Word: bassing
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...Those three TV minutes revealed Jerry Lee's electrifying, near-electrocuting showmanship. But the music was what got me. The bass figure on the piano starts rumbling and, two beats later, J.M. Van Eaton's cymbals join in. After the four-bar intro (which he first used in his own composition "End of the Road," recorded November 14, 1956), Jerry Lee makes the vocal invocation: "Come on over, baby, whole lotta shakin' goin' on!" It's a firm but liquid tenor, at times quavering with the infusion of the Spirit (perhaps holy, perhaps profane) that Jerry Lee heard and sang...
...perverse perks ("You broke my will, but what a thrill"), before surrendering to ecstatic inanity: "Goodness gracious! Great balls of fire!" The second verse, which explains the singer's agitation as an agreeable form of sexual psychosis, punctuates the news with three right-hand arpeggios, while the bass drum is joined by a foreground tapping (presumably the rim of the snare drum), as if someone is keeping time on the mike with his buck teeth. In the bridge, Jerry Lee's left hand rumbles menacingly up to the break, when four-note poundings heighten the melodrama of the lyric...
...four high keys while the left hand describes a familiarly stealthy boogie-woogie figure, creeping up and down the lower register. We're back into the bridge, Jerry Lee's enunciation more forceful, and rampaging through the final verse. At "C'mon, baby, ya drive me crazy," the chugging bass figure is briefly counterpointed by a cute hearts-and-flowers, silent-movie piano flourish, as if sentiment not sex were the theme of the story - he's lying with his right hand, telling the truth with his left. A last "Goodness gracious! Great balls of fire!", a final four-note...
...London he acknowledged that the young lady accompanying him - Myra Gale Brown, the 13-year-old daughter of his cousin J.W. Brown (who played bass in his touring band) - had been his wife since December 12, 1957. Jerry Lee was used to hell breaking loose around him, but usually he was the one who opened its cage. Now he looked pale and defenseless in the tabloid press's glare. The Rank theater chain canceled his bookings, he returned to the U.S. to find the reception no kinder, and the bride and groom found themselves the Monica-and-Bill...
...abused himself with pills and booze for most of his adult life. He nearly died in 1981 from a ruptured stomach. He shot his bass player Butch Owens in the chest - accidentally, it is said; Owens survived. But Lewis's family tree is full of untimely deadwood. His elder brother Elmo was run over by a truck when JLL was three. His eldest son Jerry Lee, Jr., died at 19; car crash. Steve Allen Lewis, his son by Myra, died at 5 in a swimming pool. His fourth wife, Jaren Pate, also died in a swimming pool...