A Letter to Jerry Lee Lewis

A Christmas Letter to Jerry Lee Lewis
God Knows Where

Dear Jerry Lee,

I received the Oxford American Southern Music Issue #10 (OA #63) for Christmas. Your picture's on the cover and they selected "Hold On I'm Coming" for your song on the two CD offering. I've listened to it about a hundred times in the last three days.

Way back on page 160 there's a quote from you: "My only regret is that I've never sat in the audience and watched a Jerry Lee Lewis show."

Well, Killer, let me tell you how it is! Back in the olden days in the late 1950's, Columbus Mississippi had the City Auditorium for gospel quartets and wrestling and the annual Pilgrimage Pageant.

One magic night you came to town and I was there!

This being almost 2009 and all, some of my memory has faded. I'm not sure if you were the opening act or the main act or the only act. One thing's for sure - you are the only act I remember.

I was seated toward the back of the Auditorium when you came out on stage. Between the whistling and hollering and jumping up and down, I thought you had on a kid's rain slicker. Your blond pompadour and shiny yellow suit dazzled me and I whistled and hollered and jumped even more. Then you started singing.

And did you sing!

At the end you were sitting on top of the upright piano and playing/stomping with your shoes. I always worried how the Blackwood Brothers Quartet would be able to perform, next time they were in town, if you tore up the piano. Then I read the article in OA about you pulling into another town for another gig with a piano in a little trailer behind your Cadillac convertible. So maybe you were kicking your own piano in Columbus Mississippi that night.

So I hate that life being what it is kept you from watching your own performance. It was life changing for me. I wish you could have been on the stage and sitting with me at the same time. Now, that would have been way cool for both of us.

You said it best, "just think what a dull world this would be without a Jerry Lee Lewis in it."

Thank you, Jerry Lee, for being in my world! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!