False Messiah

By Lawrence Wright Rolling Stone July 14-28, 1988 To understand clearly that Jimmy Swaggart plotted his own destruction, you must stand here in the courtyard of the Travel Inn, that squalid rendezvous on Airline Highway in Metairie, Louisiana, just across the parish...

Friday Night at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge

By Paul Hemphill From The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights and Country Music 1970   If You Don’t Clean Your Tab in 1968, Your Credit Is No Damn Good in 1969.   Thank You.   Tootsie.   —Notice Behind the Bar At Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, Nashville,...

The Strange and Mysterious Death of Mrs. Jerry Lee Lewis

By Richard Ben Cramer Rolling Stone March 1984 How was I out to lunch? Let me count the ways. I was new to magazines, never having written for a national publication, much less for ROLLING STONE. I was a newspaperman, just returned from the Middle East—a bit unsteady,...