Jerry Lee Lewis

His Own Story

Rick Bragg

He crashed a dozen Cadillacs in one year and played the Apollo. With racial hatred burning in the headlines, the audience danced in the seats to a white boy from the bottomland
Jerry Lee Lewis by Rick Bragg (Paperback ISBN 9780857861597) book cover

Available as Paperback, eBook

Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story is the last great untold rock-and-roll story, in the legend’s own words.

Jerry Lee Lewis has lived an extraordinary life. He gave rock and roll its devil’s edge with hit records like ‘Great Balls of Fire’. His incendiary shows caused riots and boycotts. He ran a decade-long marathon of drugs, drinking, and women, and married his thirteen-year-old second cousin, the third of seven wives. He also nearly met his maker, at least twice. He survived it all to be hailed as one of the greatest music icons. For the very first time, he reveals the truth behind the Last Man Standing of the rock-and-roll era.


“There’s plenty of richness in Rick Bragg’s retelling of the Killer’s life … Hits all the legendary moments, both high and low … Worth reading”
Stephen King

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“Rick Bragg’s biography of Jerry Lee Lewis really is the business. The words on the page perfectly match the music and the man”
Roddy Doyle
author Of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“I loved every amphetamine-laced, whiskey-soaked, gun-shot page of it …This thing moves. It rocks”
Ann Patchett

“No one in rock and roll has ever made music and lived life with the ferocity of Jerry Lee Lewis, and no writer is better suited than Rick Bragg to tell Lewis’s story. The result is a biography with the memorable language and narrative drive we expect only from the finest novels. Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story is the best book on rock and roll I have ever read”
Ron Rash

“Jerry Lee Lewis is a fascinating guy, a really opinion-splitting kinda legend, and this is his autobiography”
Noel Fielding, My Life In Suitcase - Five Touring Essentials
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Rick Bragg

In 1986, Jerry Lee Lewis was the first person inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has had 14 no.1 hits and 42 top 20 singles and 22 top 20 albums and has won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy. Lewis is the last surviving member of the Million Dollar Quartet which included Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley.

Rick Bragg
is an American journalist. He joined the New York Times in 1994 and in 1996 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Bragg is the author of five books: All Over but the Shoutin’, Ava’s Man, The Prince of Frogtown, I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story and The Most They Ever Had. He is now professor on the journalism programme at the University of Alabama’s College of Communications and Information Sciences.


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