Episode 676 - Peter Guralnick

Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fucksters?

What the fuckaroos? What the fuckaroo bonsais, maybe, even. How are you? Hi, Mark Maron here.

Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining. I'm happy to be here. I'm punchy.

I'm tired. I shot all day. Maron Season 4. In progress.

It's happening. First two episodes were tremendous. Did I already tell you about that? No, I couldn't have.

We just wrapped it on Monday night. Like, Lynn Sheldon, who you've heard on the show and seen her many movies, directed the first two. Spectacular. Went great.

I think I was in the middle of it the last time I talked to you. The stories are good now. This block, we're shooting with the incomparable Bob Gatt Goldthwait back on set with his hats and his interesting clothing choices and his auteur vision. And we're doing the thing.

We're doing the show. I'm bearded and frazzled. And it's going well. I think you'll like him.

It's fun for me. I think I mentioned this before. The fact that we're in a new area, a reality not like the one that I live necessarily, has freed me up a bit. Having a bit more fun.

Hope that's okay. My guest today is the Honorable Peter Goralnik. Peter Goralnik, I don't know if you know who he is, but he's one of the best friends. He's a great music writer.

He's written amazing books about music. The one that first blew me away was Searching for Robert Johnson. He went on to write Last Train to Memphis, The Rise of Elvis Presley, Careless Love, The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. He did Dream Boogie, The Triumph of Sam Cooke, which I read a little bit of.

I've read a little bit of all these books, but his newest book is Sam Phillips, The Man Who Invented Rock and Roll. And I got to talk to him. Now, I am certainly no music nerd. I know what I know, but I don't know it in detail, and I don't run too deep with some things.

A few specific things, maybe I know some stuff about. It's not a nerd out on one specific artist or many specific artists, but this guy's a historian, and the people he chooses to talk about are pretty fascinating people. This is a massive book on Sam Phillips. And Sam Phillips, Sun Records Studios, I mean, they were all there, man.

This is where it all happened. This is where it all coalesced. Black music, country music, mountain music, some gospel music, and it all sort of came together. And that's where Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis and Howlin' Wolf, a lot of them all came out of there.

And some country artists that I need to know about. Charlie Rich, John Prine did a Sun single back in the day. Carl Perkins, of course. Out of the vortex of all those different forms of music and personalities comes rock and roll.

Perhaps, maybe, depending on what you think the first rock and roll song is, I believe I discussed that with Peter Koronek. I did go to Sun Records. I stood out in front of it. Unfortunately, the time that I went there, when I was younger, I don't think I was as into it as I should have been.

I did go. I went to Nashville. I went to Memphis. I did go to Graceland.

I did go out there. I did not know Elvis. I met his uncle. I met his uncle, Vernon, and I bought a Graceland comb that was taken from me by a woman who drove a large Cadillac with leopard skin pattern seat covers.

Where does that go? How does that work out? Well, I went out to Graceland, and I saw the house, and I was surprised at how relatively humble it was and not too ostentatious. Perhaps it was for the time.

There was a room with three TVs, and that was sort of like, ooh, a room with three TVs. This guy was out of control. I do remember the trophy hut out back. That was really the most impressive.

There's an entire sort of hangar just for gold records and stuff. That was interesting. And who was that comic who used to do that great joke? God, what was that guy's name?

He did that great joke. If Elvis was so great, why is he buried in his backyard like a gerbil or hamster or something? Oh, if anyone knows who did that joke, please tell me. That was a good joke.

I don't think it was Rob Schneider. I don't think it was. So across the street, my memory from Graceland was a strip mall where you buy all kinds of things. Elvis.

And Vernon Presley sat there in front of one of those stores saying he was Elvis' uncle, and he'd written his book. Just sitting out there in front of a store on his own selling this book about Elvis. Vernon Presley. So I bought a book, and I bought a comb, and I bought some other knickknacks, Elvis' knickknacks, that night back in Memphis.

Well, what had happened was, this is a rock and roll story. It's got nothing to do with rock and roll. It's got nothing to do with Elvis. Maybe it does.

But that night, I met some dudes on the roof. They sold me a little blow. So I had a little blow. I had some Elvis paraphernalia.

I had Uncle Vernon's book. I had nothing to do, and I was all alone, and I was drinking. So I did a little blow, and I went to a club. I asked someone, maybe the concierge at the Peabody, where could I go to do some clubbing?

Because I was on a little blow and ready to go in Memphis, Tennessee. So I went to this place that he recommended, and in my memory, I walked into this large kind of one-room club, and there was nobody in it but one crazy-looking woman dancing in the middle all by herself. Just dancing, looking crazy. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way.

It all looked a little crazy. It looked like I just walked into a David Lynch situation. And I didn't know what else to do. I was drinking.

I was doing some blow. This was the club I was at. So I went out, and I was very kind of, you know, not dancing with the lady. I waited until she got off the dance floor, and I said, what's up?

She goes, not much. I go, you want to do some blow? She goes, yeah. So we do some blow?

I go, you want to hang out? Or something, whatever the equivalent of that was then? She goes, okay. And we go out.

I said, I'm staying in this hotel. I don't have a car. She goes, I have a car. We jumped into this large Cadillac Eldorado with weaponskin seats.

It looked like a pretty well-worn in car. We drove back to the Peabody. We went up to my room, and we did some blow, and nothing happened. But she did, for some reason, go, can I have this Elvis comb?

And I go, yeah, I guess. And she took my Elvis comb, and some of my change, and maybe some matches. I think I gave her lighter and the rest of my cigarettes. And then she left.

