Jerry Lee Lewis

 

It has now been confirmed that Jerry Lee Lewis has died. 

There can't be any doubt that he was the last of the true greats from the golden age of rock'n'roll; I can still recall the excitement of first hearing Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On, different from the frenzy of Little Richard's recordings but every bit as potent. In The Sound of the City Charlie Gillett had especial praise for his ability to sing, as it were, in inverted commas, never wholly abandoned like Richard but "almost always" with "an edge of detachment or even cynical derision", as though not quite buying into this "love" business:

 This detachment enabled Lewis to pace his records, and control his audiences at live performances, with a finesse few rock'n'roll singers showed. He would have needed only Chuck Berry's flair for writing songs to be a comparably important figure.

These I Have Loved (and Learnt off of)

 

A few years ago I wrote a series of pieces about the radio broadcasters who had contributed the most to my musical education over the years. Not all of these figures were attached to the BBC, but most were; and to celebrate that institution's 100th anniversary I've condensed those memories into one handy single post - no strenuous clicking required. 

"Broadcaster" seems more a appropriate term than DJ in this context, as I'm not including representatives of Radio 1 in this happy band, even though the station was regular listening for me in the early seventies. This is because John Peel and others were, in effect, building on enthusiasms already learnt from my brothers or through music papers or watching Top of the Pops or The Old Grey Whistle Test. My siblings were immune, however, to the delights of doo wop and rock'n'roll, which were largely my own discoveries, made by a process of trial and error whenever a likely-looking LP in a record shop or newsagent's seemed cheap enough to take a chance on. 

In the late seventies and early eighties, however, I became keenly aware that alternatives were available, that another style of music was available and had, in fact, been around for quite a while.

Emmerdale

 

  "Amos is a character." 

That was my entree.