'Fifteen,' the singer replied, obviously thinking that sounded suitably mature.

'And how old is Myra?' he asked Jerry Lee. Meeting the star at the airport, Tanfield noticed that there was a very young girl in The Killer’s party. No sooner had he landed at Heathrow than we had our answer, in no small part due to the inquiries of a Daily Mail reporter called Paul Tanfield. Would he be the wild man of the Louisiana swamps we’d been led to believe? He was young and vital.Ĭould he possibly live up to his advance billing, those of us who bought the music papers wondered, as we read about him on our way to school. Jerry Lee Lewis, however, or, 'The Killer', as he was known, had enjoyed two classic worldwide hits with Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On and Great Balls Of Fire, and had even appeared in a Hollywood rock film, High School Confidential. True, we’d had a couple of would-be early rock stars of our own, but they were limp counterfeits like Tommy Steele, who already seemed to have one eye on becoming the dreaded all-round entertainers. Army, anyway), there was a feeling that we were getting everything second-hand and missing all the fun. To us, that first generation of rock fans, this guy was the real thing.Īnd that was important, because, having been completely overlooked by Elvis Presley who’d never come to Britain (and who was by then in the U.S. Whole lotta trouble goin' on: Jerry Lee Lewis with child bride Myra

Who sang hillbilly rock