As well as his music, Jerry Lee Lewis was known for his controversial private life, in particular for marrying his cousin who was just 13 at the time.
The singer, who has died aged 87, married seven times in total, his third wedding to Myra Gale Brown in 1958, his first cousin once removed, which massively damaged his career.
Lewis already was already well known when he married 13-year-old Mrya, having released A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On in 1957, followed by Great Balls of Fire and Breathless.
The musician had insisted that Myra was closer to 15, but when newspapers in Britain, where he was touring, discovered the truth there was uproar.
After just three performances his tour in the UK was cancelled and he was booed off stage.
In the states his career also took a huge dive and he was shunned.
Later after years in the wilderness, he turned to country music and Nashville, with his songs climbing up the charts.
Lewis, who was born in Louisiana, first wed when he was 16, to preacher's daughter Dorothy Barton, but the marriage lasted less than two years.
Within days of his divorce being finalised to Dorothy, he married Jane Mitchum in 1953 and the pair were together for four years, having two children.
Myra and Lewis were married for more than a decade and they had two children, Steve and Phoebe.
Tragically, Steve drowned in a pool in 1962 when he was three years old.
In 1971, the rock 'n' roller married Jaren Gunn Pate, but, in 1982, just weeks before the divorce settlement could be finalised, she drowned in a swimming pool.
A year later, his fourth wife, Shawn Stephens overdosed just ten weeks into their marriage.
Rolling Stone went on to publish an article that suggested Lewis killed Stephens, either intentionally or not, but a grand jury cleared him of any crime.
Lewis married Kerrie McGarver in 1984 and the pair were married for 21 years, and had a son, Jerry Lee Lewis Jr.
Tragedy struck again when their son, aged 19, died when a jeep he was in overturned.
He married for the seventh and final time in 2012, to Judith Brown, who was once married to his cousin, Rusty.
Zach Farnum, Lewis' publicist, described the singer as perhaps the last great icon of the "birth of rock 'n' roll , whose marriage of blues, gospel, country, honky-tonk and raw, pounding stage performances so threatened a young Elvis Presley that it made him cry."
“He was there at the beginning, with Elvis, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, and the rest, and watched them fade away one by one till it was him alone to bear witness, and sing of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll.”
The singer died at his home in Memphis.
He is survived by his wife Judith, his children Jerry Lee Lewis III, Ronnie Lewis, Phoebe Lewis and Lori Lancaster.
