Swaggart says God first spoke to him when he was 8. While Swaggart considered a country music career and Gilley and Lewis briefly contemplated the ministry, all three came to their callings early. Mickey, Jerry Lee and Jimmy knew to stay on the white side of Mississippi Avenue, but nevertheless found comfort and musical inspiration at Haney's Big House, a black nightclub. The branches of this extended family, as Frankie Lewis Terrell describes it, had much in common: they fought violently (Mickey's mother once took a shot at one of her husband's mistresses), drank and gambled to excess, believed in voodoo and never missed Sunday services at the Assembly of God church on Texas Avenue, where all three cousins performed. Son Swaggart had a few businesses, played the fiddle but eventually chose to scratch out a living as a minister. Elmo Lewis did odd jobs and spent time in jail. Arthur Gilley, Mickey's father, ran a taxi service and chased women. Mickey Gilley - whose mother Irene was sister to Jerry Lee's father, Elmo - came into world less than 12 months later, in 1936. In 1935, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Lee Swaggart were born their mothers, Minnie Bell Swaggart and Mamie Lewis, were sisters. Swaggarts, Lewises and Gilleys had been lured to town to pick cotton and bootleg whiskey.
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