In the United States: rock’n’roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis has died

One of the last great pioneers of rock and roll, American musician Jerry Lee Lewis, has died at the age of 87, his agent announced Friday.AFP. Associated for eternity with the song “Great Balls of Fire”, famous for its strong stage presence and dynamic style on the piano, rock legend from Louisiana (south), Jerry Lee Lewis died of natural causes, he specified the same source.

Friend and rival of King Elvis Presley himself, Jerry Lee Lewis had influenced an entire generation of musicians, such as Bruce Springsteen who said of him in 1995: “It doesn’t play rock’n roll, it’s rock’n roll”. He was as famous for his successes as for the dramas and scandals that marked his existence.

Born on September 29, 1935 to a poor family in Ferriday, Louisiana, he discovered the piano at the age of 9 and his parents mortgaged the family farm to pay for his instrument. In 1956 he left for Memphis (Tennessee), the mecca of new American music, and was one of the first to sign with the famous Sun Records label. His meeting with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins that same year resulted in a legendary recording session known as “The Million Dollar Quartet” (“The Million Dollar Quartet”).

In 1957, his first title, “Whole lotta shakin ‘goin’ on”, already bears the mark of his disheveled style. While rock is still in his infancy, the crowd flocks to see him fiercely tap the keyboard with his fingers, elbows or feet, his hair swinging furiously to the frenzied beat as he sends the stool to dance in a wild dance step. . A few months later, “Great Balls of Fire”, which will also be the title of a docu-drama about his life in 1989, pushes him to the top of sales and makes him one of the most adored stars of the moment. .

A scandal erupts when the press discovers that his third wife, Myra Gale Brown, is his 13-year-old first cousin. American radio stations decided to boycott the singer, who fell out of favor for half a dozen years before resurfacing by abandoning rock for country music. Imaginative and sometimes violent, alcohol and drugs have given him serious health problems and just as many problems with the police.

But the legend does not fade, indeed, and is one of the first musicians inducted into the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” (museum and pantheon of rock, in Cleveland, Ohio), when it was created in 1986. He spent part of his last few years on his ranch in Nesbit, Mississippi, with his seventh wife, and was still on stage in early 2019. But, following a mild stroke in May of this year, he had canceled the concerts.