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In memory.

Tina Turner, the dynamic rock and soul singer who rose from humble beginnings and overcame a notoriously abusive marriage to become one of the most popular female artists of all time, has died, her family announced in a statement. She was 83.

Turner died Wednesday at her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland.

“With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model,” her family said.

“With her music and her boundless passion for life, she enchanted millions of fans around the world and inspired the stars of tomorrow. Today we say goodbye to a dear friend who leaves us all her greatest work: her music. All our heartfelt compassion goes out to her family. Tina, we will miss you dearly,” a statement on her verified page read.

A riveting live performer, Turner had a string of R&B hits in the 1960s and early ’70s with her domineering and violent husband Ike Turner before she left him – fleeing their Dallas hotel room with 36 cents.

Her solo career floundered for years before she mounted a stunning comeback in 1984 with her multiplatinum album “Private Dancer” and its No. 1 hit, “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

Before long Turner was a global superstar, commanding MTV with her spiky wigs, short skirts and famously long legs strutting across concert stages in three-inch heels.

Her talent earned her acclaim as the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” while her resiliency made her a hero to battered women everywhere. When she sang of pain and heartache in her husky, full-throated voice, every word rang true.

Hear why Tina Turner said she left the US.

“For a long time I felt like I was stuck, with no way out of the unhealthy situation I was in,” she told Harvard Business Review in 2021. “But then I had a series of encounters with different people who encouraged me … And once I could see myself clearly, I began to change, opening the way to confidence and courage. It took a few years, but finally I was able to stand up for my life and start anew.”

‘He knew I had potential to be a star.

She was born Anna Mae Bullock in 1939 to poor sharecroppers near Nutbush, Tennessee, a rural community north of Memphis that she later made famous in her autobiographical song, “Nutbush City Limits.” She spent her early years living with her grandmother after her parents split.

“We weren’t in poverty. We had food on the table. We just didn’t have fancy things, like bicycles,” Turner said in a 2005 interview with Oprah Winfrey.

“We were church people, so on Easter, we got all done up. I was very innocent and didn’t know much else. I knew the radio—B.B. King, country and western,” Turner said. “That’s about it. I didn’t know anything about being a star until the white people allowed us to come down and watch their television once a week.”

Following the death of their grandmother in the 1950s, Turner and her sister Ruby moved to St. Louis, Missouri, to live with their mother.

It was in St. Louis that she began to visit some of the local clubs and met musician Ike Turner, whose band, Kings of Rhythm, were popular in the area. He recruited her at age 17 to join his band as a singer.

“Ike had to come to the house and ask Ma if it was OK for me to sing with him. He knew I had the potential to be a star. We were close, like brother and sister,” Turner told Winfrey. “On his off nights, we’d drive around town, and he would tell me about his life, his dreams. He told me that when he was young, people found him unattractive. That really hurt him. I felt bad for him. I thought, ‘I’ll never hurt you, Ike.’ I meant it. He was so nice to me then, but I did see the other side of him.”

She began performing as Tina Turner and, in 1960, they formed the Ike & Tina Turner R***e. Their relationship evolved and their son Ronnie was born that same year. They married in 1962 and raised four children, including two children from Ike’s previous relationships and Tina’s son, Craig, also from a previous relationship.

A brutal union
As Turner has stated in her autobiography and in interviews, the physical abuse began almost from the start.

Thin-skinned and mercurial, Ike Turner would fly into fits of rage at the slightest provocation, she said, adding that he would hit her with whatever was available – coat hangers, telephones, a wooden shoe stretcher, his fists.

Often, she said, he’d even beat her before they went onstage.

“He’d hit me in the ribs, and then always try to give me a black eye. He wanted his abuse to be seen. That was the shameful part,” Turner told Winfrey.

Tina sang lead on most of their songs with the help of female backup singers, while her husband remained in the background, usually on guitar. Their musical partnership yielded a string of R&B hits, including “A Fool In Love,” “Nutbush City Limits” and “Proud Mary,” their 1971 cover of a Creedence Clearwater Revival song, which reached No. 4 on the pop charts and won them a Grammy.

