Jerry Lee Lewis has become Schrödinger’s Rock Star — TMZ didn’t know if he was alive or dead until somebody checked. The tabloid-on-a-computer site apologized yesterday for taking the word of somebody claiming to be Lewis’ representative and reporting that Lewis had expired at age 87.
You can’t kill the Killer that easily — he’s survived everything from the IRS to six marriages, including the one to his 13-year-old cousin that wrecked his career, to a stroke in 2019. But he had to beg out of his induction ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame in October because of what was called the flu. He’s alive and living in Memphis, though he doesn’t look all that well in the photos that prove it.
Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the 10 performers in the initial class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This 1957 appearance on the Steve Allen Show — the setting made him more restrained than usual — might give you some idea of why.
