Sam Phillips

The author of Last Train to Memphis brings us the life of Sam Phillips, the visionary genius who singlehandedly steered the revolutionary path of Sun Records. The music that Phillips shaped in his tiny Memphis studio, with artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ike Turner, and Johnny Cash, introduced a sound that had never been heard before. He brought forth a singular mix of black and white voices unabashedly proclaiming the primacy of the American vernacular tradition while at the same time declaring, once and for all, a new, integrated musical world. With extensive interviews and firsthand personal observations extending over the author's 25-year acquaintance with Phillips, along with wide-ranging interviews with nearly all the legendary Sun Records artists, this book gives us an ardent, intimate, and unrestrained portrait of an American original as compelling in his own right as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Thomas Edison.--Adapted from book jacket.