Loganville couple celebrates 75 years of marriage, music and memories

Smiling, Lois Brown gently kicked the chair in front of her husband, who, foot tapping as his fingers moved nimbly along his electric bass’ strings, ignored the first, and then the second, kick.

As Jay Brown concluded the song, he turned down the volume on his stereo and Lois laughed.

“Did you see me kicking the chair?” she asked her husband. “You remember why?”

At 91, the couple bantered like the 16-year-olds they were when they married on Sept. 24, 1943, in Winnsboro, La., in a short Justice of the Peace ceremony.

At the time, they’d only known each other for about a year, but that year was long enough for the two to realize they were in love, they said.

“I first saw her when I was playing in a band at an American Legion (event),” Jay said. “I was on stage and I saw her out there dancing with this ole’ ugly boy.”

“When I actually met him was a while after that,” Lois interjected. “He had a date with my best girlfriend’s sister, and this man is always early — he’s never late. So he got there and she was not dressed and ready to go, so while she got dressed, he sat there and talked to me.”

Jay realized the girl he was talking with was the same one he’d seen “going around and around” the dance floor with the “ugly boy.”

“I sat there and talked with her for a long time while this other girl was getting dressed,” he said. “She got dressed and as we left, I looked back in the door and said, ‘I’ll see you later.’”

Jay’s date, Lois said, was the type of girl who didn’t want to be left home on a weekend night, so, to cover her bases, she’d booked two dates — one with Jay and one with another boy.

“Her sister and I started laughing when (the girl and Jay) left because we said, ‘She’s going to run into that other guy that she made that date with,’” Lois said. “It was a small town, so it could have happened easily. Well, we started laughing about it and we said, ‘Let’s go up there and see.’ We took off, went downtown, and sure enough, just as soon as we walked inside, there they stood. Jay was standing there and she was standing there, and this other guy she had a date with was standing there.”

Jay was a quick thinker, Lois said, and easily came up with a plan.

“As we walked up there, Jay said, ‘You had a date with her first, so you go ahead and take her,’” Lois said. “Jay reached over and grabbed my shoulder and said, ‘Here’s me a date anyway,’ and I didn’t say no. I went with him, and that was our first date. I always said, ‘it was love at first date,’ because after that, we were seeing each other constantly.”

Six thousand volts

For many reasons, the Browns, who now live in Loganville, are an impressive duo.

There’s the fact that at 91, they still drive and live alone.

Then there’s the fact that Jay can still play the electric bass and piano almost as well as he did back in the 1950s and ’60s with his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis, and their drummer, Russ Smith — and that he played in a show at Athens’ The Foundry the previous night.

There’s also, of course, the fact that on Monday, the couple celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary — a lifetime of music, family and friends, some of whom included Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Liberto, and later, June Carter Cash; Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Sam Phillips, Elvis Presley and many others key voices of early rock and roll.

When they married in 1943, Jay and Lois couldn’t have foreseen that one day — a day that began, for Jay and Lewis, one Thursday in late October, 1956 — they’d become part of a music scene that would inspire people worldwide for decades to come.

Jay began his career as a lineman for a Winnsboro electric company shortly after Lois gave birth to their daughter, Myra Gale Brown, on July 11, 1944 — just 10 months after Jay and Lois married.

In 1949, the family moved to Memphis when Jay took a job with Memphis Gas, Light and Water, where he again worked as a lineman.

“I spent five years stringing poles in Winnsboro and thought I’d spend the rest of my life doing the same thing,” Jay said. “(But) the electric company put me in the hospital and then in show business.”

One day in 1955, about a year after Lois gave birth to the couple’s son, Rusty, Jay and three coworkers were assigned to a set of railroad tracks, where the group was told to coat live wires with rubber insulation.

Some of the wires had come loose and were laying on the ground, so Jay, not having had an accident in the decade he’d been working as a lineman, confidently picked up the covered wire and placed it on his shoulder.

