June 13, 1989: Jerry Lee Lewis Gets Hollywood Star
by Best Classic Bands Staff
One of the originators of rock and roll music alongside his Sun Records labelmate Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis enjoyed some long-overdue vindication when the piano-playing singer and notorious musical wild man both onstage and off received one of the ultimate symbols of American celebrity on June 13, 1989, getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He rocketed to fame on the strength of such hit singles as 1957’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” (#3) and “Great Balls of Fire” (#2) and 1958’s “Breathless” (#7) and “High School Confidential” (#21) until it became known at the start of a 1958 tour of Great Britain that the 22-year-old artist known as “The Killer” had married his 13-year-old cousin Myra Gale.
All but two of the tour dates were canceled. Back in the U.S., Lewis became virtually blacklisted from radio and his bookings plummeted from concerts for thousands of dollars to shows in small clubs for a few hundred bucks. Although there were no more Top 20 pop singles, he later enjoyed a career resurgence as a country artist from 1968 through the ’70s, and in 1986 was an inaugural inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Watch a brief clip from the ceremony: “Jerry Lee Lewis is happy to be here in Hollywood, California!”
Lewis was born on Sept. 29, 1935, and has seen seven marriages, the deaths of two wives and two sons, various arrests, tax troubles and numerous other travails.
He suffered a stroke on February 28, 2019. A May 21, 2019, update on his Facebook page, indicated that he was “progressing miraculously in his recovery.” So much, in fact, that he revealed in a January 2020 interview that he had recorded a new album with producer T-Bone Burnett. [His recordings are available here.] Lewis died on Oct. 28, 2022. Details of the album have yet to be revealed.
A June 11, 2024, announcement on his Facebook page noted that the Jerry Lee Lewis Ranch Experience is coming soon. Located just 18 miles south of Graceland and Memphis in Nesbit, Mississippi, this iconic home—where Jerry Lee lived from the mid-1970s until his passing in October 2022—will soon open its doors to the public once again.
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Jump into a conversationFind Jerry’s bad-ass biography “His Own Story” by Rick Flagg. The writing is so good you can feel JLL’s life. Terrific book.