Recently I saw Jerry Lee Lewis for the umpteenth time in my life. He played at the Ryman here in Nashville on a Saturday night.
This past month, September 29 he turned seventy-five years old. I first saw him in 1958 when I was sixteen-years-old. In 1975 I saw him four nights in a row, two shows a night at a small club in Indianapolis, Indiana. The “good attendance” got my cousin and me an invite from Jerry to come back to his dressing room between shows and meet him; which the two of us did.
Jerry is the only one still living out of the stable of performers that got their start at Sun Records in Memphis. Elvis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins all are gone, and Jerry remains. Vegas once would have given you pretty good odds against this ever happening. It's been said of Lewis: "The Lord didn't want him and the devil was scared of him." Maybe so.
I have been fortunate to have seen what I think are some of the most famous performers in the lifetime of many of us. Sinatra, saw him numerous times; saw Elvis, Orbison, Fats Domino, Rick Nelson, Johnny Cash many times, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. But there is only one Jerry Lee.
During the show the other night, I stood in the back of the performance hall and talked for some time with his niece, Earile. She and her mother, Linda Gail Lewis, opened for Jerry and did an excellent show. She remarked that while Jerry’s health is not good, he was having a good week and had looked forward to performing here in Nashville.
The song he did just prior to closing the show was a song he recorded many years ago entitled, Listen sometime to Jerry do the Sonny Throckmorton classic "I Wish I Was Eighteen Again."
I’m three quarters home from the start to the end
And I wish I was eighteen again
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October 4, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson