Since his childhood in Florence, Alabama, Phillips believed that black music could transform the soul. Guralnick is clearly fond of his subject, as indicated by his new book’s complete title: Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll: How One Man Discovered Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley, and How His Tiny Label, Sun Records of Memphis, Revolutionized the World! He argues that Sam Phillips was an idealist devoted to principles of individualism, authenticity, freedom, and racial enlightenment. And so you might assume that Phillips was calculating racial attitudes, appropriating black music, and gauging the market for a big score.īut whenever Phillips made this statement, Peter Guralnick contends, he would laugh, “as if to underscore that money was never the point-it was the vision, it was what would come afterward.” Informed by a long relationship with Phillips and a longer career as a great American music writer, Guralnick has produced a sprawling, engaging biography stuffed with stories and tidbits. If you know a little something about Sam Phillips, you probably know his famous remark: “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars!” You also probably know that the white man he discovered was Elvis Presley and that Phillips’s label, Sun Records, popularized a new rock ‘n’ roll sound that transformed American music.
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