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JERRY LEWIS

“ROCK-A-BYE YOUR BABY WITH A DIXIE MELODY”

(Sam Lewis, Joe Young, Jean Schwartz)

Decca 30124

No. 10    December 29, 1956

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Jerry was born Joseph Levitch, in a show biz family, in Newark, New Jersey, on March 16, 1926.  His

parents were often away performing in the Catskills on the “Borscht Circuit.”  During the summers,

Jerry would join his mom and dad and their stage act, where he would sing a solo number.  After one

year of high school, Jerry quit to make the rounds of the booking agents.  In between gigs, he would

work as a soda jerk, shipping clerk, theater usher.  By 18, when he married Patty Palmer, a vocalist with

the Jimmy Dorsey Orches­tra, Jerry Lewis was an experienced small-time stand­ up comic, with a knack

for impersonating big-time celebrities.

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In 1946, Lewis met Martin–Dean Martin, a strug­gling vocalist and all-around entertainer.  Their first

appearance, as a team, at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, proved a tremendous success.  Their basic bit

involved Dean crooning and Jerry constantly interrupting, with much ad-libbing and the trading of

insults and hurt feelings in the mix.  By decade’s end, Martin & Lewis were America’s number one

comedy team.

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Before splitting in 1956, Dean and Jerry made a staggering array of flicks–17 money-makers; most

notably, their debut My Friend Irma (1949), That‘s My Boy (1951), Scared Stiff (1953), and their last

Holly­wood or Bust (1956).  Pursuing a solo career, Jerry con­tinued to work his singular shtick–the

benign fool, with contorted facial expressions, silly slapstick, and something akin to a sympathy-

inducing case of arrest­ed development.  As such, he created–sometimes producing, directing and

scoring–Cinderfella (1960), The Bell Boy (1960), and most noted The Nutty Professor (1963); the

latter most successfully refried in 1996 by Eddie Murphy.

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Amidst all, Jerry Lewis found time to record semi­-serious offerings, beginning the year of his break from

Martin.  His recording career was brief, but chart-alter­ing when Jerry’s reworked AI Jolson’s 1918 hit

“Rock-a­ Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody.”  Only one other disk–his work-up of the 1927 Paul Whitman

hit, “It All Depends on You” (#68, 1957)–his immediate fol­low-up, ever made Billboard’s listings.  With

increasing resistance to his films in the ’70s and an awareness of a pain-killer drug addiction and

worsening ulcers, Lewis regrouped, recouped, and eventually returned with his ever-intense attentions

given to personal appearances, writing books–The Complete Filmmaker (1971) and Jerry Lewis in Person

(1983)–and the perennial Muscular Dystrophy Telethon.  In 1983, Jerry won critic-approval as an empty

talk show host in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy.

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In the ’60s Jerry’s son, Gary Lewis–and his Playboys–went on to exten­sive teen fame with hits such as:

“This Diamond Ring.”