What Made Milwaukee Famous Made a Fool Out of Me

Looking at a list of those we lost in 2022, the one who stood out to me, undoubtedly due to my affinity for people and things southern, was The Killer. Jerry Lee was the very definition of what those not from the south dislike about us. He was loud, ugly, arrogant, and was primed at all times to fight with either fist, knife, or gun at the drop of a hat. Hell, Jerry Lee wasn’t even above dropping his own damned hat just to get the ball rolling. A young Jerry Lee Lewis earned the sobriquet “Killer” while still in grade school, when he tried to choke-out his teacher. There are too many fascinating stories of his antics to tell here. Still though, he’d be there at church the next Sunday morning like any good boy, praying for forgiveness. After all, he and his cousin Jimmy did dream of being preachers some day.

Jerry Lee’s rock and roll career was derailed when he married his thirteen year old cousin. He was twenty-two. But honestly, if it wasn’t that it would have been something else. And yes, while marrying a thirteen year old cousin sounds atrocious even to me (he who would dare to defend The Killer), interfamilial love was not unusual in the south at the time. Family bibles are littered with such things, and if you are from the south (or most anywhere else for that matter), you probably have some sullied genes in your own damned pool, so don’t walk around with your nose too high.

The cousin part is not so much for a southerner, and is easily gotten past. If you think someone a dumbass just because they marry their cousin then remember that Albert Einstein did it, and Darwin, and Poe as well (another good southern lad scorned by the Yankee press). In fact, Poe‘s cousin was also thirteen when he married her, so there!

It is that thirteen year old part that gets us these days. In fact, girls marrying so young was not very common even back in older times except amongst the very poor, but marrying a girl off young did resolve many problems for those poorer families, especially if the young man was wealthy. Still, a twenty-two year old man marrying a 13 year old girl is impossible to defend. Jerry Lee and Myra should have waited and just lived together, the same as Elvis and Priscilla did, or even Jimmy Page and Lori Mattix later. (Those dern rock-a-rollers! Whatever do you do with them?)

But no matter what you think of the man, he was a talent! Nobody, but nobody could play like Jerry Lee, then or now. Sam Phillips, a man who saw his fair share of talented people, called Lewis the “best musician I ever saw.” John Lennon knelt and kissed Jerry Lee’s feet when he met him. At 20 years old The Killer could play literally any song you asked him to play, be it rock, blues, jazz, country, gospel… he knew them all, and could hear any recently written song besides, and immediately improve it.

I heard a man say the other day how difficult it is to strum or pick a guitar with one hand, finger the notes and chords with the other, and sing at the same time. It is why so often the more difficult parts of a song happen during the vocal break. That man was not wrong. But look yonder at Jerry Lee; hammering out chords with his left hand, a melody with his right, singing over-top, and doing it all with glorious, glorious style!

With all that said Jerry Lee will little be missed. He was mean, maybe even crazy, foolish, and brash. Jerry Lee lived his life searching for sense in a confusing world centered somewhere between heaven and hell. The Killer had to quit preaching when he was 19 years old because, “there was just too many pretty girls out there in the pews.”

Atta boy. Who would have thought your crazy, old ass would outlive them all?

In other words, Jerry Lee Lewis was your typical backwood southern boy. I hope The Killer finds some peace in death. He sure never found any in life, and if he had he might well have pulled out a pistol and popped off a shot at it.