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. Swaggart worked several part-time odd jobs to support his young family and also began singing Southern Gospel music at various churches.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). 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). He 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.' They were related by marriage, as Son's maternal uncle was Elmo Lewis, who was married to Minnie'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 the senior pastor of the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The Jimmy Swaggart Ministries owns and operates the SonLife Broadcasting Network (SBN). In 1980, Swaggart received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Performance for Traditional Gospel. During the 1970s and 1980s, he sold in excess of 17 million LP albums. Swaggart plays the piano and he also sings in a baritone voice. His 'crusades' enabled him to travel throughout the contiguous United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, and South America.

Īt the height of his popularity in the 1980s, his telecast was transmitted to in excess of 3,000 stations and cable systems each week. and on 78 channels in 104 countries, and over the Internet. The weekly Jimmy Swaggart Telecast and A Study in the Word programs are broadcast throughout the U.S. His television ministry, which began in 1971, and was originally known as the Camp Meeting Hour, has a viewing audience both in the U.S. Jimmy Lee Swaggart ( / ˈ s w æ ɡ ər t/ born March 15, 1935) is an American Pentecostal televangelist, gospel music recording artist, pianist, and Christian author.

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