📍Ferriday, LA 71334, USA
1935 – 1954“I grew up poor in Ferriday, a small cotton town in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, near the Mississippi. My father, Elmo, farmed and did carpentry, and my mother, Mamie, was a devout member of the Assembly of God, who loved gospel singing. When I was about eight I sat down at the piano at my aunt and uncle's house and picked out Silent Night, and soon afterwards my parents mortgaged their farm to buy me a used upright piano of my own. I never forgot what they gave up for that. Ferriday was full of music and full of cousins. My cousins Jimmy Lee Swaggart and Mickey Gilley played piano with me, and between us we became a preacher, a country star and a rock and roller. On Sundays we heard the holy-rolling piano and singing of the Pentecostal church; on other nights we crept across town to Haney's Big House, the Black juke joint where blues players performed, and listened through the walls and windows. I mixed it all together, gospel, boogie-woogie, country and blues, with a bit of Moon Mullican and Jimmie Rodgers on the radio. My mother hoped I would play for the Lord, and sent me to a Bible institute in Texas, but I was soon sent home for playing a hymn in boogie-woogie style. In 1956 I went to Sun Records in Memphis, and Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On and Great Balls of Fire followed. Ferriday never forgot its three cousins: the Delta Music Museum in town celebrates us and other musicians from the area, and the music I learned there stayed with me on every stage.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today