Visiting the Jerry Lee Lewis Ranch
Winter in North Mississippi.
NESBIT, Ms.—The best rock n’ roll is dangerous so the tip off you are on the best rock museum tour ever is the dozens of knife marks on the inside bedroom door of the Jerry Lee Lewis Ranch in rural Nesbit, about 20 miles south of Memphis.
And then there are the brass bullet casings on the back porch of the two-story brick house. I’m part of a mid-January tour group with two other Lewis fans so there are enough casings to grab for souvenirs.
The 45-minute tour is led by Jerry Lee Lewis III. He doesn’t seem to mind us picking up the blasts from the past.
The small $45 private tours are by appointment only. I’m camping in the Graceland RV park in Memphis. I call the ranch on a Tuesday morning and Jerry Lee III answers the phone. He will include me in the day’s only tour if I get to the ranch by 11:30 a.m. There are no PR people to deal with or questions to answer.
My group includes a couple from Lewis’s native Louisiana and a legal representative for Lewis. A business meeting is scheduled at the ranch that afternoon. The Killer spends time at the ranch for family meetings. But Lewis, 83, actually lives with his seventh wife Judith watching “Gunsmoke” and “Death Valley Days” reruns in a senior community near Snowden Grove Park down the road in Hernando, Ms. Judith had been married to the brother of Lewis’ third wife Myra Gale Brown, who at the time (1957) was his 13-year-old cousin.
Jerry Lee III (left) and me.
Just like anyone who has endured a move, Lewis downsized. He left his white Rolls Royce, white 2001 Lincoln Continental (with KILLER 9 license plates) gold records, gun collection, knife collection, sheriff badges, piano and autographed pictures at the ranch.
The most tender part of the tour is the Jerry Lee Lewis Pet Cemetery that includes his dogs Honey Lee Lewis, Topaz Lee Lewis, Superman Lee Lewis, Country Dog Lee Lewis, and one cat, Cowbell Lee Lewis. Just like her master, that cat has nine lives. We find the bullet casings near the pet cemetery.
The ranch has been open to the public on and mostly off since 2000.
The 35-acre property is anchored by a private lake stocked with bass, catfish, and crappie. All caught fish are thrown back. During the 1980s Lewis broke his right leg jet-skiing in the lake.
There’s a piano-shaped swimming pool that is not part of the winter tour. At one time guests could stay in an adjacent cottage where Jerry Lee’s father once lived. But the ranch was closed to the public until April 2017 when Lewis asked his son to help with the down-home tourist attraction.
Jerry III, 32, was working as bar manager at a TGI Friday’s in Grand Rapids, Mich.
How great is that?
His name often rings a bell. “Some people would ask more about the name than other people,” he says. “It depends on who I was talking to.”
When the ranch reopened in 2017, Lewis issued the statement, “I love all my fans. When they look back on me I want them to remember me not for all my wives, although I’ve had a few, and certainly not for any mansions or high-livin’ money I made and spent. I want them to remember me simply for my music.”
Jerry III begins the tour on the front porch of the 45-year-old ranch. Tourists don’t have to hand over cellphones and cameras like at Paisley Park in Minnesota, but the bedroom and back rooms are off limits for pictures and video. Cellphone signals can be difficult.
“The guy who built the house actually helped build the extension on the Memphis airport,” Jerry III explains. “Dad says he packed the walls with steel and airplane parts. I’ve never knocked a wall down to find out. But I can tell you the (red) brick all the way around the house and the (brick) columns down the gate, it all came from Chicago. It’s Chicago Fire Brick (which was at 1467 N. Elston from 1917-2003). It’s hard to get today.”
Nice way to attract attention!
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire, the Killer’s bedroom features a king sized bed, big screen television set and a framed autographed jersey from retired NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. “Dad still comes here now and then,” his son says in the bedroom. “But there’s only so many ways to display guns and knives safely.”
And he glances at the scarred bedroom door. “This is where he taught me how to throw a knife,” Jerry III continues. “Standing at the edge of that bed. We blew out the peephole a long time ago.” A working latch is affixed to the door so no one can walk in and get stabbed by mistake.
A bedroom closet is filled with fancy shoes. “If you look closer, there are 30 shoes of all the left feet,” Jerry III says. “There’s not a right shoe that matches. But they’re all the same shoes and they have different soles. We don’t have any idea what happened.” The educated guess is that the right shoe was lost when Lewis would raise his right leg and shake it while playing the piano.
Jerry III also chuckles when he looks at the black and white notes and clefs that border the bedroom ceiling. “My mother put those up 28 years ago,” he says. “It’s hilarious since he doesn’t read sheet music. He can only play by ear. I don’t play the piano. I got one piano lesson from him and it didn’t go the greatest.”
The nearby wood-paneled den (also off-limits to photography) includes a full-length bar adorned with gold ‘45s and a 1965 television set that was a gift from Myra. They were married from 1957 to 1970. Jerry III’s mother is Kerri McCarver. Kerri and Jerry were married from 1984 until 2005.
Jerry III looks at the bar in the den and says, “The guy that hung out here the most was Carl Perkins. He was a cool dude. (Perkins died in 1998.) Johnny (Cash) came out when I was younger. The first time I met Gary Busey was here (laughs.) Before I was born I heard of parties they had here.” Present-day stars like (John Mellencamp/John Fogerty drummer) Kenny Aronoff and Chris Stapleton have toured the ranch. “Chris sat with dad and hung out,” Jerry III says.
Wild horses (photo from Jerry Lee Lewis Ranch).
A front living room is accented with dozens of honorary keys to cities and photographs. There’s a framed American flag from 1971’s Apollo 14, the third mission to land on the moon. Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa brought along a cassette of songs Lewis had made for him.
But a 1973 Wurlitzer piano catches my attention. It was the same Wurlitzer that Lewis took to his gigs at the beloved Hernando’s Hide-A-Way, down the road from the Graceland Mansion. Hernando’s remains the only bar in America where I stepped across a pool of blood to gain entry.
During the 1970s and 80s, the roadhouse was a regular stomping ground for Lewis and his sister Linda Gail Lewis. The shuttered music club has been purchased by country singer Dale Watson, who recently moved to Memphis from Austin, Tx.
“They’ve got a lot of original photos from Hernando’s,” Jerry III says. “They’re trying to make it look as close as to how it used to, yet still be respectful of the time. Dad would literally bring that piano to Hernando’s. It didn’t matter if someone was on the show that night or he’d bring it on stage when they were done. Pretty much every person in the area over 50 or 60 years old can tell you of a time they saw Dad at Hernando’s, the Americana Club or Bad Bob’s (all in Memphis.)
The tour winds down near where it started. A kitchen off the front porch doubles up as a small gift shop. Guests can choose from Jerry Lee vinyl, “Ranch” tee shirts, an autographed picture of Lewis ($200) and copies of Rick Bragg’s 2014 “Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story” that was penned in cooperation with Lewis. Jerry Lee III leans against a kitchen sink and answers questions. He is a patient man who shares a generous smile.
His father is Jerry Lee Lewis.
Start Louis has inspired me to go back to piano practice class 75 years old and I’m learning to play Boogie Woogie and hope someday Tumi mr. Louis we were at his Ranch a few years back and I have pictures of me standing by his piano game dearly loved him have the highest respect for him and he is truly one of the best singers and piano players this world will ever have