Jerry Lee Lewis

Jerry Lee Lewis recorded "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" at Sun Studios in Memphis on February 15, 1957, and in three minutes established himself as the most dangerous man in rock and roll. His instrument was the piano, and he played it with a physical violence that no one — with the possible exception of Little Richard — had ever brought to the instrument. Lewis' technique combined boogie-woogie left-hand patterns learned from Black musicians in his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana with a right-hand attack that hammered chords and glissandos at full force, sometimes using his fists, elbows, and feet on the keys. At Sun Studios, Sam Phillips recorded Lewis on the studio's Steinway Model D grand piano, positioning a single RCA 77-DX ribbon microphone above the soundboard to capture both the notes and the percussive violence of the hammers striking strings. The resulting recordings — "Whole Lotta Shakin'," "Great Balls of Fire" (1957), "Breathless" (1958) — had a rhythmic ferocity that rivaled Elvis and a showmanship that exceeded him. On tour and on television, Lewis preferred Baldwin grand pianos for their brighter, more aggressive tone projection — a Baldwin could cut through a screaming audience in ways the warmer-voiced Steinway could not. His live performances were famously destructive: Lewis kicked piano benches into the audience, played standing up, set pianos on fire (at a 1958 show in Sheffield, England), and once pushed a grand piano off a stage. On his later country recordings in the 1960s and 1970s — including the hit "What Made Milwaukee Famous" (1968) — Lewis tempered his attack slightly, playing a Yamaha C7 grand with more nuance while retaining the rhythmic drive that had made him famous. His influence on piano-driven rock — from Elton John to Billy Joel to Jerry Lee's direct heir, the young Keith Richards, who taught himself piano by playing along with Sun Records 45s — is total and permanent.