Introduction

1. Anticipation

2. Showtime

3. Family Ties

4. Moonshine

5. Births

6. Early Death

7. More Hardship

8. That Old-Time Religion

9. Conquered Unconquered

10. Music

11. Mothers and Sons

12. Early Performances

13. First Wives and First Forays

14. Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll

15. Crazy Arms

16. Making It

17. Mickey Gets Inspired

18. Jimmy’s Woes

19. Myra Gale

20. The Devil’s Music

21. Trouble All Around

22. Traveling Preacher

23. Nesadel

24. The Evangelists

25. Breaking Through

26. Club Regular

27. Downtime

28. The Climb Back

29. Satisfaction

30. Rage and Partying

31. Things Are Looking Up

32. Using His Talent for God

33. All This Heartbreak

34. Mickey Returns to the Studio

35. Playing with Guns

36. Squeaky Clean

37. Deeper and Deeper

38. Urban Cowboy

39. Not One to Wallow

40. Struggle Amid Success

41. Building Pressure

42. Calm Before the Storm

43. The Aftermath

44. The Reckoning

45. Burnout

46. Defiance

47. The Step Too Far

48. Holding Court

49. Stygian Night

50. Last Man Standing

51. Going Home

52. Mickey’s Spirit

53. Jimmy’s Redemption

54. Survival

Appendix A: Summarized Family Tree

Appendix B: Maps

Appendix C: Time Line of Events

Appendix D: Author’s Favorite Songs

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

As a child growing up in small-town East Texas, a town similar in many ways to small towns everywhere, I remember my father watching on television a shouting, singing, finger-pointing bear of a man named Jimmy Swaggart. While Swaggart’s preaching didn’t mean much to me at that age, his piano playing caught my attention and moved me, as it did millions of others around the world. People were touched and thrilled by his message, and drawn in by his charisma.

As a teenager raised largely in the conservative, fundamentalist Assembly of God world, I struggled with worldly temptations and the discomfiting feelings they aroused, and found that adhering to every edict I had been given in Sunday school was going to be, at the very least, a difficult chore. The words I heard from the pulpit such as “hellfire” and “lost in eternity” and “backsliding” created an increasing sense that I risked slipping into the gates of hell at any inopportune moment. When I heard that the preacher I saw on television had stumbled and made a public and painful mistake of his own, it didn’t disappoint me. Instead, it encouraged me. It gave me hope. It taught me that men, who never stop being men, can maintain their spiritual identity even in the face of imperfection. And it provided an early understanding of the need for grace.

Country music dominated my youth. The stereo in the room just off the kitchen played country-and-western and gospel music. Every trip to town from our rural home included songs from the country radio station in Tyler, Texas, forty miles away. Every spring afternoon, the time I spent in the batting cage next to the high school baseball field was punctuated by music that blared through the rolled-down windows of a teammate’s pickup truck. Singers such as Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty, Willie Nelson, and dozens of others permeated my very being and are still ingrained in me decades later.

One of the top performers in those days was a crooner who played piano with flair and sang about flowers and honky-tonks. Even today, the lyrics to each of Mickey Gilley’s seventeen number one country hits come as naturally to me as if I learned them yesterday. When I hear him sing “Put Your Dreams Away” and “True Love Ways” and “You Don’t Know Me,” the songs trigger memories that can seem more vivid than anything happening in present time. This is the power of music—that a familiar note or word can instantaneously, magically return us to half-forgotten places, people, and times.

On August 10, 1991, I was a college student in Austin, Texas. That evening, a friend and I headed down to the Aqua Fest music event, just south of downtown. As a devotee of good piano playing, I was already a fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, who was slated to be the main act. The Four Tops opened the show and sang well-known numbers for nearly an hour. As the sun went down, the wind picked up, bringing with it another Texas thunderstorm. Over the fringes of the Texas Hill Country, lightning flickered across the cool night sky. Between the unpredictable weather and the unpredictable nature of the evening’s headliner, the continuation of the show was in doubt.

Yet an hour later, Jerry Lee Lewis strode purposefully to the front of the stage. A thin man, then fifty-five years old, he stood looking at the crowd. Then he bowed slightly and made his way to the piano stool behind him. His face looked stern, his eyes piercing as they gazed ahead, somewhere into the middle distance.

The next hour thrilled those who had weathered the elements and the delay to witness the show. This man, who’d become an afterthought in rock ’n’ roll history to many, put on an amazing, hypnotizing performance. As occasional lightning flashed in the distance, he pounded both hands on the piano keys and his music became a force, a driving rhythm, oddly similar to the rocking church services I had known as a child.

