Description
Exploring interwoven threads of personality, coincidence, progress, and taste--all essentially unrelated to music--a veteran journalist explains how popular culture and business intersected in Memphis to set the stage for rock and roll well before Elvis arrived. Reprint.
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Robert Gordon begins where most chroniclers of the music world end and spins a magical fairy tale peopled with Delta bluesmen, a peanut vendor, a matinee cowboy, a professional wrestler, and a manic deejay. It Came From Memphis doesn't focus on Elvis, Al Green, or the Sun/Stax studios. Instead it creeps into the shadows cast by those institutions, concentrating on artists like Jim Dickinson and Alex Chilton, and bands like the MarKeys and Big Star. Gordon limns, with respect and the fascination born of true devotion, the story of white teenagers caught in the middle of an extraordinary confluence of music, entrepreneurship, to usher in an exciting new musical form. The result is a rock 'n' roll and Memphis -- its alma mater.
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