Dewey and Elvis: The Life and Times of a Rock 'n' Roll Deejay
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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 rock 'n' roll 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" 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). This book illustrates Phillips's role in turning a huge white audience on to previously forbidden race music. His 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, Louis Cantor presents a very personal view of the disc jockey while arguing for his place as an essential part of rock 'n' roll history.
AcknowledgmentsixIntroduction11Programmed Chaos: Dewey Phillips on the Air72Before the Storm: Dewey Arrives at the Five-and-Dime303The White Brother on Beale Street454The New Memphis Sound: The Birth of Black Programming645"What in the World Is That?" Is This Guy Black or White?746Racial Cross-Pollination: Black and White Together877The Great Convergence: Pop Tunes' One-Stop968The Phillips Boys: Soul (Better than Blood) Brothers1069Red, Hot and Blue: The Hottest Cotton-Pickin' Thang in the Country12210Dewey and Elvis: The Synthesized Sound13511Dewey Introduces Elvis to the World14412The King and His Court Jester: Men-Children in the Promised Land15913"Red Hot at First... Blue at the Very End"17514The Final Descent: "If Dewey Couldn't Be Number One, He Didn't Wanna Be"19315"Goodbye, Good People"20716The Legacy: The Next Generation and Beyond222Epilogue231Notes235Bibliography265Index277
