Jerry Lee Lewis Rocks

by Robert Palmer

. large format, clean copy

Genres: Biography, Music

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Robert Franklin Palmer Jr. was a 20th century American writer, musicologist, clarinetist, saxophonist, and blues producer. Robert Palmer is best known for books he authored such as Deep Blues, his music journalism articles for The New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine, his work producing blues recordings and the soundtrack to the film Deep Blues, and his clarinet work in the 1960s band The Insect Trust.

-Wikipedia

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Tom Shannon, Jr · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a hoot! I never saw this side of author Robert Palmer before. I read his book Deep Blues years ago, which was a wonderful education about blues musicians of the deep south. This is quite informative too, but its layout and feel are more like a fan's scrapbook than the somber textbook feel of Deep Blues, which lacked pictures and humor.

The front of this book contains a dedication to Ian Curtis (!), and takes an autobiographical, teen-oriented first-person approach in chapter one, titled "Aspiring Punk", whose initial page has a snapshot of the author as a twelve-year-old greaser. Here Palmer sets the frame of reference excellently with tales of his juvenile antics, foibles, fanfare for Jerry Lee and mindset as a kid (such as the time he shoplifted his first Jerry Lee Lewis Sun 45 during his Cold War adolescence in Little Rock.)

The biography proper begins in the subsequent chapters. It was written mostly in third-person, seasoned occasionally with first-person journalistic notes from interviews like, "I asked Jerry Lee if he really destroyed all those pianos..." There's plenty of of insight, profundity, humor and absurdity, and some theology and tragedy too (though less of a southern gothic / biblical tone pervading than in Nick Tosches' fine Jerry Lee bio "Hellfire" which was published the year after this.)

The pages are plastered with a myriad of black and white pictures, news clippings and telegrams (all images together consuming likely as much page space as the text), and eye-catching high-contrast graphics such as piano keys, maps, and illustrations of explosions that pop right off the page! This has some foul language and drugs, so not for kids. There's no table of contents, index, discography, or anything like that -- it's not that kind of book. This one's for fun!

Contains nine chapters of varying lengths. The longest two chapters cover Jerry's relationships with Sam Phillips of Sun Records, and with his 13-year-old cousin-turned-wife Myra (and the resulting scandal that decimated his first British tour in '58.)

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The original bad boy of rock and roll, Jerry Lee Lewis was loved by teens and hated by their parents. He was a new brand of rocker who smashed pianos on stage long before The Who smashed their guitars. He shocked the world by marrying his 14 year old cousin and because of it was asked to leave Britain when he went there to tour. He married multiple times and when his rock and roll career began to falter, he successfully switched to country music and toned down his image somewhat. But he would always be "The Killer".

This book is not really a biography but rather chapters of pieces of his life interspersed with interviews with friends, colleagues, and enemies. Lots of pictures, not a lot of text, this is a book to read while you are also reading something a little more serious. Fun stuff for the music fan.