Lewis was the first cousin to make it big with his breakout hit “Crazy Arms” in 1956. It burned down in the Sixties.” How They Made it Big: Conquered and Unconquered It was one of the most important blues joints in the South. People would come from Monroe, Alexandria, Shreveport. It was one of the few places in the South where they could play and also have a place to stay, because Haynie owned a hotel in the back. “Everybody played there-eighteen-year-old B. Haynie allowed them to come in but told them not to let their rich uncle know or he’d get in trouble. “Jerry would sneak in the back and listen to the blues.
He was black and grew up dirt poor, but he became successful. Will Haynie owned a club there called Haynie’s Big House.
“I’ve collected hundreds of family photos.ĭavis describes Ferriday as “the perfect harmonic convergence of blues, gospel, and country. “There are so many interesting people in this family,” he says. He conducted about one hundred interviews, taping most of them. He made numerous research trips to Ferriday and also traveled to Memphis Nashville Baton Rouge Houston Branson, Missouri and Cleveland, Tennessee. He spent three years on the book, working nights and weekends while holding down his day job and raising three daughters. “They had a ton of information, not only on Jerry but on the other two cousins.” “I developed a pretty close friendship with Frankie Jean, who is a character herself,” he says. He also interviewed Lewis’s sisters Linda Gail and Frankie Jean. He talked to Gilley’s sister Edna, who died in 2012 at eighty-seven. None of the three men maintains a home there now, but in his research, Davis found plenty of relatives in Ferriday. They were raised in the Pentecostal church, and each had close relationships with their mothers. Researching the Lewis, Swaggart, and Gilley Familiesīorn in Ferriday in 1935 and ’36 during the Great Depression, the cousins grew up poor, but each exhibited musical talent at an early age. He was in his late fifties, but when he put his hands on those keys it was like he metamorphosed into a man twenty years younger.”įascinated by the three men from Concordia Parish who had achieved amazing success, after completing a master’s degree in liberal studies at Southern Methodist University in 2009, Davis decided to write a book. “I was absolutely blown away,” he recalls. He estimates he has been to more than fifty of his concerts-the first of which was at an outdoor music festival in Austin in the early 1990s, when Davis was a college student at the University of Texas. He did an hour-long show-preaching, playing piano, and singing gospel songs.”Īs a teenager, Davis became a huge fan of Lewis. I remember hearing Jimmy’s music every Sunday morning. “Their singing was great but it was their piano playing that really drew me in,” says Davis.
#JIMMY SWAGGART MUSIC FULL#
Eventually he turned to Country music.) Gilley released such hits as “Room Full of Roses” and "Don't the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time.” Fans shunned him, radio stations dropped him, and he struggled for years to regain his stature. (Lewis’s rock career had nosedived after he married his thirteen-year-old cousin in 1957, when he was twenty-two. That’s what wraps their lives together.”Īs a child in the seventies, Davis first heard Lewis and Gilley on Country radio. A lot has been written, but the most compelling story to me is the fact that they are cousins who grew up very close. In 2009, I really began reading, and I went to Ferriday. “I saw Urban Cowboy and the Jerry Lee biopic Great Balls of Fire. “I’ve been gathering information since I was a kid,” Davis explains about his research on the three cousins. How it began: Listening to Jerry Lee Lewis in the seventies And Swaggart gained fame as a televangelist-and infamy for his fall from grace for allegedly consorting with prostitutes. Lewis, known as “The Killer” for his wild way with a piano, was a huge hit in the fifties with such rock & roll classics as “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” Gilley was a country-music singer best known for opening “the world’s biggest honky-tonk” in Pasadena, Texas-the model for the dance hall in Urban Cowboy.
The men are related through maternal and paternal lines that Davis details in his 2012 book Unconquered: The Saga of Cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart, and Mickey Gilley. Gilley and Swaggart are first cousins once removed. Lewis and Swaggart are double first cousins.
Davis was exposed early on to the famous trio from north Louisiana-cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart, and Mickey Gilley. Growing up in Quitman, a small town in the piney woods of northeast Texas, author J. Davis tells the story of three cousins from Ferriday who hit the big time. The Killer, the Preacher, and the Cowboy J.
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