J.D. Davis - Unconquered: The Saga of Cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart, and Mickey Gilley

A s a child growing up in small-town East Texas, a town similar in many ways to small towns everywhere, I remember my father watching on television a shouting, singing, finger-pointing bear of a man named Jimmy Swaggart. While Swaggarts preaching didnt mean much to me at that age, his piano playing caught my attention and moved me, as it did millions of others around the world. People were touched and thrilled by his message, and drawn in by his charisma.

As a teenager raised largely in the conservative, fundamentalist Assembly of God world, I struggled with worldly temptations and the discomfiting feelings they aroused, and found that adhering to every edict I had been given in Sunday school was going to be, at the very least, a difficult chore. The words I heard from the pulpit such as hellfire and lost in eternity and backsliding created an increasing sense that I risked slipping into the gates of hell at any inopportune moment. When I heard that the preacher I saw on television had stumbled and made a public and painful mistake of his own, it didnt disappoint me. Instead, it encouraged me. It gave me hope. It taught me that men, who never stop being men, can maintain their spiritual identity even in the face of imperfection. And it provided an early understanding of the need for grace.

Country music dominated my youth. The stereo in the room just off the kitchen played country-and-western and gospel music. Every trip to town from our rural home included songs from the country radio station in Tyler, Texas, forty miles away. Every spring afternoon, the time I spent in the batting cage next to the high school baseball field was punctuated by music that blared through the rolled-down windows of a teammates pickup truck. Singers such as Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty, Willie Nelson, and dozens of others permeated my very being and are still ingrained in me decades later.

One of the top performers in those days was a crooner who played piano with flair and sang about flowers and honky-tonks. Even today, the lyrics to each of Mickey Gilleys seventeen number one country hits come as naturally to me as if I learned them yesterday. When I hear him sing Put Your Dreams Away and True Love Ways and You Dont Know Me, the songs trigger memories that can seem more vivid than anything happening in present time. This is the power of musicthat a familiar note or word can instantaneously, magically return us to half-forgotten places, people, and times.

On August 10, 1991, I was a college student in Austin, Texas. That evening, a friend and I headed down to the Aqua Fest music event, just south of downtown. As a devotee of good piano playing, I was already a fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, who was slated to be the main act. The Four Tops opened the show and sang well-known numbers for nearly an hour. As the sun went down, the wind picked up, bringing with it another Texas thunderstorm. Over the fringes of the Texas Hill Country, lightning flickered across the cool night sky. Between the unpredictable weather and the unpredictable nature of the evenings headliner, the continuation of the show was in doubt.

Yet an hour later, Jerry Lee Lewis strode purposefully to the front of the stage. A thin man, then fifty-five years old, he stood looking at the crowd. Then he bowed slightly and made his way to the piano stool behind him. His face looked stern, his eyes piercing as they gazed ahead, somewhere into the middle distance.

The next hour thrilled those who had weathered the elements and the delay to witness the show. This man, whod become an afterthought in rock n roll history to many, put on an amazing, hypnotizing performance. As occasional lightning flashed in the distance, he pounded both hands on the piano keys and his music became a force, a driving rhythm, oddly similar to the rocking church services I had known as a child.

He laughed with the audience occasionally, growled at them regularly, and chastised his band members when they lost the beat. In a line of a song addressed directly to his evangelist cousin Jimmy Swaggart, he told him to leave him alone while he got his kicks.

He mixed rock n roll, country, and blues. He rearranged and made up lyrics; he often changed keys.