But offstage their marriage remained tumultuous, fueled in part by Ike Turner’s co***ne addiction.

“Another night we had a fight in the dressing room, and when I went onstage, my face was swollen,” she told Winfrey. “I think my nose was broken because blood was gushing into my mouth when I sang. Before, I’d been able to hide under makeup. But you can’t hide swelling.”

She stuck with Ike Turner for more than a decade, terrified of his temper and determined not to abandon him like others had.

But things came to a head in July 1976 when they flew to Dallas for a show. Turner wrote in her book that after a flight on the airplane, her husband began hitting her in a car on the way to their hotel. While he slept, she slipped out of their room, carrying only a Mobil credit card and 36 cents – “a quarter, a dime and a penny.”

She fled across a busy highway to a motel, where a sympathetic clerk saw her bloodied face and gave her a room. She then called a lawyer she knew, who arranged for a friend to pick her up and put her on an airplane back to Los Angeles.

“After my plane landed in California, my heart was in my ears. I was afraid Ike would be there because when I’d left once before, he tracked me down on a bus…” she told Oprah. “So when I got off that plane, I ran like mad. I said to myself, ‘If he’s here, I’m going to scream for the police. And I had one chant in my head: ‘I will die before I go back.’”

Her rise to international fame
Turner performs in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 1990.
Turner performs in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 1990.

By then a friend had introduced Turner to Buddhism and its practice of chanting, which she credited with giving her the strength to leave her husband. Raised Baptist, Turner embraced Buddhism whole-heartedly in middle age and said its teachings changed her life.

“I came to understand that any achievement stems from inner change,” she told Harvard Business Review. “The more I studied Buddhist principles, the deeper I dug within myself and cleaned up whatever attitudes or habits were standing in my way.”

She and Ike were formally divorced in 1978 after a long legal battle. She wrote in her book that he retained most of the earnings and assets they had earned as a couple, while she cared for their four sons. The divorce almost ruined her financially, and for the next few years Turner performed on TV specials and in Las Vegas as she struggled to rebuild her career.

Her comeback gained momentum after she hired Australian manager Roger Davies in 1979. Rod Stewart invited her to perform “Hot Legs” with him on “Saturday Night Live” two years later, and in 1983, her cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” became a hit in England.

Then came “Private Dancer,” which spawned three Top 10 hits, won her three Grammys and eventually sold more than 10 million copies. Although she didn’t like the song at first and had to be talked into recording it, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” made her, at 44, the oldest female artist to score a No. 1 hit.

Turner holds an award at the 1985 Grammys.
Turner holds an award at the 1985 Grammys.
CBS/Getty Images
In 1985, at the peak of her powers, she sang on the all-star charity single “We Are the World,” performed with Mick Jagger at the historic Live Aid concerts and co-starred in Mel Gibson’s post-apocalyptic film “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” scoring another hit with “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” a song from the movie.

The next year Turner chronicled her early career and abusive marriage in a best-selling memoir, “I, Tina,” which was adapted into a hit 1993 film, “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” starring Angela Bassett.

The hit albums, singles and sold-out concerts continued throughout the late ’80s and ‘90s, and Turner remained a popular live act well into the new millennium – especially in England.

Turner moved to Switzerland in the 1990s with German boyfriend Erwin Bach, an executive for her record company. He was 16 years younger. The pair married in 2013 after a 27-year romantic relationship and in 2022 bought a $76 million estate on Lake Zurich.

“I pay taxes here (in the US). My family is here,” she told CNN’s Larry King in 1997. “I left America because my (biggest) success was in another country and my boyfriend was in another country. Europe has been very supportive of my music.”

Turner and Erwin Bach attend the opening night of the "Tina" musical in London, in 2018.
Turner and Erwin Bach attend the opening night of the "Tina" musical in London, in 2018.
Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images
Ike and Tina Turner were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 and she was inducted as a solo artist in 2021. “Tina,” a musical based on her life story, opened on Broadway in 2018.

