Jerry Lee Lewis: Fans, peers pay last respects at Mississippi funeral home

"This Is Our Killer."

Those words, written vertically, one letter atop another, were printed on a ribbon that dangled Thursday night from the lone floral arrangement that had been placed on the casket that held the mortal remains of Jerry Lee Lewis.

The casket was inside the Hernando Funeral Home on U.S. 51 in DeSoto County, Mississippi. Outside, Lewis was still indomitable, even immortal, in the memories and appraisals of the hundreds of fans, friends, peer musicians and others — some in suitcoats and ties, some with tattoos and rockabilly pompadours — who lined up to pay their respects to the rock 'n' roll pioneer who attacked his 87 years of life the way he attacked the keys of his piano: with passion, playfulness, recklessness, violence and tenderness.

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"This is as big as Elvis dying. I wasn't alive then, but this is the same kind of emotional experience for us," said Kyler Campbell, 27, of Nesbit, Mississippi, who wore cuffed blue jeans and a T-shirt decorated with multiple photographs of Jerry Lee Lewis at the height of his piano-pumping 1950s wildness.

"A lot of the guys, like Elvis and Carl Perkins, those guys knew they were great performers, but Jerry Lee knew he was great," said Jerry Phillips, son of the late Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records, where Lewis cut such star-making rock 'n' roll assaults as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" and "Great Balls of Fire."

“I’ve known him since I was 8 years old, we’ve had a lot of experiences together and he’s a great guy," Phillips said, speaking in the present tense, as if Lewis' death did not yet seem real. "He can be mean, he can be hard, he can be tough, he can be great, he can be all those things."

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Increasingly frail and in ill health in recent weeks, Lewis died Oct. 28 at his home in DeSoto County. Thursday's public visitation in Hernando was an opportunity for Lewis' neighbors and Memphis music associates to pay homage to the artist known as The Killer, prior to the more elaborate funeral set for 11 a.m. Saturday in Lewis' birthplace of Ferriday, Louisiana. The main officiant will be Lewis' cousin, the celebrity evangelist Jimmy Swaggart — himself no stranger to scandal and the tug of war between heaven and hell.

Some mourners arrived close to three hours before the funeral home's doors opened at 5 p.m.; home addresses inscribed inside the guest book included England, Ireland and the Netherlands. They lined the front of the building, which stretched parallel to the street. On the other side was Hernando's historic Velvet Cream burgers-and-shakes drive-in restaurant — a destination made to order for the rockabillies in the queue — and next door to the funeral home was Vampire Penguin, a shaved ice shop that offers what owner Krista Durtschi called "a signature Jerry Lee Lewis snow": vanilla topped with Atomic Fireball candy.

Once the doors opened, the line snaked through the business and into a large room with cream-colored walls. The closed casket was placed on a bier in the center of the room, flanked by floral arrangements (some in the shape of musical notes, and one reading "Great Balls of Fire"), and two large posters on easels: one, a photograph of a gray-haired Lewis at the piano; the other, advertising Lewis' appearance at the Viva Las Vegas Car Show in 2011. Classic Sun recordings by Lewis were piped into the room, at low volume: "Breathless," "Little Queenie," "Lewis Boogie" ("But now you take my boogie, it keeps you in the groove/ Then your sacroiliac begins to shiver and to move"). The songs weren't hymns, but to the people in line, it was sacred music.

Near the coffin, each mourner was greeted by Judith Coghlan Lewis, Jerry Lee's seventh wife; her daughter, Tiffany McKinnon; and Jerry Lee's son, Jerry Lee Lewis III. "We may have been old, but we had a wonderful time," Mrs. Lewis said.

Some of Lewis' longtime musical colleagues attended — people who had played with Jerry Lee for so many years they were "like brothers," said guitarist Kenny Lovelace.

"I'm having a hard time getting over it," said drummer J.M. Van Eaton, who was a teenager when he accompanied Lewis on Jerry Lee's first recording for Sun, "Crazy Arms."

"With the other guys I worked with, Charlie Rich, Johnny Cash, it was sad when they died, but I'm having a hard time with this one," said Van Eaton, 85. "We came up at the same time. It's heartbreaking in a way to realize that era is over. I guess I'm about the last of the Sun primary players."

"You're the last man standing now," said Jerry Phillips, alluding to Lewis' assertively titled 2006 album, "Last Man Standing."

Lovelace, 86, who lives in Franklin, Tennessee, had played guitar in Lewis' band and on Lewis records for 54 years. (He said he last played in concert with Lewis on Feb. 19, 2019, in Greenville, South Carolina).

"You get to know somebody pretty well in 54 years, onstage and offstage," Lovelace said. Working with Lewis, he said, the concept of a "set list" was more or less theoretical. "Sometimes we wouldn't even know what he was going to do, he'd just take off. We got used to it."

That unpredictability helps explains the devotion of some of Lewis' fans, including Darren and Daniel White, a father and son from Birmingham, England, who for close to 30 years have traveled around the world to attend Lewis shows.

"I've seen him 60 times, which is not bad for a 34-year-old," said Daniel.

"Jerry Lee was the one who excited me the most of everyone," said Darren, 54, who described himself as a former "rock 'n' roll deejay." Their passion for the music of The Killer was so evident and their presence at concerts so frequent that eventually they were befriended by Lewis and his camp. The duo flew from England for the Hernando visitation, and next they will travel to Ferriday, where Daniel will be a pall bearer.

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Jud Calkins, 81, drove to Hernando from St. Louis. He said he planned to drive back home Thursday night. "I didn't know what I was in for, coming here, but I wanted to pay my respects." A high school graduate from the Class of 1959, "I listened to my Sun Records 45's every morning before I went to school," he said. "Jerry Lee just captured my imagination like no one else."

Accompanied to the visitation by his wife, Juliette, 28, a native of France (the couple met at a rockabilly convention), Kyler Campbell said he grew up in Nesbit, "right down the road from Jerry Lee's house. So I used to see his house every morning on the way to school."

The proximity fanned the flames of his fandom. "I saw him at a red light one time, he was in the passenger seat, somebody else was driving. I looked at him and waved, and he waved back. And that was about the No. 1 coolest experience of my life."

Multiple Memphis officials also showed up, including Jim Holt, president of the Memphis in May International Festival; Memphis Tourism president Kevin Kane; and Memphis & Shelby County Film Commissioner Linn Sitler. Former Memphis mayor Willie W. Herenton said he was good friends with Lewis, and had visited him at his home recently. "His sense of humor and style were one of a kind," Herenton said. "Jerry's cool."

The visitation was open to the public until 8 p.m., but by 7 almost everyone in line had made their way through the funeral home. Some mourners continued to mill about in the parking lot and share stories.

"One of the greatest talents ever has left the planet, and the Earth is not going to be the same," Phillips said. "I really mean that. The Earth is not going to be the same."

Said Lovelace: "I hope to see him one day, in heaven — on the other side."

Commercial Appeal reporter Gina Butkovich contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Jerry Lee Lewis: Fans, musical peers pay last respects to rock pioneer