He laughed with the audience occasionally, growled at them regularly, and chastised his band members when they lost the beat. In a line of a song addressed directly to his evangelist cousin Jimmy Swaggart, he told him to leave him alone while he “got his kicks.”

He mixed rock ’n’ roll, country, and blues. He rearranged and made up lyrics; he often changed keys.

His music and lyrics took him to another place, somewhere far away. It seemed to me that he was alone with his genius in the midst of hundreds of screaming fans.

He poured everything he had into this performance, until he was exhausted and drenched in sweat. Then he dragged himself off the stool and, after another short bow, exited stage left.

That night, I knew I had witnessed one of the greatest rock ’n’ roll performers of all time. I have seen him countless times since, but the power of that first performance has never faded.

The music of Jerry Lee Lewis mesmerized me, as did the music of his first cousins Jimmy Swaggart and Mickey Gilley. As time went by, I became equally captivated by the human story within their music and behind it.

These three, less than a year apart in age, grew up together in the same small town where they were shaped by the music and white-hot theology of the Pentecostal church. The intensity of their music derived from the continuing struggle between themselves and something greater than themselves, between the material and the spiritual, and—in the largest sense—between heaven and earth. Each of these men has experienced great heights and excruciating lows. Yet, through it all, they survive, still playing, still performing, and still seeking to reconcile their internal contradictions.

– 1 –

ANTICIPATION

– JERRY –

On a crisp Saturday evening in the Deep South, a black limousine rolls up to the VIP entrance behind a casino hotel. A man and woman step out of the car, checking their watches as event personnel rush to greet them. A moment later, an aging man emerges with difficulty from the backseat, helped to his feet by his two-person entourage. Jerry Lee Lewis has been here many times, in many seasons of his life. Tonight, he’s returned to wrest magic from a weary body and slowed yet still nimble fingers.

Inside the casino, a crowd forms in front of the doors leading to the performance hall, their chatter scarcely heard over the constant beckoning of blackjack dealers, the jingle of slot machines, and the shouts of rowdy patrons gathered around a craps table in the vast casino behind them. When the auditorium opens at 8 p.m., an hour before the scheduled performance, these early arrivers—the vanguard of his eclectic audience—flock to their seats.

There’s the white-collar professional who rolls in with his twenty-years-younger trophy wife; there’s the blue-collar roustabout who spent all week busting his ass and is looking to blow off some steam with his buddies.

“First time I saw him play was back in the early sixties in Birmingham,” recalls a middle-aged man whose belly bulges beneath his “Rock ’n’ Roll Lives” T-shirt. “I’ve seen him about twenty times. Man, he can tear that piano up. I’ve never seen nothin’ like it.”

Another man comments, “We saw him at the Panther Club over in Fort Worth. He screamed at the guy runnin’ the sound and stomped off the stage ten minutes into the show and we all were just standing there lookin’ at each other and wonderin’, ‘What the hell?’”

“He was in Shreveport the year before my husband, Clyde, got sick,” says a blue-haired lady. “We drove up to see him. He only played about thirty minutes that night. He didn’t appear to be in very good condition.”

Most of the young fans attending tonight have never seen Lewis perform. But they’ve heard his records and know that his music remains as fresh as it was more than half a century ago, when his enduring hits were created.

Many older patrons were introduced to him during his second incarnation when, as a rock ’n’ roller shunned by the musical genre he helped birth, he found a haven in country music. These folks don’t frequent music venues anymore, and they don’t understand the music young people listen to nowadays. Even so, they understand the genius of Jerry Lee Lewis.

– JIMMY –

On a bright Sunday morning, a steady flow of cars cruise along Bluebonnet Road in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Family Worship Center, the imposing church structure nestled next to this busy thoroughfare, no longer stands out the way it did twenty years ago, when it was one of only a handful of buildings on this long stretch of road. Now the church is nestled between the enormous Mall of Louisiana and a conglomeration of business and retail establishments.

Around 9 a.m., a full hour ahead of the start of the morning service, the church begins to fill with a constant stream of worshippers. Three-fourths are white, the other fourth are black; all appear to interact freely with one another. Walking through the giant glass doors, they enter a stunning facility capable of accommodating 7,500 people. Inside, they are enveloped by the sense of warmth created by the rich, dark-red interior, the open architecture, and the smiling faces of the greeters.

Around the corner from the foyer, the church bookstore is open for business. One wall is dedicated to music CDs, both recent recordings such as “Heaven’s Sounding Sweeter All the Time” and gospel classics dating back to the 1960s. There are DVDs of church sermons given in the last several years and of classic crusades from the ministry’s glory years in the 1980s, when people in the tens of thousands, in places as disparate as Capetown, South Africa, and Managua, Nicaragua, crowded into vast stadiums to hear messages of hope and deliverance.

