Dewey and Elvis : the life and times of a rock 'n' roll deejay / Louis Cantor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cantor, Louis.

Series:

Music in American Life

Music in American life

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Disc jockeys--Biography.

Disc jockeys.

Rock music--Tennessee--Memphis--History and criticism.

Rock music.

Popular culture--United States.

Popular culture.

Phillips, Dewey--Biography.

Phillips, Dewey.

Presley, Elvis, 1935-1977.

Presley, Elvis.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (321 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Urbana, Ill. : University of Illinois Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Beginning in 1949, while Elvis Presley and Sun Records were still virtually unknown--and two full years before Alan Freed famously "discovered" rock 'n' roll--Dewey Phillips brought the budding new music to the Memphis airwaves by playing Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, and Muddy Waters on his nightly radio show Red, Hot and Blue. The mid-South's most popular white deejay, "Daddy-O-Dewey" soon became part of rock 'n' roll history for being the first major disc jockey to play Elvis Presley and, subsequently, to conduct the first live, on-air interview with the singer. Louis Cantor illuminates Phillips's role in turning a huge white audience on to previously forbidden race music. Phillips's zeal for rhythm and blues legitimized the sound and set the stage for both Elvis's subsequent success and the rock 'n' roll revolution of the 1950s. Using personal interviews, documentary sources, and oral history collections, Cantor presents a personal view of the disc jockey while restoring Phillips's place as an essential figure in rock 'n' roll history.

Contents:

""Cover""; ""Title Page""; ""Copyright Page""; ""Contents""; ""Acknowledgments""; ""Introduction""; ""1. Programmed Chaos: Dewey Phillips on the Air""; ""2. Before the Storm: Dewey Arrives at the Five-and-Dime""; ""3. The White Brother on Beale Street""; ""4. The New Memphis Sound: The Birth of Black Programming""; ""5. ""What in the World Is That?"" Is This Guy Black or White?""; ""6. Racial Cross-Pollination: Black and White Together""; ""7. The Great Convergence: Pop Tuner' One-Stop""; ""8. The Phillips Boys: Soul (Better than Blood) Brothers""

""9. Red, Hot and Blue: The Hottest Cotton-Pickin' Thang in the Country""""10. Dewey and Elvis: The Synthesized Sound""; ""11. Dewey Introduces Elvis to the World""; ""12. The King and His Court Jester: Men-Children in the Promised Land""; ""13. ""Red Hot at First . . . Blue at the Very End""""; ""14. The Final Descent: ""If Dewey Couldn't be Number One, He Didn''t Wanna Be""""; ""15. ""Goodbye, Good People""""; ""16. The Legacy: The Next Generation and Beyond""; ""Epilogue""; ""Notes""; ""Bibliography""; ""Index""; ""Illustrations follow page 86""; ""Illustrations follow page 158""

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [265]-276) and index.

ISBN:

9786613135636

9781283135634

1283135639

9780252090738

025209073X

OCLC:

923494770