This is probably the best obit we will read about him:..........Lewis embodied pinched obduracy, brooding, malevolent ignorance, violent unreliability and borderline madness. He abused women, played with guns and shot at men; he drove the highways of the south blind drunk with his loaded pistol on the dashboard. Yet in the vivid contrast between the meanness of the man and the grandeur of the artist, the common denominators were his phenomenal energy and admirable, all-conquering self-belief.

He will be remembered for his lifetime of hillbilly delirium, but he will be renowned for his seizure of the musical moment at the dawn of rock’n’roll, when an incomparable talent was his intoxicant and ours: when he shot up the old order and played out his defiant dramas on the keyboard, in the studio and on the stage.

He was an artist, true to his fire. For once, the Guardian says something that makes some sense. I don’t believe for a moment that he could have made the music he did if he’d been a different kind of person than he was. There’s a lesson in there but there’s no need to elaborate.

This may be an apocryphal story, but I read once that Little Richard had invited him to be his house guest for the weekend. When asked afterwards what it was like, he replied that it was fun having him but he didn’t sleep more than a couple hours and, if you were thinking of inviting him, you should “first, lock up your liquor and your women.”

Chantilly Lace was an effort to get us to appreciate all kinds of women. And for that I’m grateful.