Episode fifty-nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" by Jerry Lee Lewis. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.

Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "So Long I'm Gone" by Warren Smith.



Resources

As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.

I'm relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records.

Books on Jerry Lee Lewis tend to be very flawed, as the authors all tend to think they're Faulkner rather than giving the facts. This one by Rick Bragg is better than most.

The episode of Cocaine and Rhinestones I mention in the episode is here.

There are many budget CDs containing Lewis' pre-1962 work. This set seems as good an option as any.

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Transcript

We're in an odd position with this episode, really. The first time we looked at Jerry Lee Lewis, it was as part of the Million Dollar Quartet, yet at the time of the actual Million Dollar Quartet session, Lewis was basically an unknown, and we didn't have time to cover his career up to that point -- even though the Million Dollar Quartet recordings prove that he considered himself a peer of Elvis and Carl Perkins right from the start. And we also talked about Lewis a fortnight ago, when we were dealing with Billy Lee Riley, but again, the focus was on someone other than Lewis.

The problem is that Jerry Lee Lewis is just the kind of figure who demands discussion, even before he became a famous musician. He's someone who just dominates other people's stories, and pushes in to them and takes over.

So now we've got to the point where he's about to have his first hit, but we haven't really looked at how he got to that point, just at him interacting with other people. So now we're going to have to back up, and look at the first hit record from the last great artist to be discovered by Sun Records.

[Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On"]

Jerry Lee Lewis was a young piano player from Ferriday, Louisiana, who loved music more than anything. He loved Gene Autry, and Hank Williams -- and he loved Al Jolson. He would later tell a story about going on a date to the cinema. Before the show they were playing records, and one record that came on was Jolson singing "Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye":

[Excerpt: Al Jolson, "Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye"]

Lewis immediately got out of his seat, told his girlfriend he needed to use the toilet, cycled home, worked out how to play the song on the piano, cycled back, and rejoined his date for the film. She asked why he'd been gone so long, and he said he'd picked up some popcorn as well.

Sam Phillips would often say later that Jerry Lee Lewis was the most naturally talented musician he ever worked with. Elvis was the most charismatic, Johnny Cash had the most commanding presence, and Howlin' Wolf was the most profound artist, but Lewis was the one who had the greatest obsession with his music, the greatest drive to create, and the greatest sheer knowledge of music, in all different genres. Lewis would play piano for eight hours a day, and while in other matters he was surprisingly ignorant -- other than the Bible, the only things he ever read were comics -- he could talk with a huge amount of authority about the musical techniques of everyone from B.B. King to Frank Sinatra, and he could hear a song once and remember it and play it years later. And whatever music he learned, from whatever source, he would somehow transmute it and turn it into a Jerry Lee Lewis song. Nothing he played sounded like anyone else.

He'd started playing music when he was four years old. He'd been walking past a piano in the house of his rich uncle, Lee Calho