Jimi Hendrix and Jerry Lee Lewis question (see below)  

It's true that he married his 13 year old cousin. It almost ended his musical career at the time and he lost a lot of fans. He did a lot of other unpleasant things too, so it wouldn't be much of a surprise if he was also a racist.

Jerry Lee Lewis married his second cousin Myra when she was 13. Enland has no problem with him marrying his second cousin (they used to practice that themselves). The problem was that she was 13. Everyone was shocked, Europe and Stateside, that he has married a child.

I have to agree with you, Jimi was the best. I didn't know that about Jerry Lee Lewis until now. That just changed my opinion about him.

Maybe Jerry Lee Lewis is a nice person really, I suppose you can't judge anyone without having met them. Thanks for your response.

After reading this dicussion I wanted to see if I could find out if this was a false story or was it true. The only thing I could find was that some guy named Eric Burdon wrote a book called Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, and another called I Used to Be an Animal, but I'm All Right Now. He states that he went on tour with Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and that everyone was on the same bus and it was, I quote "We were on the Chuck Berry/Jerry Lee Lewis tour. With everybody on the same bus, it was hell on wheels. It was wonderful."

Based on that information, I would have to say that the story about him refusing to shake hands with a black man is false. If he could party with a black man and share a tour bus with one, he wasn't and isn't a racist.

Thanks for the information. The story I heard is probably not true, just one of those urban myths.

By the way, Eric Burdon was the singer in the band The Animals, along with bass player Chas Chandler (who later became Jimi's manager).

I looked up information on Jerry Lee Lewis myself and found something interesting about another incident with Chuck Berry.

Here's a Quote - During the last song, "Great Balls Of Fire," Jerry Lee poured lighter fluid on the top cover of the piano and after he finished walked offstage and as he passed by Chuck, who was waiting in the wings, said, "Top that, n---er!" Much of this incident was sanitized for the movie, and Quaid as Lewis said "Top that, Star!"

The full article is here - http://www.artistfacts.com/detail.php?id=187

Hmmm. Well, I don't know. I mean maybe he did say that, but it doesn't mean he was being racist. Look at people today, blacks call each other the N word all the time and I have seen whites call each other the N word. Maybe he did use that word but it doesn't mean he was being racist. Who knows? Unless we were actually there, we don't know in what context or even how it was said.

I'm a fan of both Jimi Hendrix and Jerry Lee Lewis. Jerry Lee is one of the most arrogant people in the history of rock music. It's hard to say about his approach to Jimi. Maybe he didn't like Jimi's music.

I don't why that he would be so cold to Chuck Berry. After all he has recorded versions of Chuck's songs. There were a lot of black artists on Sun Records when Jerry Lee was there. And he's recorded a lot of songs by black artists besides Chuck over the years.