Streaming Thursday Thoughts

I’ve been reading Rick Bragg’s account of the life of Jerry Lee Lewis. He mostly tells it in Jerry Lee’s own words. Bragg only fills in with recordable facts of the era that brought “The Killer” to stardom. I’m sure that some of the stories were made up on the spot, and some were the results of the “Liberty Valance Syndrome,” i.e. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Still, it’s a fascinating book, by a fascinating writer about a fascinating character in a fascinating place during a fascinating time.

Top that if you can. The book sure points out the idiocy of not locating the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Memphis. But that’s neither here nor there.

The book is bringing forth some personal memories, some of which test me. I had always remembered hearing about the death of Hank Williams while sitting in my grandmother’s front yard. Now I know it couldn’t have happened that way. We didn’t sit in front yards in January then and we don’t now either. It must have been in the living room. I’ve recalled the incident involving a cousin, or cousin’s wife, breaking the news. “Did you know that Hank Williams died?”

Nobody did. Such things weren’t considered front page news back then and some of the folks gathered around didn’t, or couldn’t, read much anyway. I had just turned nine, and figured that Hank was an old man and ready to die, not a young person of 29 who should have been ready to live.

It was years later that I learned I had seen the legendary Hank Williams in person once when he appeared at Robinson Auditorium in Little Rock. With supreme effort, I’ve dredged up a fuzzy image, much like a scene from one of the early silent movies, of a man in a bright suit with dark circles under his eyes saying something like, “This next song has bought me and the boys a lot of beans, lately.” I suspect that’s just a case where the legend has become fact.

Memories are funny that way, a fact that makes us wonder about the reporting of history. I read once that they’ve never been quite sure how long the cannonade lasted before the assault on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg. Memories range from a few minutes to an hour or more, and there were maybe 100,000 witnesses.

I do remember hearing about the death of Elvis, and I remember pretty much exactly where I was. I was on Highway 67/167 headed south from Searcy, home to Little Rock from a meeting. I was somewhere between Searcy and McCrae, Arkansas and it was the night of August 16, 1977. I was bored and twisting the dial on the car radio when an announcer gave me the news.

Not much changed. People knew Elvis was overweight and not taking care of himself. Of course there were hard-hearted purists who claimed, with a fervor born of true love, that Elvis—the real Elvis—died when his beautiful hair hit the floor at the Fort Chafee, Arkansas Army Receiving Center.

Back to Jerry Lee Lewis. He truly must be a crazy person, the kind about whom you warn your kids. I hope I don’t lose any friends, but I wasn’t that much of a fan. I was an Elvis man. The main thing I recall as a youth was hearing about Jerry Lee’s marriage to his cousin (third cousin) Myra Gale Brown, who was only 13 years old at the time. He was 22 or so and she would be his third wife as soon as the second was fully dissolved.

I was fascinated but didn't condemn. Myra was only a few months younger than I was, so she was about the same age as Betty Jean Colclasure. Heck, she wasn’t that much younger than Annette Funicello. Case closed.

Sainted mother was more bemused than scandalized about all this. She didn't care what Jerry Lee did in private. Besides, like me, she thought Elvis was king, and hell, his own marriage story wouldn’t slide from a Norman Rockwell painting. In SM’s little corner of the world, 14 to 16 was the proper age for marriage, so Myra had just broken out of the coral a few months early.

Anyway, it’s a good book. Rick Bragg is a treasure. Jerry Lee’s life is a cautionary tale: being a genius carries its own struggles. But, if one believes in an afterlife, one can imagine the day that Jerry Lee and Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (I’m told they go by full names in Heaven because of the large numbers) will go ripping through the clouds in a celestial blue Cadillac singing, loud enough so that it reaches Earth and you can hear it if you try real hard,  “I’ll fly away, oh lordy, I’ll fly away.” Yeah, Jerry Lee will teach it to him first thing, don't you know?

Hmmm