Inside the main auditorium at Family Worship Center, women share photographs of their granddaughters’ ballet recitals, or discuss summertime plans to visit relatives in Jackson or to camp in the Ozarks. The men discuss off-season activities of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, the impact on their families of current activity on Capitol Hill, and the prospects of the upcoming football campaign of the Louisiana State University Tigers.

This crowd has come to see a man who evokes memories of the little church congregation where they first learned about Jesus and “Do unto others,” where they sang in the choir and, following the benediction, went off to Grandma’s for Sunday’s fried-chicken lunch. Still, the primary memory compelling them is that of the hellfire-and-brimstone country preachers who sounded a whole lot like Jimmy Swaggart, the man who will preach here today and the person they’ve listened to over the years, through his epic ups and downs.

– MICKEY –

On Sunday evening, as the sun begins to slide over the hills west of town, traffic inches along Highway 76, the main drag through Branson, Missouri. Over the last twenty years, this sleepy Ozarks town has become a mecca of theaters, waterslides, miniature golf courses, and other amusements that serve the throngs who come here to escape their daily lives. Today, many of these travelers saunter into the theater that bears the name of Mickey Gilley, the country-music performer they came to hear and see.

In the theater lobby, a store selling music CDs and DVDs prominently displays Mickey’s friendly, smiling face. A raft of glossy 8-by-10s include images of him from earlier decades, showing the star sporting giant rings, open collars, and his signature “MG” diamond necklace.

This is a gathering primarily of people fifty and older. Mickey’s music has long been part of the backdrop of their lives. He played on the stereo as a family played spades at the kitchen table, as a mother perched on the edge of the bathtub applying alcohol and a Band-Aid to a son’s scratches, or as a father stayed up late making sure that questionable young man from across town got his daughter home by curfew.

Now, friendly debate occurs over which is the best of Mickey’s thirty-nine top ten country hits, while others remember visiting his storied club in Pasadena, Texas—long closed, but still retaining its distinction of being the world’s largest honky-tonk. “Do you remember when we went with Bill and Linda to see him perform?” a pretty, older woman in a flowered dress asks her balding husband. “He was great that night, but then Linda got upset with Bill for getting on that mechanical bull and making a fool of himself.”

As Mickey’s voice is piped in through the lobby speakers, many softly sing along to “You Don’t Know Me,” one of his number one country hits from the early 1980s. It’s a song that evokes tender memories of first kisses, and of slow dancing at the senior prom. They smile as they sing it. They know every note by heart.

– 2 –

SHOWTIME

– MICKEY –

In the theater, while the audience awaits the main attraction, a video provides a biographical sketch of Mickey’s life. Applause rings out at the sight of the face, names, and events from his early years, hard years, barely-getting-by years, and, finally, the years on top. Behind the curtain, band members shuffle back and forth, tuning their instruments while backup singers run through a few last-minute changes to the Urban Cowboy medley. Seated in his dressing room, Mickey explains to a cast member the precise intonation he wants him to use when delivering a particular line of dialogue. Though his manner is easygoing and friendly, he knows exactly what he wants and is accustomed to getting it, albeit with honey rather than vinegar.

Just before show time, Gary Myers, the master of ceremonies and Mickey’s longtime guitarist, steps onto the stage to welcome the audience. Like everyone associated with this theater, he is friendly, warm, and engaging. He congratulates the five couples in the audience who are celebrating wedding anniversaries, ranging in duration from two years to fifty-seven. As he does before each show, Myers pays tribute to the United States military veterans in the hall.

The lights dim as the curtain slowly opens. The band breaks into a hard-charging rhythm as Mickey walks onto the stage. He wears black jeans, black boots, a black-and-silver striped shirt and two huge diamond rings—one on each hand. The singer moves gingerly, a lingering reminder of the life-threatening accident that left him paralyzed for months and from which he has worked agonizingly to recover. He’s determined to walk upright and without assistance, and he does, though visible effort is required. That feat accomplished, one of his band members helps him to his seat and the performance begins.

He breaks into “Number One Rock and Roll C&W Boogie Blues Man,” the unofficial theme of the man, the show, and his entourage. While never a chart-topper, the song title, thumping beat, and playful lyrics suggest the depth and diversity of his talent.

