. The poem I read is about Jerry Lee Lewis, something like above, but I don't hold as then on a piece of paper in my blue jeans pocket. 

I give it to Ed. And he says, 

That's nice, here you take it, is it your only copy?

No, I say, you take it. 

Okay, I'm hip, he says.

So that's that's where when I wrote this thing. That's the story of me and the myth of Jerry Lee and my first meeting with Ed Sanders.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*A very similar poem still exists about the myth of Elvis. The poem was about Elvis as a prisoner of his pain and his entourage. 

Read  Elvis Was Riding His Last Summer elsewhere on this site.

After I read my poem, I continued... Then, with Ed’s attention, and before others swooped in, I sing ‘Claire June’. My adaptation of a Fugs number. Driven it was by a break up with my college girlfriend, named Juno. I took the Fug’s humorously profane “I Feel Like Homemade Shit,” re-emphasized its bluesgrassiness and made of it a humorously lovestruck lament. Said Ed drolly : “That’s it. We should have done clean music.”

[Note to self: There are notes from the time that can be added.]

Young Jerry Lee [note cigar] with Boston's Preacher Jack,
then head of Boston Jerry Lee Fan Club Chapter.