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PROGRAM #6
Real Wild Child

JERRY LEE LEWIS GREW UP praising the Lord and playing piano in the Pentecostal Church in Ferriday, Louisiana. His church is known for its ecstatic services, where worshipers who feel the Holy Ghost “speak in tongues.” Much of the emotional abandon in Jerry’s songs comes straight from that experience. Yet his fame in the secular music world created all kinds of spiritual conflicts. We’ll tell the story of one of his most beloved songs, Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On, which launched his career in 1957. He had the Sun Records rhythm section backing him up, who were also members of one of the wildest rockabilly acts ever, Billy Lee Riley and His Little Green Men.

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Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis, at the edge of the stage in New York, once aspired to become a preacher. He enrolled in a bible college in Texas, but the dean expelled him for performing a sacred hymn with a boogie woogie beat during a school assembly.