Great Balls of Fire!

by Pa Rock

Number Two Son (Ah so, Mr. Chan!) has asked me to revisit the night that I saw Jerry Lee Lewis in concert. I will try to honor that request, but as I step into the land of country music and hillbilly rockers, the temptation will be mighty strong to ramble. Be forewarned, be very forewarned!

Jerry Lee Lewis, aka "The Killer," was on a program with Porter Waggoner and Dolly Parton at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, Missouri, sometime in the very early 1970s. I am certain that some lesser stars were there also, but those three were the headliners.

Lewis, a native of Ferriday, Louisiana, grew up banging on a piano and talking Jesus with his two equally ambitious cousins, Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart. He toured with the likes of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash in the 1950s. (If you haven't seen Walk the Line, do it!) He fell into public disfavor in the late 1950s when he travelled to England to perform, accompanied by his third wife, Myra. A reporter at the London Airport discovered that not only was Myra just 13-years-old, she and the 23-ear-old Lewis were first cousins (once removed). Gotta love those hillbillies!

See, I warned you that I would ramble!

Jerry Lee Lewis (and Cousin Mickey, too, for that matter) can do anything with a piano. That night he pounded out several songs, and then ended the show with his signature number, Great Balls of Fire. Our group was standing watching him get crazy at the piano - and he was standing also. The music was raging by the time he kicked the piano bench off of the stage and into the audience. And then he was pounding the keyboard with his butt, and then he was back to leaning into over the ivories and attacking them with both hands - never missing a note or a beat - and then...and then we all gasped in amazement as "the Killer" lunged into the final few bars of the song with both hands and a foot beating Great Balls of Fire out of a piano that was probably just as shocked as we were!

There was a television documentary on Jerry Lee Lewis a few years ago that strongly indicated that his nickname, "the Killer," might be appropriate due the strange deaths of a couple of his wives.

Dolly Parton, you ask? That Dolly Parton? Yes, there was a time many years ago, just after Dolly stumbled down out of the hills of Tennessee when she and Porter Waggoner were a singing duo. They were together several years and even had their own television show for awhile. Dolly finally broke her contract with him and headed out to Hollywood where she became the caricature that we all know and love today. Even though there was a lawsuit when she broke her contract, she and Porter eventually patched things up. Dolly's song, I Will Always Love You, (the one that made Whitney Houston a bazillion dollars) was written for Porter. When Porter Waggoner lay dying in Nashville last year, Dolly came to the hospital and sat at his bedside. (That was probably more than you wanted to know.)

Porter Waggoner, after he lost his Dolly, went on to be a regular host for thirty-minute segment at The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville where he pitched Martha White Cornbread, emceed, and sang a few songs. The last time I saw him was at the Opry on March 4, 2006. I am certain of the date because they announced at the show that it was the 10th anniversary of Minnie Pearl's death - and I looked that up on Wikipedia! He was a shrivelled little, old man who had to read his song lyrics from cheat sheets as he sang. I was at the Opry that night because the 14-year-old daughter of my good friend, Cheryl Belfiore, was performing for the first time with the Opry's regular group of square dancers. Melanie was fantastic! It was a good thing that Jerry Lee Lewis wasn't around!

What, me ramble?

My Evening with June Carter

Being a small town youth and new to college in the now infamous 1960's, I was generally able to find a party or some activity to keep me from the books on the weekends. It was in the deadest part of winter of my freshman year, probably January or February of 1967, that my friend Mike (another small town kid) and I couldn't come up with a plan for Saturday night, and, at the last minute, decided to each invest the amazing sum of $5.00 to see Johnny Cash at the Shrine Mosque. (Five dollars was a significant amount of money when you consider that a semester's tuition at our school, Southwest Missouri State College, now Missouri State University, was just ninety-five dollars at that time!)

It was dark, and snow and rain were competing for dominance as we slogged through a mile or more of slush to reach the reach the famous Springfield landmark where The Man in Black was to perform. We had gotten seated and just started to shake off the wet cold when a man walked out on stage and announced that Johnny's plane couldn't land in Springfield due to the snow. He stood there through the groaning of the audience, and then continued saying that anyone who wanted a refund could collect their money at the door, but anyone who stayed would not be disappointed. Mike didn't have to think it over. He jumped up and entreated me to join him in leaving. Maybe it was the thought of facing that rotten weather again so soon, or the fact that I would still have nothing to do on a Saturday night if I left, but the decision seemed simple to me. While Mike and three-quarters of the audience hit the doors, I moved up to a better seat and settled in for the show.

June Carter, one of the stars of Johnny's traveling show, took that stage in much that same manner as Grant had taken Richmond in the previous century, full-throttle and never giving any quarter. She sang, and danced, and joked and told stories, and played music. Others shared the stage that night including June's sister, Anita, their mother, Maybelle Carter, and a relatively new singing act by the name of the Statler Brothers. But the show was June's from the first joyous note to the final curtain call.

One of the comedy highlights that night was June giving her impressions of ladies she said that she had seen navigating the slush puddles outside of the Mosque earlier in the evening. She did a stately take on a lady from St. Louis crossing a puddle, and a little less dainty version of a lady from Kansas City attempting the same crossing. She tried to close the skit with a hillbillyesque performance of a "gal from Neosho" hiking up her skirts and tromping through the mess. Just as her skirts raised above her knees, someone in the audience snapped a flash picture. June froze in mid-step and glared at the offender, while the rest of us sat in stunned silence waiting to see what would happen next. Finally June pulled her skirts above her head revealing a long, fetching pair of bloomers. When she dropped the skirts she once again glared at the offender and said, "You didn't get a thing with your Brownie Hawkeye, so there!" The timing and physicality were flawless, and the delivery cracked like lightening.

June Carter never left the stage that night. She introduced acts, laced her routines and musical numbers throughout the show, and joined in performances with her family. She even held the held court during the show's only intermission, sitting on the edge of the stage and signing programs, with the sweat literally rolling off of her throughout the break. It was as though she was personally thanking everyone who had stayed for the show and making sure that it was a night all would remember.

And I have always remembered that night, surprisingly well. But the memory became much more poignant a couple of years ago after I saw the film, "Walk the Line." The live show at the Shrine took place one year before Johnny and June were married, roughly the same time period that was reflected in the film. As I watched Reese Witherspoon on the screen, I was seeing the very same June Carter that had given me such a wonderful Saturday night those many years before. Reese rocked - and so did June!

"You didn't get a thing with your Brownie Hawkeye, so there!" --June Carter