Bob Dylan is the latest artist to add to the outpouring of tributes to Jerry Lee Lewis, who died yesterday (Oct. 28) at age 87. At the end of his concert last night in Nottingham, England, Dylan honored the “Great Balls of Fire” singer with a cover and short speech.
“[I don’t know] how many of you know, but Jerry Lee’s gone,” Dylan said as he introduced the song. “We gonna play this song, one of his. Jerry Lee will live forever, we all know that.”
Dylan and his band went into a version of “I Can’t Seem To Say Goodbye,” a song originally written by Don Robertson and covered by Lewis on his 1970 Sun Records album A Taste of Country.
Dylan and Lewis first crossed paths in the same recording studio in 1969, with Dylan telling Rolling Stone around that time that he wrote “To Be Alone With You” for the piano rock ‘n’ roller (Lewis never recorded it, so Dylan put it out on his own Nashville Skyline album). Lewis later covered Dylan’s “Rita May” on his self-titled 1979 album.
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Lewis died at his home in DeSoto County, Miss., not far from where he got his start in Memphis six decades ago.