Then he sings his first number one country hit, “Room Full of Roses,” a slow, moving ballad. He’s in perfect sync with his musicians and supporting cast and their easy, relaxed mood is contagious. He welcomes the audience, openly appreciative of the role they’ve played in his success. As he sings, his eyes scan the faces before him, and he gives each audience member the sense that he’s a friend, performing only for him or her.

It took Mickey years to learn that the only way that he could succeed was to be himself. Sometimes, after a show, he’ll think back to when the best he could do was come across as a lesser clone of his fabled rock ’n’ roll cousin Jerry Lee Lewis—which just about drove him nuts.

Now, Mickey is in his element. As he banters with Joey Riley, steel guitar and fiddle player in the band, the audience feels as if they’re sitting around the dinner table with an elderly uncle and a zany cousin.

“You’ve done so much in your career,” Riley says.

“I’ve been busy,” allows the headliner.

“He’s had sixteen-and-a-half number one records, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait. What are you talking about?”

“Yeah. That’s how many you’ve had.”

“Joey, I think the magic number is seventeen.”

“Naw. One of ’em was a duet and you only sang half a song, so you only get half credit.”

Neither of his cousins, Lewis or Swaggart, nor most other big-name stars, would allow themselves to be on the receiving end of jokes, or to appear so human in front of an audience. Mickey’s humility gives his fans the feeling that he’s one of them, an everyday person with everyday triumphs and struggles. It’s one of the things about him that they love most.

As he begins to sing Kris Kristofferson’s “Why Me,” the powerful religious influences of his childhood seep into the music, reflecting experiences in the Pentecostal church that he and his cousins shared. Though each has traveled a varied, sometimes difficult path, their faith in God and their bond with traditional gospel music remains strong. Despite Mickey’s numerous country hits, given the audience’s connection to his religious upbringing and roots, it is his gospel music that provokes the greatest response in this theater.

He smoothly progresses through more of his signature songs, building toward the closing medley of hits from the Urban Cowboy movie soundtrack. Throughout the show, fans approach the stage to take pictures or shake his hand, and he makes eye contact with each person. After so many years spent in the shadows of his two cousins, particularly Jerry, he has found his unique way to shine. His music and its connection to his listeners create the warmth that everyone here hoped to find.

Closing the show with the Ben E. King classic, “Stand By Me,” Mickey himself stands on weak legs, arm in arm with his backup singers, displaying the determination and resilience that are his hallmark.

He has had his share, and then some, of bruising adversity and disappointment. Yet, like his cousins, he has battled back and weathered it all.

– JIMMY –

The church music team of singers and musicians prepare for the morning service. Six singers fan across the stage while guitarists and saxophonists take their places behind them. A piano and organ are positioned side by side on the left side of the stage. The piano player guides the timing, but only one man determines how the music should sound. Jimmy Swaggart expects each song to be performed a certain way and his musicians prepare accordingly. He has softened with time but retains his inborn sense of how to stir and inspire. When it comes to what he wants to present to his audience, he is as unbending as ever.

Exactly five minutes before the 10 a.m. service begins, Jimmy emerges through a door at the rear of the stage. Like his two famous cousins, he is in his midseventies. His hair has grayed and thinned and his face is less taut than it used to be, but he remains an imposing, charismatic presence. He looks more at ease than he did in decades past, when the responsibilities of preaching crusades and overseeing a $150-million-per-year ministry often brought him to exhaustion.

Now, he strides to the piano, removes his dark-blue pinstriped jacket, and sits down.

The song he plays is an upbeat, fervent version of the classic hymn “I’ll Fly Away.” As his hands move across the keys, the distinct sound he produces owes much to the fact that he learned to play sitting alongside Jerry, his rock ’n’ roll cousin.

As the church service begins, everyone stands, in the audience and on the stage, as one of the singers leads the congregation in song. Hands clap, toes tap, and arms sway as they raise a collective, joyful noise to the top of the building in this traditional, Pentecostal worship service. Circling behind the singers and musicians onstage, Jimmy makes his way to the front row of “amen corner,” where the ministers, special guests, and authorized employees are seated. He plants himself in his regular spot: the second chair from the left. He stands less than he used to, but he is always involved, microphone in hand, and his deep, booming voice carries and captures attention no matter what is happening around him.

“Hallelujah!” he exclaims. “Praise God. Tell Him you love Him. Because He first loved you.”

Minutes after the service starts, a sharply dressed woman enters from the back of the stage. She gracefully takes a seat to Jimmy’s immediate right. Frances Swaggart, two years younger than her husband, is reserved and stoic. She is always observing, and her purposeful movements and expressions suggest a resilient, controlled woman.

