Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story(150)
With Bing’s money as a machine and Jerry Lee’s reputation as an enticement, the project, coproduced by Jimmy Ripp, drew a host of famous fans: B. B. King, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood, Jimmy Page, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Eric Clapton, John Fogerty, Buddy Guy, Don Henley, Kris Kristofferson, Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, Little Richard, and Rod Stewart. It also drew country singer Toby Keith, and the modern-day bad boy Kid Rock. Some of the tracks were laid down using the expedient ways of modern music, with voices spliced and married by machines. But some were done the old-fashioned way, with men looking at each other across a microphone.
It brought live performances and even a made-for-video concert show, joining Jerry Lee with great performers in their own right, like Springsteen on “Pink Cadillac.” In one of the most interesting pieces of film from the making of the album, Springsteen sings backup, and seems glad to do it. His line at the beginning of the song, “Go on, Killer!” made people smile with a kind of goofy joy. When he and George Jones sang “Don’t Be Ashamed of Your Age,” he actually yodeled so high that Jones had to warn him not to hurt himself. When he and Willie Nelson sang the sweet “A Couple More Years,” it was with a wink and a grin. When he did “Hadacol Boogie” with Buddy Guy, you knew they spanned a time when that song was more than trivia, when broke-down guitar pickers throughout the South had it in their repertoire. Guitar licks from players like Buddy and Jimmy Page meshed with his piano and voice—which showed its age, surely, but how could it not? It was still Jerry Lee Lewis and all that that implied.
And some of it was music that just stuck in your head. His duet with B. B. King sounded like the two old men were singing on barstools on Beale Street, finally equals, so long after Jerry Lee had to sneak into Haney’s to hear the man play. “‘Before the Night Is Over,’ you gonna be in love,” says Jerry Lee. “That was a song. I liked that.” He did “That Kind of Fool” with Keith Richards, “Traveling Band” with John Fogerty, “Sweet Little Sixteen” with Ringo Starr, and “I Saw Her Standing There” with Little Richard.
Recorded mostly at Sun Studio, it was called, of course, Last Man Standing.
“Who would have believed it?” said Jerry Lee.
He emerged from the gloom of his Nesbit ranch with, if not renewed vigor, at least a new purpose. Jerry Lee Lewis had not just become relevant again, he was back in the charts. Last Man Standing rose to number 26 in Billboard’s Top 200, number 8 in country, number 4 in rock, and number 1 among independently produced albums.
“Was I surprised? Naw, I wasn’t surprised,” he says, slipping back into the confident old Jerry Lee like he was never missing. He is asked if he enjoyed making some of the songs more than others, and he just says “Enjoyed ’em all,” that all of his guest artists, some of them in their sixties, were “pretty good boys.”
Asked later if he could choose to play music with anyone, anyone in the world—the Rolling Stones, B. B. King, Hank Williams—who would it be, he didn’t miss a beat.
“Kenny Lovelace,” he answered immediately.
Last Man Standing would have been a fine album to go out on, if he was planning on going out.
He was not.
“Am I satisfied with how it’s all gone? I don’t think so. I yearn to be satisfied. I do a song and I know I can do it better. And so I seek it.” He thinks only of the music as he ponders that question, not the life that frames it. By the late 2000s, he knew that his voice was changing, ever changing, but it still sounded like him, and his hands were still able to do many of the acrobatic moves of his youth. If it looked a little slower, well, that was his intent. As he had moved closer to the Lord, the old R-rated versions of his shows were fading away. He eased up on the word muthahumper, though it would creep into a recording here and there, out of habit.
In 2007, after being feted by Kris Kristofferson, Wanda Jackson, Shelby Lynne, and others for the American Music Masters series at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, on came a surprise guest: Jimmy Swaggart, who played “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and told his cousin he loved him. At the end of the program, Jerry Lee took his award and instead of making a speech, walked to the piano, sat down, and played “Over the Rainbow.”
Two years after that, he returned to the Hall of Fame for its twenty-fifth anniversary, this time at Madison Square Garden, as its guest of honor. He opened the two-night celebration alone in the spotlight with a solo rendition of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” The following night he did the same thing with “Great Balls of Fire,” and rose to kick the piano bench away. Then, walking offstage, he picked it up and heaved it farther across the floor. He was seventy-four.
Even well-meaning people believed he was surely done by now; surely he would soon succumb to all that hard living, or at least, growling in disgust, finally retire. Still, when he walked into a hotel room for an interview, reporters seemed surprised somehow that he had actually gotten old. They described his face as wattled, his voice as high and thin; they described a newfound humility when he performed onstage, an increased carefulness with music that now suddenly was not a guarantee. Some reviewers seemed almost let down when he played like a grown-up and relieved when he slipped back into his occasional indulgences.
But he kept showing up, even as the world enlisted yet one more young pretty face to retell his story, now more than half a century old. In early summer of 2010, the musical Million Dollar Quartet opened on Broadway, with the actor and musician Levi Kreis stealing the show in the role of the young upstart piano player.