1/13/2024 0 Comments Elvis roger ebertSome said he was on the way to unseating Elvis Presley as the leading figure in rock and roll until the twenty-two-year-old Lewis married his young cousin (his third marriage), generating bad publicity and causing his popularity to plummet. He followed that with another hit, “Great Balls of Fire.” His next Sun record, “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On,” was a hit. Although Lewis played piano, not guitar as was common among early rock and rollers, he made his way to Memphis, too, recording “Crazy Arms” for Sun and scoring a modest regional hit. In 1956, when Lewis was twenty-one, he read a story about musician Elvis Presley, who was native of Tupelo, Mississippi, and had moved with his family to Memphis, connecting with Sam Phillips at Sun Records. He attended Southwestern Bible Institute ( Assemblies of God) in Waxahachie, Texas, but was expelled after three months when he played a boogie-woogie version of a hymn for morning assembly. On those forays, Lewis was often accompanied by his cousin Jimmy Swaggart and another cousin, future country music star Mickey Gilley.īy the time Lewis left high school, he was married and a father. Growing up, he regularly snuck into a local African-American “juke joint,” to hear bluesmen like B. With his family, Lewis attended the local Assembly of God church, where he absorbed exultant spiritual music. His parents mortgaged their farm to purchase his first piano, which Lewis learned to play in two weeks when he was about eight years old. He was born in Ferriday, Louisiana, in 1935. The film offers a look at Lewis’s early life. The scenes featuring singing at a church were shot in the Blessings Through Faith Temple Congregation Church off U.S. Gerard as Elvis Presley.Īccording to the Arkansas Film Commission, Great Balls of Fire! was shot on location in Arkansas, with the house used to portray Jerry Lee Lewis’s childhood home being located at 93 Military Road in Marion. Other notable figures from the early days of rock and roll who are portrayed in the film include Trey Wilson as Sam Phillips, Robert Lesser as Alan Freed, and Michael St. The film also featured Arkansas native Lisa Blount as Lois Brown, the mother of Lewis’s young bride. A pivotal plot point is his controversial marriage to his cousin Myra, which led to criticism and a setback in his career. ![]() It follows Jerry Lee Lewis’s early career in 1956 through 1959 as he rose to stardom. ![]() The 108-minute film was based on a book by Myra Brown Lewis and was directed by Jim McBride. It starred Dennis Quaid as Lewis, Winona Ryder as the thirteen-year-old cousin whom he married, and Alec Baldwin as another cousin, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. Several scenes of Great Balls of Fire! were filmed on location in the Arkansas towns of Marion (Crittenden County) and West Memphis (Crittenden County), with other filming taking place in nearby Memphis, Tennessee. Great Balls of Fire! is a 1989 motion picture loosely based on pioneering rock and roll star Jerry Lee Lewis.
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