“With a slight audible snap, the end of the wire came out of its sleeve, the loose end whipping around like a snake, and before anyone could move, the snake bit me in the back,” Jay wrote in his memoir, “Whole Lotta Shakin’: 50 Years of Memories: a Tribute to Jerry Lee Lewis.” “It sounded like a cannon when it hit me, as six thousands volts of electrical current flowed through my body and exploded from the palm of my left hand, setting my clothes on fire and completely disintegrating my wristwatch. I was unconscious and hanging by the pole, secured only by my safety belt.”

The accident landed Jay in the hospital for three days, and, after promising his wife and children he’d never climb a power pole again, the company awarded him a year’s salary worth of compensation as an injury retirement package.

The problem, Jay said, was that his hope of seriously venturing to music was dashed, given his left hand had no feeling or sensation.

“I didn’t have to work for a year, so I let (my arm) mend,” Jay said. “(After it healed), I’d heard that my cousin Jerry played piano, so I said, ‘I’m gonna go down to Ferriday (Louisiana) and see if I can’t run into him and bring him up here and see if I can’t get a band or something going in the music business.’”

When he got to Ferriday, Jay found Lewis at a joint called The Hilltop Club in Natchez, where Jay had played 15 years earlier with his brothers.

“I went in there and had to introduce myself to him; I hadn’t seen him since he was just a baby,” Jay said. “I told him that I was his cousin from Memphis and said, ‘If you come to Memphis, we’ll see if we can’t drum up some ruckus and get something started.’ Elvis was hitting big by that time, and Johnny Cash.”

Despite Jay’s offer, Lewis turned him down, and Jay returned to Memphis, alone.

“The next night, he called me and he was at the drug store and said, ‘I’m over here, come get me,’” Jay said. “I went over and got him and from then on, we’d go up to Sun Records every day and rehearse and put out what songs we’d try to do. Within six months, I would say, we had a million (copies) selling, and we were on the ‘Steve Allen Show.’ It didn’t get any bigger that than — in fact, we were the hottest rock and roll group in the country. It kicked off from there.”

The piano stool

Despite Lewis’ initial successes and the tours that accompanied his brief stardom — a 1957 marriage between then-21-year-old Lewis and his second cousin, Myra, who was 13 at the time, rocked Lewis’ career, as well as the Brown family — Jay and Lois were never apart for too long, Jay said.

“If I was gone very long — over two weeks — (Lois) would come out to where I was at,” he said. “It didn’t bother our marriage, and we enjoyed seeing the country and working with big people.”

“When he was gone, I missed him very much,” Lois said. “But he’d call every day and I’d talk to him on the phone. Like I said, if he was gone for more than two weeks, I’d go out to wherever he was; I’ve been all over because of it.”

A lot of times, too, Jay said, the couple would travel together instead of with Lewis and the band.

“At one time, we were coming back from California and we (gave up) our seat on the plane — that was when Jerry had a private plane — because we said, ‘We want to drive back across the desert in a convertible,’” Jay said. “So we went and rented a convertible — that’s just one little crazy thing.”

Back home in Memphis, too, the couple always functioned as a team, Jay said, including in the operation of a piano store.

“(Lois) worked with us; we had our own little piano store,” Jay said. “She couldn’t play piano at all and the rest of (the salespeople) could, but she’d outsell them all because she’d have me come in and play. She could sell some pianos.”

“When I wanted him to stop, I’d kick the stool,” Lois said, laughing. “He’d get the message — get up and move so I can finish selling that piano.”

To this day, Jay still plays the piano — though now most of his piano-playing is done in the Brown’s Loganville home, which they’ve occupied for about 25 years — and Lois still lovingly kicks whatever chair or stool is nearby when she wants him to stop playing.

“There was never a time in our lives where I was saying no and he was saying yes, and I always helped him with everything, and he has always (helped me),” Lois said. “(Our relationship) wasn’t a one-sided thing — and I’m still taking care of him. I’ve taken care of this man for 75 years; all I want is the best from him, for him and to keep him healthy.”