A gifted young pianist who performs with Jimmy’s musicians and singers plays a soulful, bluesy solo that segues into his passionate rendition of “I Know My Lord’s Gonna Lead Me Out.” As the song ends, Jimmy walks slowly to the podium, keeping time with the music. Though the lyrics yield different messages, the music of Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart are strikingly similar.

Jimmy points to the black organist, who breaks into a rolling instrumental solo as he bounces on his stool and his hands dash feverishly across the keys. Watching him, Jimmy reflects back to an earlier, simpler time when this vibrant young man might have been one of the musicians in his hometown who introduced him to a rhythm and a beat like nothing he’d ever heard.

All the musicians are playing now as Jimmy, eyes closed, keeps the music’s beat with rhythmic moves of his right hand, which is extended above his bowed head. When the song ends, he turns to the congregation. “I don’t know how you all feel today,” he says in a rich booming baritone, “but that kind of music should make you happy! Someone should give the Lord thanks!”

After a few more songs that have the audience rocking, Swaggart gravitates back to the piano. “This song,” he says, before taking a long pause, “was one I remember playing for my mother when I was just a boy. Let it bless you as I sing it today.”

He plays the old hymn “I’ve Had a Vision of Jesus.” He delivers the verses slowly, almost whispering. His piano solo is riveting; his left hand is deliberate and precise as his right hand performs slow, melodious runs up and down the keys. People watch adoringly, some swaying to the beat while others gaze into the near distance. For many, this music will be the highlight of the morning, taking them to a deeper place spiritually, bringing them closer to God than any sermon ever could.

For Jimmy, who never forgets that he reemerged from universal scorn and personal shame, the congregation that gathers each Sunday to hear him play and preach is a sign of grace.

– JERRY –

As show time nears, the excitement builds in the auditorium and the crowd balloons to more than a thousand. The bandleader, Kenny Lovelace, walks onstage. He has been with Jerry nearly fifty years, and once enjoyed a stint as his brother-in-law. Now, he carefully tests each speaker, well aware that Jerry has been known to explode onstage if the sound isn’t perfect.

At precisely 9:13 p.m., the band members take their positions. They play four songs and, as their final number winds to a close, Jerry Lee Lewis makes his way onto the stage. The audience roars. He walks carefully, gingerly, with hesitancy. Slightly stooped and shuffling, he proffers a slight nod to the crowd as he is introduced, though they know—and he knows—that no introduction is necessary.

The wild man of rock ’n’ roll is older and slower, and nearly tamed. Still, as his fingers hit the piano keys, a transformation takes place. He’s vibrant, focused, and intense as he pounds out “Down the Line,” a number from his early days. The lyrics are pronounced less clearly, yet the voice is arresting and rich. His hands no longer fly six inches off the keys when he strikes a note; his motion is limited and concise, but his playing is still masterful and the overall effect is intoxicating.

His playlist is fairly standard now. A few dozen song titles, handwritten on a sheet of paper, are positioned on the piano. Based on his moods and whims, he’ll play some, skip others, and occasionally add a tune he learned as a kid listening to the radio with his daddy, or one that he played in some mean-as-hell nightclub in Natchez, Mississippi, when he was young and certain that he was the greatest ever. Now, he’s three-quarters-of-a-century old, and just as certain.

As he plays, it’s as if his fingers are wiping away all the questionable events in his life—the bizarre episodes, the drunken nights, the fights that didn’t need to be started. For the next hour, he will inhabit the one sector of his life in which everything makes sense.

He breaks into “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-dee-o-dee,” one of the first songs he ever played for an audience. Then, as now, he plays it with a rockin’ beat. As the number comes to a close, he says, “Drinkin’ wine. Yeah. I never was much of a wine drinker.” The mumbled words, and his rueful tone, project a mixture of humor and regret. “I preferred hard liquor myself,” he continues. “I was a woolly man. But I don’t drink alcohol anymore. My body can’t handle it.”

The crowd hangs on every syllable, straining to hear this sudden, uncharacteristic, and public confession.

As if snapping out of a reverie, Jerry turns back to his piano. He scorches upbeat rockers, caresses slow country ballads, and moans the blues, in the process resurrecting musical ghosts etched deep within his memory and psyche. For a moment he appears to think back to those days in the 1940s when he was honing his musical genius. It seems so long ago.

“Time waits for no man,” he murmurs. The thought propels him into his next song, “No Headstone on My Grave.”

