The Devil, Me, and Jerry Lee (1998)

I’ve been toting this little memoir around with me for years, thinking it was written by Myra Gale Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis’s controversial cousin, 13-year-old bride, and third wife. But it’s actually by Linda Gail Lewis, Jerry Lee’s youngest sister, 12 years his junior. Linda Gail—this book temporarily put me in the habit of calling everyone by two names—sang with Jerry Lee for many years and eventually tried to make it on her own. Her stuff can be found on youtube. She actually had more marriages than Jerry Lee—eight to his seven—and she’s perfectly candid about the Lewis clan being “over-sexed.” She doesn’t go into any more detail than that, for which I was grateful. It’s a short book, well under 200 pages, and mostly a lot of anecdotes and funny and interesting stories about their adventures. She gives the devil his due right up-front but never goes deep into that. The devil makes them drink or take drugs a lot and accounts for their being over-sexed and that’s about it. I would have been interested in some thoughts about hellfire. She doesn’t deny a lot of Jerry Lee’s behavior, but she does deny he ever killed anyone. Mostly she explains all his famous bad behavior by the drugs and some personal problems (“demons”), about which she says nothing can be done. I think she’s right when she says they do things differently in the deep South—Ferriday, Louisiana, in this case, and the Assembly of God church. Jerry Lee, like Little Richard, was more or less sincere about his pentecostal beliefs, though Little Richard might have been a little better about staying on the straight and narrow once he got there—relatively speaking. Linda Gail’s memoir is not particularly essential, but it’s quick and fun to read and offers another view into one of the great early rock ‘n’ roll stars. Linda Gail does argue that Jerry Lee and Elvis Presley were great friends and that reports of Jerry Lee’s envy for Elvis’s greater success are exaggerated. Well, maybe. She’s certainly doing what a loving sister can do for his reputation, but I’m disinclined to believe her on that point. Otherwise I mostly take her at her word. Some great anecdotes here.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.