Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story(93)
Sam himself later tried to explain to Sun researcher Martin Hawkins why he kept so much of Jerry Lee’s work in the vault. “I was always very cautious about putting out a lot of product on my artists just to ensure a certain level of income. I think that opportunity has been abused, always has, by the major record companies. . . . You only have to look at some of the crap they put out on Elvis Presley, just because he was in some picture show or something. I think each record should be for the good of the artist’s long-term career, not for short-term gain, and didn’t want to wear Jerry out with an over-abundance of availability.”
Sam acknowledged—how could he not?—that Jerry Lee’s scandal stayed his hand. “When Jerry took a beating from the press it would have been stupid to try to cram product down people’s throats. Believe me, just before that happened, Jerry was the hottest thing in America. The press tore him up in England over his marriage to Myra and it rebounded back home. It was a devastating, unnecessary, stupid damn thing, but what could we do about it? I think Jerry’s innocence back then . . . backfired. They scalped him. It turned out to be a very ghastly and deadly thing. So many people wanted to do in . . . rock and roll, and this is just what they were looking for.
“It should never have played a role of such significance in Jerry’s life.”
Finally, Jerry Lee became so frustrated with Sam’s refusal to release and promote his records that he forced his way into Sam’s office. What happened next has been told countless times by countless people who were not there, but the one who was there, the one still alive to tell, tells it this way:
“People said I punched Sam. I never punched Sam. I snatched him across the desk by his necktie, and I told him, ‘You’re gonna release my record. It’s gonna happen, or I’m gonna whip your butt.’ He told Sally to call the law, and she called the law. He said, ‘Now wait a minute, I’ve got as much right to decide when . . .’ and I think I slapped him. But he released the songs,” or at least some of them.
Shortly after returning from England, he cut a session’s worth of solo performances at Sun, including a song Elvis loved, “Come What May,” the Hank Williams standard “Settin’ the Woods on Fire,” and several moving takes of the country ballad “Crazy Heart.”
We lived on promises we knew would fall apart
Go on and break, you crazy heart
He says of that time, simply, “We did some good records,” and even Billboard wrote that his releases might do well if they had some kind of promotion. Jud left Sun to start his own label, and while he would return as Jerry Lee’s manager and remain his friend, he would never be able to restore the magic of those early days.
Jerry Lee’s live shows were sellouts some nights and bitter disappointments the next—not because of the music, for the music was there, but because of the venues, and it would be that way for years. One night he might fill a coliseum, but the next he’d find himself in some supper club, playing for people who never liked him in the first place, who preferred big-band music and were hoping to hear some. It was a time of one-hit wonders, all now long gone with nothing more than an occasional spin on an oldie station to hang their whole life on, but Jerry Lee had never been that. He was a true star from the start, with a succession of huge and lasting hits built on a foundation of grit and talent. And as he fell, he snarled and growled and clawed on the way down, in a rise and fall unequaled in American music.
“I don’t blame Myra. She had nothing to do with it. . . . Well, she did later, with books and things, but not then,” he says, refusing as always to accept that his marriage was in any way something to be ashamed of, that he did anything wrong in marrying her. “We don’t get along too well, now, but it ain’t because of no grudge. She was my wife.”
And of his persecutors? “They just couldn’t comprehend it, really,” he says. “I think they were saying to themselves, Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I have that? Why can’t that be me?”
Elvis was reading a book on poetry in the Brooklyn Army Terminal, waiting for his flight to Germany and his assignment to the Third Armored Division, when he was asked what he thought of Jerry Lee’s marriage to a thirteen-year-old girl. “He’s a great artist,” Elvis said. “I’d rather not talk about his marriage, except that if he really loves her, I guess it’s all right.”
During his tour in Germany, Elvis met a beautiful fourteen-year-old girl named Priscilla Beaulieu at a party in the town of Bad Nauheim. She was the stepdaughter of a US Air Force officer stationed there. They dated until he returned to the States. Later, when she was in high school, Elvis got permission from her parents to bring her to live with his family, promising that they would be chaperoned by his father and stepmother. It was even arranged that she would attend an all-girls school, Immaculate Conception High School of Memphis. Her parents agreed to this with the understanding that Elvis would keep Priscilla chaste and marry her when she was older. Not long after arriving, Priscilla moved into Graceland proper with Elvis; she would deny that she and Elvis had intercourse, though she did admit they did everything but. Elvis continued relationships with Nancy Sinatra, Ann-Margret, and others, but kept his promise to Priscilla’s parents, marrying her when she was twenty-one, on May 1, 1967, at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. Colonel Parker had worried that Elvis was putting himself at risk by closeting the girl in Graceland, but the strategy worked, and his career was never really threatened.