Jer­ry Lee Lewis: Trou­ble in Mind – first-look review

Jer­ry Lee Lewis, the first-gen­er­a­tion rock and roll star, is ​“not dead,” as both Thier­ry Fré­maux and Ethan Coen mar­velled at the intro­duc­tion of the latter’s doc­u­men­tary Jer­ry Lee Lewis: Trou­ble in Mind.

Indeed, there’s a sur­pris­ing amount of Jer­ry Lee at this year’s Cannes: at the very least, he’s part of the implic­it con­text of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, about his Sun Records label­mate and rival, and then Top Gun: Mav­er­ick has that call­back to the orig­i­nal, when Goose’s sun Roost­er pounds out ​‘Great Balls of Fire’ just like his dad, and an entire bar­room of mil­len­ni­al avi­a­tors, improb­a­bly know all the words. Or maybe not so improb­a­bly – as the doc­u­men­tary reminds you, it’s an all-time iron­clad banger.

Ethan Coen’s archival doc, his first film with­out broth­er Joel, picks the per­fect open­ing clip: Ed Sul­li­van, intro­duc­ing Lewis’s per­for­mance of his 1970 coun­try hit ​‘She Even Woke Me Up to Say Good­bye.’ Even in colour, Ed Sul­li­van invokes the Bea­t­les and the rock ​’n’ roll youthquake, and the per­for­mance nice­ly sum­maris­es the cross­cur­rents that fed Lewis’ art and set the stage for the rev­o­lu­tion: the repen­tant eye con­tact and deep bass voice of gospel, the twangy hill­bil­ly lament and hard-luck poet­ry of the lyrics; and then, still, the Killer’s famous man­ic per­for­mance style, which even in this more staid mode hear­kens back to Black boo­gie-woo­gie music – that per­cus­sive piano play­ing, with his hands sweep­ing hun­gri­ly along the keys or drawn up at the wrists, like a mar­i­onette on strings, before slam­ming back down.

Jer­ry Lee Lewis is a real Amer­i­can type: born to a farm­ing fam­i­ly in Fer­ri­day, Louisiana in 1935, drawn from an ear­ly age to the bar­rel­house blues club on the Black side of town, he taught him­self to play piano at the age of eight, even as he was raised in the Pen­te­costal church and assim­i­lat­ed its fire-and-brim­stone teach­ings. The noto­ri­ous tel­e­van­ge­list Jim­my Lee Swag­gart was one of his many, many cousins – more on one of whom which short­ly – and Jer­ry Lee in this film is seen to speak fre­quent­ly about his belief in sal­va­tion, and the guilt that accom­pa­nies his leg­endary appetites.

He believes in Heav­en and Hell and isn’t sure where he’ll end up; in an inter­view with Tom Sny­der, he says he doesn’t think Jesus would have sung his epochal horned-up rhythm and blues crossover ​‘Whole Lot­ta Shakin’ Going On’ – but then, we aren’t none of us Jesus.

From age 20 he rose rapid­ly to fame through Memphis’s Sun Records along­side Elvis and oth­ers, with hits like ​‘Breath­less’ and ​‘High School Con­fi­den­tial’ – in one of sev­er­al of Coen’s droll edits, a clip from this song segues straight into the abrupt end of Lewis’s pop career, brought about by the rev­e­la­tion of his mar­riage to the 13-year-old Myra, iden­ti­fied in one clip as Lewis’s ​“ex-wife and cousin.” (A teenaged Winona Ryder played Myra in Jim McBride’s hilar­i­ous 1989 biopic Great Balls of Fire! oppo­site a too-old but appro­pri­ate­ly toothy and cocky Den­nis Quaid.)

His career involves one of the first mod­ern can­cel­la­tions – and, paving a path fol­lowed by many oth­ers since, this was fol­lowed by an even­tu­al, semi-repen­tant come­back for a more niche audi­ence, as a coun­try hit­mak­er with a taste for gospel and whisky (no repen­tance with­out sin and all that) and even­tu­al­ly an Amer­i­can insti­tu­tion and leg­endary live act.

Coen’s doc­u­men­tary is all archival clips except for a brief snip­pet of a pre-pan­dem­ic 2020 gospel record­ing ses­sion with the octo­ge­nar­i­an Lewis; it gives the broad out­lines of both his biog­ra­phy and the his­to­ry of his music, both already wide­ly known. Most­ly, it makes the case for the cross-racial roots of rock and roll in the Jim Crow South, and for its erot­ic and dan­ger­ous excitement.

Clips include many vin­tage talk-show appear­ances and doc­u­men­tary inter­views over the years, with vin­tage hair­styles and cul­tur­al assump­tions, and a grat­i­fy­ing vol­ume of full per­for­mances which show­case his dev­il­ish ener­gy: kick­ing out the piano stool and play­ing stand­ing up, legs spas­ming and blonde fore­lock flop­ping every­where, talk­ing sweet raunch over hard piano vamps and then jump­ing up on top of his instru­ment like a tent revival­ist. The Killer is one of the ulti­mate Sat­ur­day Night and Sun­day Morn­ing acts; few have bet­ter embod­ied the wild­ness and grace of Amer­i­can music.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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