You had to chuckle looking at the Taste of Blue Ash's Saturday-night entertainment schedule: “9:30-10:45 p.m. Jerry Lee Lewis,” it optimistically declared.

        The esteemed event planners of Blue Ash can mark down Jerry Lee Lewis, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame charter member, for an hour-and-15 minutes, but only one man was to decide how long Mr. Lewis would play, and that man was Mr. Lewis.

        Mr. Lewis, “The Killer,” the piano-pumping madman who provided the truest challenge to Elvis Presley's kingdom in the dawn of rock 'n' roll, didn't play for half that long. But his 35 minutes on stage made time irrelevant. A clock can't measure attitude and aura, and his performance oozed plenty of both.

        Before he appeared, Mr. Lewis' four-man band, anchored by his longtime guitarist Kenny Lovelace, did 10 minutes of warm-up and suffered through the occasional chants of “Jerry!” from the crowd.

        There was confusion about when the star would take the stage. The band wrapped up a song, and they could see Mr. Lewis had arrived backstage, seemingly ready to play.

        But, of course, Mr. Lewis would decide when he was ready, and after some delay the band chose to do another song without him, this time Chuck Berry's “Bye Bye Johnny.”

        Afterwards he walked out. Dudded up in a single-breasted tan suit with matching shirt and tie, black cowboy boots on his feet and a pipe in his mouth, he was the best-dressed man in all of Blue Ash. If we had the chance to ask him, he would have told us he was the sharpest-looking cat in the contiguous 48 states.

        The 66-year-old took a seat at the black Yamaha baby grand, uttered an unintelligible command to the sound man, and he was off — the left hand stamping out the bass line to another Chuck Berry number, “Roll Over Beethoven,” the right hand pounding the high-end keys with a flurry.

        Next came Charlie Rich's slow blues “No Headstone on My Grave,” reworked to epic proportions with starts and stops, time changes, and Mr. Lewis' lyric re-writes. “I want the whole wide world to know,” he sang, “Killer's a stud that loves you so.”

        He then made Hank Williams' “You Win Again” his own as well with more revamped lyrics. The jacket came off, and he rocked “Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee.” He walked off in the middle of the song, told a stage hand to get the stage lighting out of his eyes, and returned just in time to sing the final chorus.

        “Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On” earned him his first standing ovation. Taste officials said there were 80,000 people at the event Saturday. A big crowd directly took in the show. The rest could watch the concert on video screens set up away from the stage.

        “Great Balls of Fire,” the last song, was the other crowd favorite. He punctuated its performance by standing up and giving the piano bench a backwards kick, like a mule would give its skinner. The bench flew back, and Mr. Lewis calmly exited to another standing ovation.

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