Jerry Lee Lewis

Jerry Lee Lewis was born in Ferriday, Louisiana, to a poor farming family that mortgaged their home to buy him a piano. Absorbing blues, gospel, and boogie-woogie from local juke joints, he developed an explosive, theatrical piano style, playing with his feet, elbows, and kicking over his piano bench.

In 1956, Lewis auditioned for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee, famously participating in the impromptu "Million Dollar Quartet" jam session with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins. In 1957, his releases of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire" became international chart-toppers and defining anthems of the rock and roll rebellion. In 1958, during a British tour, his career imploded when the press revealed he had married his 13-year-old cousin Myra Gale Brown. Defying commercial oblivion, Lewis reinvented himself in the late 1960s as a dominant country music superstar, racking up seventeen top-ten country hits. He was an inaugural inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2022.