With extensive interviews and firsthand personal observations extending over a 25-year period with Phillips, along with wide-ranging interviews with nearly all the legendary Sun Records artists, Guralnick gives us an ardent, unrestrained portrait of an American original as compelling in his own right as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, or Thomas Edison. He brought forth a singular mix of black and white voices passionately proclaiming the vitality of the American vernacular tradition while at the same time declaring, once and for all, a new, "integrated" musical day. The music that he shaped in his tiny Memphis studio with artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Ike Turner, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, introduced a sound that had never been heard before. The author of the critically acclaimed Elvis Presley biography "Last Train to Memphis" brings us the life of Sam Phillips, the visionary genius who singlehandedly steered the revolutionary path of Sun Records. In his new book, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll, Guralnick chronicles Phillips' work at Sun and his lasting impact on the music industry. Peter Guralnick is the author of numerous seminal works of music and popular culture, including Searching for Roberth Johnson and a two-volume biography of Elvis Presley. It was the night of May 15, 1986, a few months after he had been inducted into the charter class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for having produced the first recordings by Elvis Presley.
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