Jerry Lee Lewis

From “Great Balls of Fire” to “Over the Rainbow,” whether the songs were brash or tearful, Jerry Lee Lewis was indomitable.

“I’m not quite as young as I used to be,” Lewis said when I Written by Charlie Rich, “Who Will the Next Fool Be” had been widely covered by soul singers before Lewis recorded it on his self-titled 1979 album, with a studio band that included Elvis Presley’s guitar mainstay, James Burton. “Old Jerry Lee should have been that kind of fool,” he yodels, after explaining that he’s incorrigible; years later, he’d sing it with Keith Richards. But even as he wallows in heartbreak, he still lets loose some yodels and splashy piano in the chorus. Hall wrote this song, talk-sung by a hard-drinking honky-tonk patron who’s driven to tears by a song: “Jerry Lee did all right until the music started,” Lewis sings, dropping his name into the song as he often did. And his music, even when he was making it within the Nashville country establishment in the 1960s and 1970s, chafed at confinement.