Great balls of fire! Lost Jerry Lee record surfaces
The Gospel of rock ’n’ roll history holds that famed Louisiana rockabilly pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis cut his first record demo in 1954 at Sun Studios in Memphis. But an upcoming episode the History Channel’s Cajun Pawn Stars is upsetting the conventional wisdom, revealing a recording Lewis made two years earlier at J&M Recording Studio in New Orleans — a recording that has evidently been authenticated by the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame’s executive director and one that also suggests The Killer’s earliest musical influence came from his exposure to the country and gospel music of his north Louisiana roots and the boogie woogie piano style of New Orleans more than the rockabilly he helped pioneer through his Memphis years. (Lewis is cousin to TV bible thumper Jimmy Swaggert and country musician Mickey Gilley.)
The recording was brought to Silver Dollar Pawn in Alexandria, site of the reality TV series, by Lewis’ longtime friend and brother-in-law, Cecil Harrison, who wanted $100,000 for it. In an episode that aired Sunday evening, the pawn shop’s owner, Jimmie DeRamus, held firm at $45,000 (the record was appraised on the show at $15,000 to $20,000), and the two men couldn’t reach an accord.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
Episcopal School of Acadiana’s Dr. Joshua Caffery, chair of the school’s English Department, is headed to Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress as the latest winner of the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
The Gospel of rock ’n’ roll history holds that famed Louisiana rockabilly pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis cut his first record demo in 1954 at Sun Studios in Memphis. But an upcoming episode the History Channel’s Cajun Pawn Stars is upsetting the conventional wisdom, revealing a recording Lewis made two years earlier at J&M Recording Studio in New Orleans — a recording that has evidently been authenticated by the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame’s executive director and one that also suggests The Killer’s earliest musical influence came from his exposure to the country and gospel music of his north Louisiana roots and the boogie woogie piano style of New Orleans more than the rockabilly he helped pioneer through his Memphis years. (Lewis is cousin to TV bible thumper Jimmy Swaggert and country musician Mickey Gilley.)
Subscribe to this comment's feed