It all started in 1949 when Memphis's own WDIA became the first radio station in the country to switch to all-black programming. After WDIA went off the air, WHBQ decided to capture some of their newly discovered black audience by putting "Daddy-O-Dewey" Phillips--the most popular white deejay in the mid-South--on a new show, Red, Hot and Blue. Although the show originally aired for just fifteen minutes a night, its impact was immeasurable.

While Elvis and Sun Records were still virtually unknown--and two full years before Alan Freed famously "discovered" rock and roll--Dewey Phillips was playing Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, and Muddy Waters. Phillips is 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 Elvis). Louis Cantor argues, however, for an expanded understanding of Phillips's role in turning a huge white audience on to previously forbidden race music. Phillips 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 the oral history collections at the Center for Southern Folklore and the University of Memphis, Cantor presents a very personal view of the disc jockey while arguing for his place as an essential part of rock 'n' roll history. Loaded with anecdotes and insights about key figures, including Elvis's close friend George Klein and Sun Records' Sam Phillips, Dewey and Elvis will be irresistible to anyone interested in Elvis, the Memphis music scene, or the history of rock 'n' roll.

"I could write a book about this book!. . . .This book is a MUST READ for all fans of blues and Rock-n-Roll history. It's my book of the year, beating out The Dylan Chronicles (a close second). Triple A+."--Holler

"Cantor's biography offers more than the story of an underappreciated disc jockey and his relationship to Elvis. Woven throughout the book is thoughtful, original, and illuminating research on the social history of race and how notions about racial identity and geographical space informed the ways in which the segregated white and black residents of Memphis interacted and were involved in one another's musical cultures and social spheres."--The Journal of Southern History

Louis Cantor is professor emeritus of history at Indiana University. He now lives in Memphis, Tennessee, and is the author of Wheelin' on Beale: How WDIA-Memphis Became the Nation's First All-Black Radio Station and Created the Sound That Changed America, and A Prologue to the Protest Movement: The Missouri Sharecropper Roadside Demonstration of 1939, which was made into an award-winning documentary film. Cantor, who grew up in Memphis, went to Humes High School with Elvis Presley.

Awards:

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2006

Links:
Visit the Google Book Search page for this title

Series:
Music in American Life

Subjects:
Music / Biography & Personal Papers / Black Studies

1325 South Oak Street • Champaign, IL 61820-6903 • www.press.uillinois.edu Privacy Policy     Website Feedback

Copyright 2008 © by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved