Present At The Creation-Sun Records’ Sam Phillips And The Invention Of Rock And Rock

Click below to listen to Fresh Air's Terry Gross interviewing Peter Guralnick on his new book on the influence of Sun Record 's Sam Phillips on the development of rock and roll.  

 

http://www.npr.org/2015/11/23/457083328/the-man-and-the-mistakes-that-invented-rock-n-roll

 

I have spent a ton of cyber-ink detailing the effect that rock and roll, now called classic rock and roll, the rock at the creation in the early to mid-1950s when I, and a whole lot of post-World War II baby boomers, now greying, came of musical age. Came of musical age to the likes of Elvis, Ike Turner, Howling Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and a ton of others who you can now see on YouTube in case you missed their performances, or were too young.

And in the center, well maybe not the exact center but close, of all the jail-breakout music the man present at the creation was one Sam Phillips of Sun Records (and many other recording sites during his long life). Sam believed that if he could get that sound that he was recording early in his career, that black-etched rhythm and blues sound of guys like Junior Parker, Ike Turner (whose Rocket 88 is my choice for the beginning of rock and roll but everybody has some choice of where it went from Frank Sinatra, Doris Day and company to from hunger black and white guys who wanted to jump up the music, make the whole world dance in the red scare Cold War night), Big Joe Turner, out to a broader audience in Mister James Crow times, North and South as far as music went, they would go crazy over it, make it their own. And they, we did.

So it is no surprise that somebody, in this case previous Sam Phillips biographer and mad monk rock and roll history man Peter Guralnick would lay down the case for one of the guys present at the creation. Giving plenty of hard-core information about the background to various   classic rock hits and the personalities involved. Also no surprise that the book comes with a CD selection of great and not so great, well-known and not so well-known songs from that time to make his case. If you are interested in a time when men and women played rock and roll for keeps check this out.