Sun Records producer Sam Phillips wanted to start a gospel line of music for the label (perhaps to remain in competition with RCA Victor and Columbia, who also had gospel lines at the time) and wanted Swaggart for Sun as the first gospel artist for the label.
Being too poor to own a home, the Swaggarts lived in church basements, homes of pastors, and small motels. Īccording to his autobiography To Cross a River, Swaggart, along with his wife and son, lived in poverty during the 1950s as he preached throughout rural Louisiana, struggling to survive on an income of $30 a week (equivalent to $310 in 2022). Swaggart worked several part-time odd jobs to support his young family and also began singing Southern Gospel music at various churches. In 1952, aged 17, Swaggart married 15-year-old Frances Anderson, whom he met in church in Wisner, Louisiana while he was playing music with his father, who pastored the Assembly of God Church there. With his parents, Swaggart attended small Assemblies of God churches in Ferriday and Wisner. He also had a sister, Jeanette Ensminger (1942–1999). Swaggart is the cousin of rockabilly pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and country music star Mickey Gilley. The extended family had a complex network of interrelationships: "cousins and in-laws and other relatives married each other until the clan was entwined like a big, tight ball of rubber bands". Swaggart's parents were related by marriage, as Son Swaggart's maternal uncle, Elmo Lewis, was married to Minnie Herron's sister, Mamie. Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on March 15, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana, to fiddle player and Pentecostal preacher Willie Leon (known as "Sun" or "Son") Swaggart and Minnie Bell Herron, daughter of sharecropper William Herron. Swaggart is widely known for his 19 prostitution scandals. Swaggart is the senior pastor of the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Jimmy Swaggart Ministries owns and operates the SonLife Broadcasting Network (SBN). Jimmy Lee Swaggart ( / ˈ s w æ ɡ ər t/ born March 15, 1935) is an American Pentecostal preacher, televangelist, gospel music recording artist, and Christian author.
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