The Ren The Embarq Concert Connection

Jerry Lee Lewis

Single Tickets:

Pit & Premium - $150
Orch/Mezz - $90/80
Section A - $70
Section B - $60

Group Sales:

Groups of 15 and up can save $50 or more! Call Brandon at 419-522-2726 ext. 211

Audience Engagement:

Read All About It (PDF, 319K)

Saturday, October 11th, 2008
at 8:00 PM

The Last Man Standing…

The Killer…

The Legend…

Jerry Lee Lewis is the wild man of rock’n roll, embodying its most reckless and high-spirited impulses. On such piano pounding rockers from the late 1950s as “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire”, Lewis combined a ferocious, boogie-style with rowdy, uninhibited vocals.

He migrated to Memphis from Ferriday, Louisiana, where he’d grown up learning how to play piano by ear listening to the music surrounding him, Western swing, boogie-woogie, up-tempo R&B, and Delta blues. Lewis’ fi rst influence was the country-blues sound of Jimmie Rodgers, although he also absorbed the gospel and R&B of the local black community. His amalgamation of these indigenous styles, abetted by his brash temperament, made him a natural-born rock and roller - maybe the ultimate rock and roll rebel. Lewis found a home at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records label, whose stable of talent also included Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison. After a country-flavored audition for Philips in 1956, Lewis was told that if he could come up with some rock and roll, “we could probably do something”. Lewis didn’t write much himself, but he transformed other people’s songs into unbridled rock and roll that even he called “the Devil’s music”.

Lewis’ debut single was a rocking recast of Ray Price’s country hit “Crazy Arms”. He followed it with “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”, which sold 6 million copies and went to #3, and “Great Balls of Fire”, a 5 million seller that reached #2. Both songs were from 1957, a watershed year for Lewis. The next year yielded more hits - “Breathless” and “High School Confidential” - and a role in a movie titled after the latter song.

Beginning in the late 1960s, he launched such Top Ten hits as “Another Place, Another Time” and “What Made Milwaukee Famous (Made a Loser Out of Me)”. By the early 1980s, he’d racked up a string of 30 country hits and also re-entered the rock and roll realm. In 1995, he marked his 60th year with a red-hot rock and roll album, “Young Blood”.

Through a life marred by controversy and personal tragedy, Lewis has remained a defiant and indefatigable figure who refuses to be contained by politesse or pigeonholes. As he declared from the stage of the Grand Ole Opry in 1973, “I am a rock and rollin’, country & western, rhythm & bluesy singing [expletive deleted]”.