His mother was a Pentecostal preacher who disapproved of secular music his cousin, the influential and eventually infamous evangelical preacher Jimmy Swaggart, was also fond of condemning 'the devil's music.' But when Lewis was just eight years old, his father (who had served time in prison for bootlegging), took out a mortgage on the family farm to buy young Jerry a piano. 29, 1935 in Ferriday, La., Jerry Lee Lewis grew up caught in a binary quandary over music and morality, perpetually torn between his religious upbringing and a burning desire to boogie.
