There’s plenty of footage of him banging on a piano with the heal of his foot but “toes?” I’d like to see that!
But it doesn’t guarantee longevity. The best selling authors of their time, such as Marie Corelli, are essentially unknown today. Does anybody listen to Pat Boone today? Non-ironically? Maybe counting on the fingers of one hand.
Jeez, no love for Ricky Nelson?
I once saw the great Ricky (known as Rick by then) in concert (hey, the radio station I worked for was giving away free tickets). Women were throwing their underwear at him, no foolin’.
Here’s a quite credible cover of Great Balls of Fire from an unlikely source. Rock ‘n’ roll finds its own level of credibility, many chase the muse but only the greats catch it.
Liberace, for all his on-stage flamboyance, had a style that made playing the piano (and the dude could play) look easy and effortless. He’d turn and smile at the audience, not a hair out of place. Lawrence Welk and Celine Dion are kind of the same aesthetic. Compare that to someone like Springsteen, who finishes a concert looking like he’s run a marathon.
Jerry Lee was in the second camp.
A technique I call “rhythm piano”.
That doesn’t mean his influence isn’t still felt.
In the Punk world we call that Billy Zoom.
Can you explain? I guess I just don’t see it. He sold a lot of records, yeah, but he wasn’t a trendsetter or especially original in any way, so, I’m straining to find his “influence.”
He introduced an outsider art form in a manner that made it accessible and acceptable to the popular culture. Elvis turned a generation onto Rock n Roll. Pat Boone turned the entire popular culture on to it. When Elvis went into the Army, he was a rebel. When he got out he was a mainstream pop idol. Much of that was thanks to Pat Boone.
I recently saw an old TCM short I’d TIVO’ed from the 1940s, which featured a couple minutes of a very young Liberace tickling the ivories. He wasn’t being flamboyant in this clip, but it was still fun to watch.
Well, it was worth an attempt. Jesus, that was…like Abe Simpson on Meth.
Kinda makes sense that all those low energy stars are still alive.
Seriously?
I guess it’s because I wasn’t really aware of Pat Boone until I was older, and he was pretty much only for “squares.” When I was little in the 50s, I knew Elvis. Boone wasn’t even on my radar.
From a 2010 Jerry Lee Lewis interview published in the Wall St. Journal:
“After graduation (from high school), Mr. Lewis attended the Southwestern Bible Institute in Waxahachie, Texas. But after playing “My God Is Real” boogie-woogie style in school, he was expelled.”
Excellent.