Rockabilly pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis died last week at 87. He garnered early hits in the late 1950s with “Great Balls of Fire” and “High School Confidential”, but his reputation suffered after the revelation of his marriage to Myra Gale Brown. She was 13 and his first cousin once removed; he was still legally married to his second wife. Brown later co-authored a memoir detailing Lewis’s abuse and infidelity.
A transition to country music in the late 1960s led to a second wind for Lewis’s career, and in the early 1970s he once again enjoyed success on the pop charts. He was a preternatural piano performer, having begun practising the instrument in his youth with cousins Jimmy Swaggart and Mickey Gilley. Among his accolades were the first-ever Grammy Award for spoken word, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and induction to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