Turner is preceded in death by her two sons, Craig, who died in 2018, and Ronnie, in 2022.

“Some of the happiest moments in my life were the birth of my beautiful baby boys, Craig and Ronnie, and marrying my partner and soul mate, Erwin Bach,” she told NBC’s Today Show in 2021.

Professionally, she said, her happiest moments were performing live.

“One of my early career goals was to become the first Black woman to fill stadiums around the world,” she told NBC. “At the time, it seemed impossible. But I never gave up, and I’m so happy I made that dream come true.

Look at who is 60.

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In Memory of the passing of iconic Jerry Lee Lewis
(September 29, 1935 – October 28, 2022)

Jerry Lee Lewis was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Nicknamed "the Killer", he was described as "Rock and roll's first great wild man and one of the most influential pianists of the 20th century." A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made his first recordings in 1952 at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana and early recordings in 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. "Crazy Arms" sold 300,000 copies in the South, and his 1957 hit "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" shot Lewis to fame worldwide. He followed this with the major hits "Great Balls of Fire", "Breathless", and "High School Confidential". His rock and roll career faltered in the wake of his marriage to Myra Gale Brown, his 13-year-old cousin once removed.

His popularity quickly eroded following the scandal and with few exceptions such as a cover of Ray Charles "What'd I Say", he did not have much chart success in the early 1960s. His live performances at this time were increasingly wild and energetic. His 1964 live album Live at the Star Club, Hamburg is regarded by many music journalists and fans in general as one of the wildest and greatest live rock albums ever. In 1968, Lewis made a transition into country music and had hits with songs such as "Another Place, Another Time". This reignited his career, and throughout the late 1960s and 1970s he regularly topped the country-western charts; throughout his seven-decade career, Lewis had 30 songs reach the Top 10 on the Billboard Country and Western Chart. His No. 1 country hits included "To Make Love Sweeter for You", "There Must Be More to Love Than This", "Would You Take Another Chance on Me", and "Me and Bobby McGee".

Lewis's successes continued throughout the decades and he embraced his rock and roll past with songs such as a cover of The Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace" and Mack Vickery's "Rockin' My Life Away". In the 21st century, Lewis continued to tour around the world and released new albums. His 2006 album Last Man Standing was his best selling release, with over a million copies worldwide. This was followed by Mean Old Man in 2010, another of his best-selling albums.

Lewis had a dozen gold records in rock and country. He won four Grammy awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and two Grammy Hall of Fame Awards. Lewis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 and his pioneering contribution to the genre was recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. He was also a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2022. In 1989, his life was chronicled in the movie Great Balls of Fire, starring Dennis Quaid. In 2003, Rolling Stone listed his box set All Killer, No Filler: The Anthology at number 242 on their list of "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2004, they ranked him No. 24 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Lewis was the last surviving member of Sun Records' Million Dollar Quartet and the album Class of '55, which also included Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley.

Music critic Robert Christgau said of Lewis: "His drive, his timing, his offhand vocal power, his unmistakable boogie-plus piano, and his absolute confidence in the face of the void make Jerry Lee the quintessential rock and roller."

EARLY LIFE
Lewis was born to Elmo Kidd Lewis Sr. and Mary "Mamie" Herron Lewis in Ferriday, Louisiana. He grew up in an impoverished farming family in Eastern Louisiana. In his youth, he began playing the piano with two of his cousins, Mickey Gilley (later a popular country music singer) and Jimmy Swaggart (later a popular televangelist). His parents mortgaged their farm to buy him a piano. Lewis was influenced by a piano-playing older cousin, Carl McVoy (who later recorded with Bill Black's Combo), the radio, and the sounds from Haney's Big House, a black juke joint across the tracks. On November 19, 1949, Lewis made his first public performance of his career, playing with a country and western band at a car dealership in Ferriday. The hit of his set was a cover of R&B artist Sticks McGhee's "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee". On the live album By Request, More of the Greatest Live Show on Earth, Lewis is heard naming Moon Mullican as an artist who inspired him.

His mother enrolled him at the Southwest Bible Institute in Waxahachie, Texas, so that he could sing evangelical songs exclusively. When Lewis daringly played a boogie-woogie rendition of "My God Is Real" at a church assembly, it ended his association with the school the same night. Pearry Green, then president of the student body, related how during a talent show Lewis played some "worldly" music. The next morning, the dean of the school called Lewis and Green into his office to expel them. After that incident, he went home and started playing at clubs in and around Ferriday and Natchez, Mississippi, becoming part of the burgeoning new rock and roll sound and cutting his first demo recording in 1952 for Cosimo Matassa in New Orleans. Around 1955, he traveled to Nashville, where he played in clubs and attempted to build interest, but was turned down by the Grand Ole Opry, as he was already at the Louisiana Hayride country stage and radio show in Shreveport.

CAREER
J&M Studio
Lewis made his first recordings in 1952 at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana. He covered Lefty Frizzell's "Don't Stay Away (Till Love Grows Cold)" and his own instrumental composition "Jerry's Boogie" (AKA New Orleans Boogie).

Sun Records
Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee, where Lewis began his career and recorded many of his most famous singles
Sun Records artist Ray Harris singing the song "Greenback Dollar", with Lewis playing the piano
In November 1956, Lewis traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to audition for Sun Records. Label owner Sam Phillips was in Florida, but producer and engineer Jack Clement recorded Lewis's rendition of Ray Price's "Crazy Arms" and his own composition "End of the Road". In December 1956, Lewis began recording prolifically as a solo artist and as a session musician for other Sun artists, including Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. His distinctive piano playing can be heard on many tracks recorded at Sun in late 1956 and early 1957, including Carl Perkins's "Matchbox", "Your True Love", and "Put Your Cat Clothes On" and Billy Lee Riley's "Flyin' Saucers Rock'n'Roll".

On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on Phillips to pay a social visit while Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks with Lewis backing him on piano. Johnny Cash was also there watching Perkins. The four then started an impromptu jam session and Phillips left the tape running. These recordings, almost half of which were gospel songs, were released on CD as Million Dollar Quartet. Tracks also include Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" and "Paralyzed", Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man", and Pat Boone's "Don't Forbid Me".

Lewis's own singles (on which he was billed as "Jerry Lee Lewis And His Pumping Piano") advanced his career as a soloist during 1957, with hits such as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On", a Big Maybelle cover, and "Great Balls of Fire", his biggest hit, bringing him international fame and criticism of the songs, which prompted some radio stations to boycott them. In 2005, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" was selected for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. According to several first-hand sources, including Johnny Cash, Lewis, a devout Christian, was troubled by the sinful nature of his own material, which he believed was leading him and his audience to Hell. This aspect of Lewis's character was depicted in Waylon Payne's portrayal of Lewis in the 2005 film Walk the Line, based on Cash's autobiographies.

As part of his stage act, Lewis pounded the keys with his heel, kicked the piano bench aside and played standing, raking his hands up and down the keys, sat on the keyboard and stood on the piano. He told the Pop Chronicles that kicking over the bench originally happened by accident, but when it got a favorable response, he kept it in the act. His inaugural television appearance, in which he demonstrated some of these moves, was on The Steve Allen Show on July 28, 1957, where he played "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On".

His dynamic performance style can be seen in films such as High School Confidential (he sang the title song from the back of a flatbed truck), and Jamboree. He was called "rock & roll's first great wild man" and also "rock & roll's first great eclectic". Classical composer Michael Nyman has also cited Lewis's style as the progenitor of his own aesthetic.
Marriage controversy

SMASH RECORDS
Lewis's Sun recording contract ended in 1963, and he joined Smash Records, where he made several rock recordings that did not further his career. The team at Smash (a division of Mercury Records) came up with "I'm on Fire", a song that they felt would be perfect for Lewis and, as Colin Escott writes in the sleeve to the retrospective A Half Century of Hits, "Mercury held the presses, thinking they had found Lewis's comeback hit, and it might have happened if the Beatles hadn't arrived in America, changing radio playlists almost overnight. Mercury didn't really know what to do with Lewis after that." One of Smash's first decisions was to record a retread of his Sun hits, Golden Hits of Jerry Lee Lewis, which was inspired by the continuing enthusiasm European fans had shown for Lewis's firebrand rock and roll. In June 1963, Lewis returned to the UK for the first time since the scandal that nearly ended his career five years earlier, to headline a performance on the MV Royal Daffodil, for a cross-channel rock and roll cruise from Southend, Essex, to Boulogne, France. For this performance, he was backed by Ritchie Blackmore and the Outlaws. None of Lewis's early Smash albums, including The Return of Rock, Memphis Beat, and Soul My Way, were commercial successes.

Live at the Star Club, Hambur

One major success during these lost years was the concert album Live at the Star Club, Hamburg, recorded with the Nashville Teens in 1964, which is considered one of the greatest live albums ever.In Joe Bonomo's book Lost and Found, producer Siggi Loch stated that the recording setup was uncomplicated, with microphones placed as close to the instruments as possible and a stereo mic placed in the audience to capture the ambience. The results were sonically astonishing, with Bonomo observing, "Detractors complain of the album's crashing noisiness, the lack of subtlety with which Jerry Lee revisits the songs, the fact that the piano is mixed too loudly, but what is certain is that Siggi Loch on this spring evening captured something brutally honest about the Killer, about the primal and timeless centre of the very best rock & roll..." The album showcases Lewis's skills as a pianist and singer, honed by relentless touring. In a 5-out-of-5-stars review, Milo Miles wrote in Rolling Stone magazine that "Live at the Star Club, Hamburg is not an album, it's a crime scene: Jerry Lee Lewis slaughters his rivals in a thirteen-song set that feels like one long convulsion."

Country comeback

Lewis performing with Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash on The Johnny Cash Christmas Special in November 1977
Frustrated by Smash's inability to score a hit, Lewis was planning on leaving the label when promotions manager Eddie Kilroy called him and pitched the idea of cutting a pure country record in Nashville. With nothing to lose, Lewis agreed to record the Jerry Chesnut song "Another Place, Another Time", which was released as a single on March 9, 1968, and, to everyone's amazement, shot up the country charts. At the time of the release, Lewis had been playing Iago in a rock and roll adaptation of Othello called Catch My Soul in Los Angeles but was soon rushed back to Nashville to record another batch of songs with producer Jerry Kennedy. What followed was a string of hits that no one could have ever predicted, although country music always remained a major part of Lewis's repertoire. As Colin Escott observes in the sleeve to the 1995 compilation Killer Country, the conversion to country music in 1968 "looked at the time like a radical shift, but it was neither as abrupt nor as unexpected as it seemed. Jerry had always recorded country music, and his country breakthrough "Another Place, Another Time" had been preceded by countless country records starting with his first, 'Crazy Arms', in 1956." The last time Lewis had had a song on the country charts was with "Pen and Paper" in 1964, which had reached number 36, but "Another Place, Another Time" would go all the way to number 4 and remain on the charts for 17 weeks.

Between 1968 and 1977, Lewis had 17 Top 10 hit singles on the Billboard country chart, including four chart-toppers. Hits include "What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made A Loser Out of Me)", "To Make Love Sweeter For You", "She Still Comes Around (To Love What's Left of Me)", "Since I Met You Baby", "Once More With Feeling", "One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)", and "Sometimes A Memory Ain't Enough". The production on his early country albums, such as Another Place, Another Time and She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye, was sparse, quite different from the slick "Nashville sound" that was predominant on country radio at the time, and also expressed a full commitment by Lewis to a country audience. The songs still featured Lewis's inimitable piano flourishes, but critics were most taken aback by the rock and roll pioneer's effortlessly soulful vocals, which possessed an emotional resonance on par with the most respected country singers of the time, such as George Jones and Merle Haggard. In his book Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story, biographer Rick Bragg notes that the songs Lewis was recording "were of the kind they were starting to call 'hard country', not because it had a rock beat or crossed over into rock in a real way, but because it was more substantial than the cloying, overproduced mess out there on country radio".

In a remarkable turnaround, Lewis became the most bankable country star in the world. He was so huge in 1970 that his former Smash producer Shelby Singleton, who purchased Sun Records from Sam Phillips in July 1969, wasted no time in repackaging many of Lewis's old country recordings with such effectiveness that many fans assumed they were recent releases. One of his latter unreleased Sun recordings, "One Minute Past Eternity", was issued as a single and soared to number 2 on the country chart, following Lewis's recent Mercury hit "She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye". Singleton would milk these unreleased recordings for years, following The Golden Cream of the Country with A Taste of Country later in 1970.

Grand Ole Opry appearance

Lewis played the Grand Ole Opry for the first and only time on January 20, 1973. As Colin Escott writes in the liner notes to A Half Century of Hits, he had maintained an ambivalence to Music City ever since he was turned away as an aspiring musician before his glory days at Sun Records: "It was 18 years since he had left Nashville broke and disheartened...Lewis was never truly accepted in Nashville. He didn't move there and didn't schmooze there. He didn't fit in with the family values crowd. Lewis family values weren't necessarily worse, but they were different."

As recounted in a 2015 online Rolling Stone article by Beville Dunkerly, Lewis opened with his comeback single "Another Place, Another Time". Ignoring his allotted time constraints— and, thus, commercial breaks— Lewis played for 40 minutes (the average Opry performance is two songs, for about eight minutes of stage time maximum) and invited Del Wood— the one member of the Opry who had been kind to him when he had been there as a teenager— out on stage to sing with him. He also blasted through "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On", "Workin' Man Blues", "Good Golly, Miss Molly", and a host of other classics.

The Session and Southern Roots

Lewis returned to the pop charts with "Me and Bobby McGee" in 1971 and "Chantilly Lace" in 1972, and this turn of events, coupled with a revitalized public interest in vintage rock and roll, inspired Mercury to fly Lewis to London in 1973 to record with a cadre of British and Irish musicians, including Rory Gallagher, Kenney Jones, and Albert Lee. By all accounts the sessions were tense. The remake of Lewis's old Sun cut "Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee" was the album's hit single, reaching number 20 on the Billboard country chart and peaking at number 41 on the pop chart. The Session was his highest pop charting album since 1964's Golden Hits of Jerry Lee Lewis, hitting number 37. It did far better on the country albums chart, rising to number 4. Later that year, he went to Memphis and recorded Southern Roots: Back Home to Memphis, a soul-infused rock album produced by Huey Meaux. According to Rick Bragg's authorized 2014 biography, "the Killer" was in a foul mood when he showed up at Trans Maximus Studios in Memphis to record: "During these sessions, he insulted the producer, threatened to kill a photographer, and drank and medicated his way into but not out of a fog." During one exchange that can be heard on the 2013 reissue Southern Roots: The Original Sessions, Meaux asks Lewis, "Do you wanna try one?", meaning a take, to which Lewis replies, "If you got enough fu**in' sense to cut it." Lewis was still pumping out country albums, although the hits were beginning to dry up. His last big hit with Mercury was "Middle Age Crazy", which made it to number 4 in 1977.

Later career

Lewis performing in 2009
In 1979, Lewis switched to Elektra and produced the critically acclaimed Jerry Lee Lewis, although sales were disappointing. In 1986, Lewis was one of the inaugural inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Although looking frail after several hospitalizations due to stomach problems, Lewis was responsible for beginning an unplanned jam at the end of the evening, which was eventually incorporated into all future events. That year, he returned to Sun Studio in Memphis to team up with Orbison, Cash, and Perkins along with longtime admirers like John Fogerty to create the album Class of '55.

In 1989, a major motion picture based on his early life in rock and roll, Great Balls of Fire!, brought him back into the public eye, especially when he decided to re-record all his songs for the movie soundtrack. The film was based on the book by Lewis's ex-wife, Myra Gale Lewis, and starred Dennis Quaid as Lewis, Winona Ryder as Myra, and Alec Baldwin as Jimmy Swaggart. The movie focuses on Lewis's early career and his relationship with Myra and ends with the scandal of the late 1950s. A year later, in 1990, Lewis made minor news when a new song he recorded called "It Was the Whiskey Talkin' (Not Me)" was included in the soundtrack to the hit movie Dick Tracy. The song is also heard in the movie, playing on the radio. The public downfall of his cousin, television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart around the same time, resulted in more adverse publicity to a troubled family. Swaggart is also a piano player, as is another cousin, country music star Mickey Gilley. All three listened to the same music in their youth and frequented Haney's Big House, the Ferriday club that featured black blues acts. Lewis and Swaggart had a complex relationship over the years.

In 1998, Lewis toured Europe with Chuck Berry and Little Richard

On February 12, 2005, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by The Recording Academy.[11] On September 26, 2006, a new album titled Last Man Standing was released, featuring many of rock and roll's elite as guest stars. Receiving positive reviews, the album charted in four different Billboard charts, including a two-week stay at number one on the Indie charts. A DVD entitled Last Man Standing Live, featuring concert footage with many guest artists, was released in March 2007.

Lewis performing in 2006
In October 2008, as part of a successful European tour, Lewis appeared at two London shows: a special private show at the 100 Club on October 25 and at the London Forum on October 28 with Wanda Jackson and his sister, Linda Gail Lewis. In August 2009, in advance of his new album, a single entitled "Mean Old Man" was released for download. It was written by Kris Kristofferson. An EP featuring this song and four more was also released on November 11. On October 29, 2009, Lewis opened the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

In May 2013, Lewis opened a new club on Beale Street in Memphis.Lewis was still considered actively performing in concert, though he had to cancel all shows since his February 28, 2019, stroke, waiting for his doctors' go-ahead.

In 2017 Lewis had a personal presence at The Country Music Television Skyville Live show. It was a specially recorded performance featuring a whole array of artists paying tribute to the music of Lewis.

In March 2020, it was announced that Lewis, together with producer T-Bone Burnett, was recording a new album of gospel covers. It was the first time he entered a recording studio following his stroke.

On October 27, 2020, to celebrate Lewis's 85th birthday, a livestream aired on YouTube, Facebook and his official website. The livestream special, Whole Lotta Celebration' Goin' On, featured appearances and performances by Willie Nelson, Elton John, Mike Love, Priscilla Presley, Joe Walsh, and others. John Stamos served as the host.

Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind is the title of a documentary on Lewis released in 2022 and directed by Ethan Coen.[53] Earlier in 2022, a collaborative gospel album was released with Jerry Lee Lewis and his cousin Jimmy Swaggart, called The Boys from Ferriday.

Music legacy
Accolades

Lewis's "Brass Note" at the Beale Street Walk of Fame in Memphis

Jerry Lee Lewis Avenue in Ferriday, Louisiana
Along with Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison, Lewis received the first Grammy Award in the spoken-word category for the very rare album of interviews released with some early copies of the Class of '55 album in 1986. The original Sun cut of "Great Balls of Fire" was elected to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, and Lewis's Sun recording of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On" received this honor in 1999. Only recordings that are at least 25 years old and have left a lasting impression can receive this honor. On February 12, 2005, Lewis received the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award the day before the Recording Academy's main Grammy Awards ceremony, which he also attended.

In June 1989, Lewis was honored for his contribution to the recording industry with a star along Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On October 10, 2007, Lewis received the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's American Music Masters Award. His next album, Mean Old Man, was released in September 2010 and reached No. 30 on the Billboard 200 album chart.

On November 5, 2007, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, honored Lewis with six days of conferences, interviews, a DVD premiere and film clips, dedicated to him and entitled The Life And Music of Jerry Lee Lewis. On November 10, the week culminated with a tribute concert compered by Kris Kristofferson. Lewis was present to accept the American Music Masters Award and closed his own tribute show with a rendition of "Over the Rainbow". On February 10, 2008, he appeared with John Fogerty and Little Richard on the 50th Grammy Awards, performing "Great Balls of Fire" in a medley with "Good Golly Miss Molly". On June 4, 2008, Lewis was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame and appeared on A Capitol Fourth and performed the finale's final act with a medley of "Roll Over Beethoven", "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On" and "Great Balls of Fire".

In December 2019, Lewis was honored with a Mississippi Country Music Trail marker at his ranch in Nesbit, Mississippi to celebrate his contributions to country music.

In May 2022, Lewis was announced as a member-elect to the Country Music Hall of Fame, to be inducted in October 2022. "This year's inductees are trailblazers who each paved their own unique path within country music," Sarah Trahern, CMA Chief Executive Officer, said. "Jerry Lee, Keith (Whitley, and Joe (Galante) each found their musical callings early in life and displayed a strong-minded and fierce passion for music making. In very different ways, they all have left a lasting impact on the industry and generations of fans alike. I am thrilled to welcome this deserving class to the Country Music Hall of Fame." "I'm just overwhelmed that they asked me here today," Lewis, 86, said during an event earlier that week at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, adding that his career had taught him to "be a good person and treat people right."

Piano style

Lewis was an incendiary showman who often played with his fists, elbows, feet, and backside, sometimes climbing on top of the piano during gigs and even apocryphally setting it on fire. Like Chuck Berry's guitar playing, Lewis's piano style became synonymous with rock and roll, having influenced generations of piano players.

In a 2013 interview with Leah Harper, Elton John recalls that up until "Great Balls of Fire", "the piano playing that I had heard had been more sedate. My dad collected George Shearing records, but this was the first time I heard someone beat the s**t out of a piano. When I saw Little Richard at the Harrow Granada, he played it standing up, but Jerry Lee Lewis actually jumped on the piano! This was astonishing to me, that people could do that. Those records had such a huge effect on me, and they were just so great. I learned to play like that." Lewis was primarily known for his "boogie-woogie" style, which is characterized by a regular left-hand bass figure and dancing beat, but his command of the instrument and highly individualistic style set him apart. Appearing on Memphis Sounds with George Klein in 2011, Lewis credited his older piano-playing cousin Carl McVoy as being a crucial influence, stating, "He was a great piano player, a great singer, and a nice-looking man, carried himself real well. I miss Carl very much." Lewis also cited Moon Mullican as a source of inspiration. Although almost entirely self-taught, Lewis conceded to biographer Rich Bragg in 2014 that Paul Whitehead, a blind pianist from Meadville, Mississippi, was another key influence on him in his earliest days playing clubs.

Although Lewis's piano playing is commonly labeled boogie-woogie, gospel music was another major influence in the formation of his technique. In Joe Bonomo's 2009 book Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found, Memphis producer and musician Jim Dickinson calls Lewis's occasional penchant for interrupting the standard boogie woogie left-hand progression by omitting the seventh and repeating the fifth and sixth, creating a repetitive, driving, quasi-menacing momentum, "revolutionary, almost inexplicable. Maybe Ella Mae Morse, Moon Mullican had done it, but not in a way that became the propelling force of the song. Rock and roll piano up to that point had been defined by Rosco Gordon, Ike Turner, and to an extent, Ray Charles. None of them was doing that. Even Little Richard, as primitive as he plays, wasn't doing that shuffle... There was something in Jerry Lee that didn't want to play that seventh, and that's the church. Certainly in white spiritual music you avoid sevenths."

Stroke and death
On February 28, 2019, Lewis had a minor stroke in Memphis.[90] He fully recovered after several canceled appearances.

On October 28, 2022, he died at his home in Nesbit, Mississippi, following a bout of pneumonia, at the age of 87 on October 28, 2022.

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