Lewis was born in 1935 to the poor farming family of Elmo and Mamie Lewis in Ferriday, Concordia Parish, in eastern Louisiana. In his youth, he began playing piano with two of his cousins, Mickey Gilley (later a popular country music singer) and Jimmy Swaggart (later a popular television evangelist). His parents mortgaged their farm to buy him a piano. Lewis was influenced by a piano-playing older cousin, Carl McVoy (who later recorded with Bill Black's Combo), the radio, and the sounds from Haney's Big House, a black juke joint across the tracks.

Lewis's turbulent personal life was hidden from the public until a May 1958 British tour where Ray Berry, a news agency reporter at London's Heathrow Airport (the only journalist present), learned about Lewis's third wife, Myra Gale Brown. She was Lewis's first cousin once removed and was only 13 years old at the time. (Brown, Lewis, and his management all insisted that she was 15.) Lewis was 22 years old. The publicity caused an uproar, and the tour was cancelled after only three concerts.  The scandal followed Lewis home to the United States; and, as a result, he was blacklisted from radio and almost vanished from the music scene. Lewis felt betrayed by numerous people who had been his supporters. Dick Clark dropped him from his shows. Lewis even felt that Sam Phillips had sold him out when the Sun Records boss released "The Return of Jerry Lee", a bogus "interview" spliced together by Jack Clement from excerpts of Lewis's songs that "answered" the interview questions, which made light of his marital and publicity problems. Only Alan Freed stayed true to Lewis, playing his records until Freed was removed from the air because of payola allegations.  Lewis was still under contract with Sun Records, and kept recording, regularly releasing singles. He had gone from $10,000 a night for concerts to $250 a night for engagements in beer joints and small clubs. At the time he had few friends whom he felt he could trust. It was only through Kay Martin, the president of Lewis's fan club, T. L. Meade (also known as Franz Douskey), an occasional Memphis musician and friend of Sam Phillips, and Gary Skala, that Lewis went back to record at Sun Records.  In 1960, Phillips opened a new state-of-the-art studio at 639 Madison Avenue in Memphis, abandoning the old Union Avenue studio where Phillips had recorded B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Lewis, Johnny Cash and others, and also opened a studio in Nashville. It was at the latter studio that Lewis recorded his only major hit during this period, a rendition of Ray Charles's "What'd I Say" in 1961. In Europe, other updated versions of "Sweet Little Sixteen" (September 1962 UK) and "Good Golly Miss Molly" (March 1963) entered the hit parade. On popular EPs, "Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes", "I've Been Twistin'", "Money" and "Hello Josephine" also became turntable hits, especially in nascent discotheques. Another recording of Lewis playing an instrumental boogie arrangement of the Glenn Miller Orchestra favorite "In the Mood" was issued on the Phillips International label under the pseudonym "The Hawk", but disc jockeys quickly figured out the distinctive piano style, and this gambit failed.

What was turbulent about it?
The publicity caused an uproar, and the tour was cancelled after only three concerts.