At thirteen he made is debut at a Ferriday Ford dealership and then went on to make an appearance on the Ted Mack Amateur Show. Lewis won a ten-dollar prize for winning the contest, which led him to a thirty-minute show on WANT radio in 1948 in nearby Natchez, Mississippi.
In the next few years Jerry Lee moved to Wauxhatchie, Texas to attend Bible College/Institute where he was shortly expelled partly because he slipped boogie-woogie riffs into hymns. After being thrown out of the Bible College, rejected for a slot on the Louisiana Hayride, RCA records, divorced twice and was only twenty-one. After all of this he appeared on the doorstep of producer Sam Phillips' in Memphis, Phillips right hand man, songwriter-producer Jack Clement, made a demo recording of Lewis who was soon called back to Memphis for a session. When he returned to Memphis, Phillips' tried a variety of songs out on the singer and found that he could handle any type of material thrown at him with ease. So they began recording and sent a single out that Sun records thought was worthy "Crazy Arms", it didn't chart but it did decent in record sales. Jerry Lee's sophomore single release in 1957 more than made up for his first release. Lewis' remake of Roy Hall's "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" spent twenty three weeks on the top of the country charts, going all the way to number one, and topping out at number three on the pop charts. The fallow up single and probably his most well known single "Great Balls of Fire", also went to the number one spot, and subsequent singles "You Win Again" and "Breathless" were in the top ten on the country charts. .
While on the road, Jerry spent a lot of time parting he picked a lot of bad habits like extreme binge drinking. Lewis was known as a wild man and doing off the wall things. Like jumping off hotel roofs into pools and doing all sorts of drugs. He was known as eccentric in Ferriday and by his friends and the people around him on the road and around the world.