At one point, the band loses the beat. Jerry jerks his head up and glares at them. As a younger man, his demand for precision led him to outright belligerence toward any band member who did not perform to his standards. Now the fire in his eyes blazes as hotly and as fiercely as ever, but quickly fades to a barely glowing ember. Age and sobriety have mellowed him, not always in ways he might wish. No longer can he sustain his intensity throughout a performance; these days he teeters between boredom and exhaustion, superseded at frequent intervals by sparks of passion. As he throws himself into Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven,” he is fully engaged, reveling in his ability to summon his magic and transport an audience.

When he fires into “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” the crowd erupts again. He has played this song tens of thousands of times, but he still infuses it with a vibrating pulse, still gets a kick out of seeing women get up and move to the beat when he exhorts them to “wiggle it around just a little bit.” Those wiggling women range in age from twenty to seventy and are a living, breathing testament to the power Jerry Lee Lewis has exacted over thousands of audiences and millions of listeners. When he came on the scene this power was viewed by many as dangerous and threatening; now that he’s an old man it seems engaging and harmless.

As he concludes with “Great Balls of Fire,” his hands race over the keys and the audience goes wild. Then the music abruptly ends, he nods to the crowd, and rises slowly from his seat. With that, the magician disappears; the illusion of youth extinguished. Having given all that he could for as long as he could, he’s weary and spent.

Yet he keeps going, and going strong, even now, when all the men he started out with—Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash—are long gone.

There’s one thing Jerry knows for sure: none of those guys would have bet a plugged nickel that he’d be the one to outlive them all.

– 3 –

FAMILY TIES

Jerry, Jimmy, and Mickey, cousins united by ties originating in the Lewis clan, were born at a time and place where family trees were apt to resemble tangled vines. The Lewises—Elmo, Ada, and Irene—were three of the eleven children born to Leroy and Arilla Lewis, cousins who married in the 1880s. They lived in an area near Mangham, Louisiana, known as Snake Ridge, a stretch of dusty, unfertile terrain so small that it cannot be found on any map. There they endured a hardscrabble existence, barely surviving on the scant harvests the land would provide. In their rough, unpredictable world, it was music that stoked their spirits and soothed their souls. When they weren’t battling to eke out a living, they were playing banjos and fiddles and guitars, and singing hymns and country songs.

Music helped keep them going. It was a balm applied to the scrapes and bruises of their lives. But with the music came whiskey, and with the whiskey came rage, and with the rage came the chaos and violence in which the Lewises lived and rarely flourished.

Elmo and his two sisters would find their life’s partners among the hopeful, hard-pressed offspring of three families: the Herrons, Swaggarts, and Gilleys. During the Great Depression, as prospects in Snake Ridge shrank to nothing, they would move some fifty miles south to Ferriday, a town in Concordia Parish, which borders the Mississippi River in eastern Louisiana.

Ferriday is a hundred miles north of Louisiana’s state capital, Baton Rouge. Heavily influenced by Napoleon’s Civil Code, the state takes pride in its tenacity and autonomy, stubbornly rejecting counties, county commissioners, and common law, and governing its municipalities with a unique brand of parishes, civil law, and police jurors. Through the years the land has drawn the desperate like a magnet, luring them with the promise inherent in plentiful wildlife and fertile soil, and obscuring the inescapable fact that the place offers more trials and hardships than abundance.

As a result of these conditions, Ferriday was known for hardened men and disappointed women, and as a borough for the downtrodden poor consigned to battle the relentless forces conspiring to keep them that way. Ferriday was where God-fearing people prayed for a better life without expecting to find one; where there was punishing labor or no work at all; where plowed fields veered between parched and flooded, and brutal summer heat was interspersed with sudden, violent squalls. It was where men found refuge in liquor and fast women, if only momentarily.

Before it was a town, Ferriday was a cotton plantation gifted to Helena Smith and William Ferriday on the occasion of their marriage in 1827. It was named the Helena Plantation, and life there was destined to be hard. William and Helena would lose nine of their fourteen children in the epidemic-prone lowlands. Still, one of their sons, J. C., would become a local leader and the Helena Plantation would remain in the Ferriday family until J. C. died in 1894.

By 1903, the land was laid out in a grid design of parallel and perpendicular streets. The numbered streets ran north to south, while east-to-west roads were named primarily for Southern states. In 1906, when the new town was christened, it seemed natural to name it for one of its most revered citizens, the Honorable J. C. Ferriday.

Like many a Southern town, Ferriday owed its growth to the railroads: the Texas and Pacific, the Iron Mountain, and the Louisiana and Arkansas all converged in and ran through it. The rhythmic sounds of huge trains passing by formed the pulse of the community, and the cavalcade of railway cars, moving swiftly and purposefully through the days and nights, instilled in Ferriday’s citizens a constant reminder that, somewhere far away, a better life existed.

