Influential pianists – Jerry Lee Lewis

The famous pianist Jerry Lee Lewis rose to fame in the early 1950s with hits such as ‘A whole lotta shakin going on’ and ‘Great balls of fire’.

Lewis pioneered a whole new musical style which later became know as ‘rockabilly’. This was a mixture of his two great loves in music, first that of the then predominantly negro music, rhythm and blues with that of his other musical influence, that of country. The result was a sort of high energy boogie-woogie piano based sound.

His success carried on through the 1960s despite a huge scandal due to his marriage to his younger cousin. He still has huge record sales and is still touring to this day.

There are lots of piano tutorials available which will teach you how to play in the style of this revolutionary trend setting musician.

Here are a couple of good ones I managed to find on YouTube.

This is a video tutorial that breaks down how to play the some of the basic riffs in the style of Jerry Lee Lewis

And this is another good one

And just to finish off, here is a clip of the great master himself from 1956.

In 1986 Jerry Lee Lewis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame due to his pioneering contribution to the genre of rockabilly.