The Academy of Country Music’s 1974 “Top New Male Vocalist” and the Association’s 1976 “Entertainer Of the Year” are among middle cousin Mickey Gilley’s many accolades. When asked how it felt to have saved more souls than any other preacher on Earth, the Reverend Billy Graham responded – “I don’t know, ask Jimmy Swaggart.” During the peak of his popularity, Swaggart’s weekly telecast was transmitted to over 3,000 stations each week. The eldest of the three cousins, Pentecostal preacher Jimmy Lee Swaggart, would rise from a pauper who spread the word on street corners from a top his car to one of the most revered televangelists in history. And certainly, each have left and continue to leave their mark on this earth. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, there’s a little bit of these three cousins in every southern family – especially mine.įrom March 1935 to 1936, three cousins were born within miles of one another. Lewis, Swaggart and Gilley have made perhaps the most public display of this. When you’re raised in the Bible Belt you stay somewhere in between shouting from the Amen Corner and falling from the proverbial bar stool.
The three cousins, Lewis, Swaggart and Mickey Gilley, have each had their impact on mine and my brother’s lives. I don’t recall at what age I first heard Jimmy Swaggart, but I remember the piano solo in the “Sawdust Trail” when he told his mother he was coming to Heaven to meet her.
I first heard Jerry Lee Lewis at about 6 years old when my parents purchased a boxset of 1950s Billboard hits at a yard sale. Left to right: Mickey Gilley, Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Lee Lewis
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