Because of the railroads, Ferriday evolved into a cultural melting pot dominated by blue-collar, hard-living roustabouts for whom the past was something to forget and the future was an unruly kaleidoscope of half-formed dreams. These were people looking to survive by any means necessary, ethical or not, and they imbued Ferriday with a gritty edge and a distinct sense of danger. As back-country fundamentalist conviction vied with the free-and-easy morality of those inhabiting the Mississippi’s southernmost shores, Ferriday would earn its reputation as “the alcohol town” comprising saloons, nightclubs, and brothels frequented by bad guys and worse guys.

In the twenties, when Huey Long became Louisiana’s governor, slot machines suddenly cropped up all over town. These one-armed bandits could be found in grocery stores, gas stations, and restaurants. They would remain there for years, reinforcing the false and beguiling promise that prosperity could be attained through nothing more strenuous than luck.

By the late 1920s, nearly two-thirds of the town was black, a population who brought to Ferriday savory cuisine, demonstrative religious worship, and most significantly, their music. Racial groups that did not otherwise mingle would harmonize together, discovering a wordless commonality through melody and rhythm. As the region diversified, so did the music. Having begun with African American influences that evolved from the soulful resonance of slave songs, it moved on to incorporate the expressive, improvisational sounds of Delta blues and became inextricably woven into the town’s social and cultural fabric.

This, for better and worse, was Ferriday, the place where Elmo, Ada, and Irene Lewis and their respective spouses would migrate to seek a better life.

Elmo Lewis, born in 1902, was the seventh of Leroy and Arilla’s children, and the hardest working. Tall and lanky, he was a quiet man until he started sipping moonshine. His low tolerance for alcohol, typical of the Lewises, would land him on the wrong side of the law from time to time. Luck never did come his way and he spent his life toiling as a carpenter and farming meager harvests. He was a loving man who could find something good to say about anyone, but he was not a man to be crossed. “He had a dark side,” his daughter Frankie Jean recalled. “He would not take no for an answer. And he could have an uncontrollable temper.”

Elmo also had an abundance of the Lewises’ talent for music. He played guitar and sang and loved listening to music, especially the songs of Jimmie Rodgers, the “Singing Brakeman.” Whenever he could, he’d play Rodgers’s songs on his Victor Talking Machine and sing along to numbers like “Blue Yodel No. 9.”

Elmo married one of the pretty Herron sisters, Mamie, who caught his eye the moment he saw her. They soon started a family, giving the name Elmo Jr. to their firstborn son. Their second son, born nearly six years later, was named Jerry Lee. Mamie was ten years younger than Elmo and the fifth of seven children in the Herron family. Like the Lewises, the Herrons had always looked to music for entertainment and succor. Elmo loved to hear Mamie sing. She had the light, pure voice of an angel and a love of music equal to his. Music transported her; it bore into her soul and set her dreaming of a life that would offer less hardship and more enjoyment.

Elmo’s older sister Ada was fun-loving and affectionate. She married W. H. Swaggart, a sizable, solid-as-a-rock authoritarian who was not averse to bootlegging. He’d get caught every so often and Ada would march their two children in to visit him in the parish jail. In time, W. H. became Ferriday’s night marshal, a curious position given his own propensity for skirting the law, but one ideally suited to his stern and commanding demeanor.

In the early years of their marriage, the Swaggart family’s income was meager and required their oldest boy, Willie Leon—referred to by all as Son, and born in 1915—to quit school and go to work at an early age. Son longed for a better life and struggled to achieve it. He worked as a fur trapper and trader, pecan harvester, farmer, and part-time gas station employee. All his life, he dreamed of making money. He hated to spend it. A fire burned inside Son, and the hope of doing better was his only antidote to a constant gnawing for success in his gut.

Being a Lewis, Son was also a terrific musician, in high demand to play the fiddle at local dances. He married the youngest of the Herron sisters, Minnie Bell, born in 1917, a beauty with green eyes and wavy brown hair. Minnie Bell played guitar and sang in a clear contralto, which further endeared her to Son Swaggart. From an early age she’d had many suitors, but none more ardent than young Son, who desperately wanted to win her affection and rescue her from the hard life she’d known as a child.

They wed on February 13, 1934, two days before the birthday they shared, his nineteenth and her seventeenth. Their son Jimmy Lee would be born thirteen months later. Minnie Bell was as hardheaded and outspoken as her husband, and constant friction and disagreement came between them. Like her sister Mamie, Minnie Bell dreamt of a better life. Also like Mamie, she had no clear sense of what she was looking for or how to go about attaining it. Yet both had always known how to dream. Dreams were their refuge and, given the severity of their lives, refuge was necessary.

