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Here's to decades of deep-down gut, heaven-high soul

By Bill Ellis
ellis@commercialappeal.com

It's all about Saturday night and Sunday morning when the Grammys trumpet the latest round of Lifetime Achievement Award winners today.

Among this year's 10 inductees are two Memphis-affiliated acts who bring all the primal rock and sublime spirituality one event (or lifetime) could ask for: Sun Records rockabilly pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and the first name in Stax gospel, the Staple Singers.

"It's pretty hard to beat a Lifetime Achievement Award," said Lewis, who was among those in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1986 alongside Elvis Presley and Sam Phillips.

As the title implies, the Lifetime Achievement Award is given for a career of excellence in the recording arts.

For unsurpassed piano-thumper Lewis, 69, that body of work is largely defined by his '50s output for Sam Phillips and the Sun label. To this day, singles such as "Great Balls of Fire," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" and "Breathless" not only are quintessential Killer but quintessential rock, a riot act of rhythm and testosterone that still sits, like Lewis at his piano bench, half-unhinged ready to explode with teen petulance and promise.

Originally from Ferriday, La., Lewis talked about the honor on a recent evening, in the living room of the Nesbit ranch where he has lived for decades. Wearing a white flannel robe, red flip-flops and carrying a pipe, he looked like the Dixie-fried answer to Hugh Hefner. His trademark locks sprouted from his head like exclamation points.

"I feel great about this award because you earn it," he says. "They studied your life all through these years and finally they figured out I'm not a real killer, I'm just called that."

Lewis, who refers often to his "God-given talent," adds, "It's deserving and I think I should get it."

Such bravado got him where he is today. Lewis played rock on the piano at a time when everyone expected to hear it on guitar, and he forced popular culture to meet him on his terms. When Nashville rejected him ("I told them I'm a piano player, I'm not a hillbilly guitar player!"), he and his dad, Elmo, ventured to Memphis, selling 39 dozen eggs to fund his trip in search of the like-minded mavericks he found at Sun.

With engineer Jack Clement rolling tape on the first sessions, Lewis quickly joined the famed roster of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins as Sun gods. Or perhaps he was more like Icarus. Lewis's career -- riding high in 1957 from the whole lotta shakin' he was doing on the charts -- took just as quick a nose dive the following year when he was on tour in the U.K., and the British press discovered he had married his 13-year-old cousin Myra (while technically still married to wife No. 2).

But Lewis persevered, finding a second, longer career as a respected country artist in the '60s and '70s for the Mercury label and its Smash subsidiary.

He's been through six marriages, the tragic deaths of several children and wives, IRS seizures, a tax-evading move to Ireland, his shooting and wounding of his bass player, the opening and closing of a namesake club on Beale and a bomb of a Dennis Quaid biopic about his life. But Lewis says he has no regrets and wouldn't change a thing: "I just thank God I'm living."

And his piano is still pumping. He performed with matchbox twenty for PBS's Sun documentary, "Good Rockin' Tonight," and recently held court on the televised Memorial Day special, "Willie Nelson & Friends: Outlaws and Angels," shaking things up with the new Killer: Kid Rock.

Lewis has also been busy writing his next chapter, a record tentatively titled The Pilgrim that's slated for release through DreamWorks this year. He wouldn't discuss the project, though the album's guest list reads like a "Who's Who" of rock and country greats from Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Page and members of the Rolling Stones to Eric Clapton, Merle Haggard and Toby Keith.

The Staple Singers and Lewis will receive their honors in a luncheon ceremony today at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. They will join a diverse roll-call that includes onetime Sun artist and Muddy Waters pianist Pinetop Perkins, rock royalty Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin, country music greats the Carter Family and Eddie Arnold, jazz giants Jelly Roll Morton and Art Blakey, and classical composer/conductor Morton Gould.

"I'm just so happy, I'm just bubbling inside," says Mavis Staples, 65, of the honor. The group -- with singing siblings Cleotha, Pervis and Yvonne, and their patriarch and leader the late Roebuck 'Pops' Staples -- was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1999. "(I'm) very grateful to be thought of at a time like this when we're such old-school people."

Where Lewis put a gospel shot of his Pentecostal upbringing into the boogie woogie of R&B, 'Pops' Staples -- who learned firsthand from such greats as Charley Patton while growing up on the Mississippi cotton estate Dockery Farms -- sent blues straight back into gospel.

His Chicago-based family troupe, which began singing professionally in 1951, made many classic recordings -- notably "Uncloudy Day" -- before coming to Memphis and the Stax label in 1968. But it was a perfect confluence of forces that found the Staples family down South cutting records for Stax, after label exec Al Bell lured them away from Warner Brothers. Over the next seven years, they became the standard bearers of the message song. On classics such as "Respect Yourself" and "I'll Take You There," they not only scaled the top of the pop charts, the Staple Singers inspired a generation locked in the Civil Rights struggle.

"That was our people," says Mavis Staples of her family's hit-making tenure at Soulsville U.S.A. "Stax had the soul, the gut. Otis Redding and Johnnie Taylor. Motown was a little cutie pie. We'd get ugly when we'd sing over at Stax. Our best stuff came out of there."

In tandem with her award, Mavis will perform with hip-hop artist Kanye West at the 47th annual Grammys on Sunday.

And what would 'Pops,' who died in 2000, think of the esteemed accolade?

"I can hear him laugh, 'Do y'all see what we done done?'" says Mavis. "I've talked to him already. I said, 'Well, Daddy, you did it, you did it.' And I know when I go there to accept that award, that Pops is going to be smiling. And I feel so good, 'cause I know he's witnessing all of this."

For all the distinction that a lifetime award carries, Staples and Lewis both consider it a mixed blessing.

"Once they say Lifetime Achievement Award, it does feel like it's kind of over for you," says Staples, whose latest album, Have a Little Faith, has made her a leading nominee at the coming W. C. Handy Blues Awards. Her ubiquitous presence could also be felt last year at the Democratic National Convention, where she sang, and on records by Los Lobos, Dr. John and a Stephen Foster tribute (the latter two are up for Grammy nominations).

"I'm gonna let them know, when you say Lifetime Achievement Award, put on there, 'To be continued.' Don't fix it like you won't be hearing from us anymore."

As for Lewis, he simply says: "What took 'em so long?"

-- Bill Ellis: 529-2517