Along with the physical hardships, the Herron sisters had inner torment: Elmo and Son knew well that the women they’d taken for wives came from a dirt-poor family in which the darkness of severe mental illness held sway.

The girls’ father, John William Herron, was a sharecropper and a toughened, hard man. While a certain rigor was required for survival in such difficult times, the impact of Herron’s stern demeanor on his wife and children had been as bad as it was good. For one thing, he was incapable of understanding the delicate nature of his wife, Theresa, a lovely, fragile woman admired for her bone-white porcelain skin and long, beautiful red hair. In her youth, she had danced all night at square dances where he played the fiddle.

As she gave birth to their seven children and began to age, everything carefree about Theresa became subsumed by depression. The lack of medical understanding of mental illness, the negative stigma it carried, and the extensive shock treatments she underwent only worsened her condition. In her later years, Theresa became unhinged, throwing rocks at the local school bus as she cursed, ranted, and raved. Ultimately, it fell largely to three of her daughters and a daughter-in-law to provide the constant care she would require for the rest of her life. No one could say for certain how much of her madness was inherited by her offspring, but in later years, some of her descendants would give folks reason to think that their maternal grandmother’s debility had been passed on.

In any case, Jerry and Jimmy were double-cousins: their mothers were Herron sisters, and Jerry’s father and Jimmy’s grandma were Lewis brother and sister. They were, from birth, connected in ways that were deep, abiding, and inescapable.

Irene Lewis fell between the older Ada and younger Elmo in the Lewis sibling birth order. She was determined and tough—traits she’d need to survive her marriage to Arthur Gilley. The youngest of eleven children, Arthur was an infant when his father died at age forty-two. The Lewis family, though poor and in perpetual want, stepped in to help the Gilleys, and the two families drew close as they sought to make ends meet. Ultimately, three Gilley brothers—Arthur, Harvey, and George—would marry three Lewis sisters—Irene, Eva, and Carrie, respectively.

Like many men of the day, Arthur had a taste for womanizing. It was not long before Irene’s temper and Arthur’s eye for the ladies caused no shortage of trouble. Despite the difficulties in her marriage, Irene came from a line of people who didn’t quit on each other.

As a teenager, Irene had been all too aware of the constant difficulties her family had endured at the hands of her father, Leroy Lewis.

“Mama, why should you keep puttin’ up with this?” she asked Arilla, her mother, on many occasions. “We work all year, scrapin’ by, and Daddy spends most of our money on alcohol before he even gets home.”

Arilla Hampton Lewis had seen the disappointed looks on the faces of her children over the years as they witnessed the irresponsible actions of their father. But she had a warm smile on her face as she addressed her daughter’s question.

“Irene, darlin’, we’ve made it this far just fine. I expect we will make a way going forward. You know your daddy has a sweet side, a caring side. He’s made his fair share of mistakes, I know.”

Irene wasn’t worried so much about herself. Soon enough, she would be married and away from this. Her mama, to whom she was devoted, was there to stay. Irene hated to see her contend with the irresponsible behavior of her father. She loved her father, she supposed, but she was pretty sure she didn’t like him much.

“Mama, it’s just not right for Daddy to do that to you—and us. It’s just not right. Why don’t you get away while you can? You can live with us kids. We’ll take care of you.”

Arilla smiled again at her dark-haired daughter. She was soft-spoken, but now answered Irene with authority, to make sure her intentions were clearly stated—and fully understood. “No, Irene. I married your daddy—for better or worse. I’m going to stay with him.”

Arilla Hampton Lewis stayed with Leroy Milton Lewis. When he died nearly a quarter of a century later, she was still there by his side.

Like her mother, Irene remained in a difficult marriage. She and Arthur would have two sons, Aubrey and Ray, and a daughter, Edna. When Edna turned ten and the boys were in their teens, Irene was relieved that her children were maturing and past needing constant attention. Then she got pregnant again and, at the age of thirty-five, gave birth to a baby boy she named Mickey.

Mickey Leroy Gilley had much in common with his cousins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Lee Swaggart. All three were born into poverty and inherited a mixture of Lewis traits: musical talent, ingenuity, easy charm, stubbornness, and grit. These traits would propel them to beat the odds stacked implacably against them and become Ferriday’s most famous sons.

Praise for Unconquered

Contents

INTRODUCTION

– 1 –

ANTICIPATION

– JERRY –

– JIMMY –

– MICKEY –

– 2 –

SHOWTIME

– MICKEY –

– JIMMY –

– JERRY –

– 3 –

FAMILY TIES