So that was not very rock and roll. I guess that's the point of that story. But nonetheless, in terms of Elvis Presley, it's weird. I knew some of his great songs when I was younger, but it took me seeing Rick Danko open for Jerry Garcia at the Orpheum in Boston do Mystery Train alone on an acoustic guitar in the most beautiful, intense, almost tripped-out fashion.

Granted, I was on Little Mushrooms, but that was my portal in to everything Elvis somehow or another was seeing the late Rick Danko just lose himself in Mystery Train. Anyway, that was quite a ramble. I hope it tightened up and made some sense or was at least compelling as we enter this conversation with rock journalist Peter Goralnik. All right, let's focus on rock and roll, man.

All right, what's up? Yeah, you know what it is. You've been chasing it your whole life. No, wait, now, so you're like a real writer guy, Peter Goralnik.

I've been seeing your name forever, and I own several of your books. This one, the new one I got for free, but I read most of Dream Boogie. I've had I Like Going Home, Feel Like Going Home Forever. Searching for Robert Johnson was a nice poetic meditation on the nature and truth of Robert Johnson.

The Double Elvis Swammer, two major books that ate up how much of your life? A decade at least? Only 11 years. The Last Rain in Memphis and Careless Love, the quintessential seminal Elvis homes.

Well, you know. Yeah, whatever. What do you know? But did you set out originally?

I mean, I think we went to this in college. I don't do a lot of research. I graduated from Boston University. Yeah, no, I graduated from Boston University, and I even taught at Boston University in the classics department when I was 23, 24, 25.

Classics. Classics. You know, I'm a classic kind of guy. Okay, so let's talk about that for a minute.

So what does that mean, classics? Latin and Greek. So you can read Latin and Greek. You know, I taught Greek, but I really, I was faking it.

I majored in Greek. I never was that good at it. Latin, I was quite good at it, and I could read pretty well. But I taught, of course, in the ancient novel where one year I would be reading Latin of Apuleius.

Yeah. Another year I would be in English. We read stuff like classics. I introduced classics to Brooklyn.

Zeldie. V, Tristram Shandy, a whole range of things, which I saw as being parallel in various ways to these ancient works. To the tragedies and to the narratives. Yeah, to the narratives, yeah.

The great hermeneutic code where everybody ends kind of shitty or ends kind of good, right? Or ends. Everybody ends. Right, right.

So when you were a kid, you were, you know, kind of a, what, a language nerd? No, not at all. It was just an easy thing to major in because I went to, in high school, I got so much Latin that I could declare a major and take no courses. Right.

And then I could take whatever I wanted. No, I just, all I ever wanted to be was a writer and a baseball player from the time I was six or seven years old. But a writer, because you did a couple of books out of the gate there that weren't necessarily along the journey that you took, right? No, I've written ten novels.

I mean, I wrote my first one. Here comes the truth. No, I didn't set out to write. The only reason.

And I published two collections. Don't break my heart, Peter. You're the guy. Don't tell me that music writing was just something you had to do for money.

There was no money. I mean, I would never have done it. If money were the object, this is not what I would have done. But I, no, I published two collections of short stories when I was 20 and 21.

But I, no, I wrote about music. I wanted to be a writer. But I fell into the blues when I was 15 or 16. How'd that happen?

Well, that's when I got it, too. I mean, you're older than me, right? How old are you? Me, I'm about 15.

Come on, I'm 15 at heart. I'm 15 at heart. I'm 15 at heart. I mean, the person on the exterior of the produced to rock fans.

Well, before that, really. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I mean, it was just after the brother or friend of mine went to the Newport Folk Festival. He comes back, you know, with a couple of dozen albums and they could have been.

That they were selling at the Folk Festival? Yeah, and they could have been, you know, I just can't think of who would, you know, who would have been, you know, Peter Paul and Mary, except that was before Peter Paul and Mary, but just all kinds of folk. We don't buy it before. A couple of blues guys.

And he came back with a couple of blues guys. What, Skip James? No, he wasn't. Muddy Waters?

No, I'd say more like Bill Brunzi. Oh, okay. Anyway, this friend of mine and I just settled on it. We heard these blues and we just went crazy.

And we got, this was like 1959, 1960, and we just, it became a lifelong search. And it just turned me around. It turned my life around. And it led me to every other kind of music that I listened to.

Every time. Sure. But what do you think it is? Are you a Jewish guy?

I'm a Jewish guy. Yeah, me too. So, and I'm not saying anything. I do talk about that sometimes.

But, you know, there's been a few fairly inspired Jewish blues players and a lot of Jewish kids, like myself, who were mildly enlightened when we were younger and gravitated towards blues. Did you ever think about that connection at all? No, never. Because I had no Jewish background.

I'm Jewish ethnically. I know I'll be on the list when Donald Trump draws it up. But, you know, other than that, that's my identity. Yeah, well, I feel kind of the same.

I had a little bit of Jewish background. I mean, I did, you know, I did seek sort of identification through Jewishness at some point. I'm not a religious man, but culturally I Jewish. Yeah, no, I didn't have any of that, but I know Ralph Basfrance from the Chess Records.

You know, he made this big connection between Jews and the blues and the way you heard from the cantors growing up and the temples was exactly the same as the blues. And I take that, you know, for his truth, and I don't dispute that, but that was not the case with me. No, it was something like, I had never heard anything like this before, and I presented a raw slice of, I mean, it was like last week's at Brooklyn. Oh, you can see that.

It was just a whole, introduced a whole element of sound and an unadurned honesty that just knocked me out. Musically and vocally. Musically and vocally both. And I just sat in my room, my mother had gotten this phonographic with green stamps from stop and shop.

Yeah. And, you know, it's one of these little portable things. Sure. Everything's built up.

Yeah. And I I would sit there in my room, first at home, going off to college, just listening to these records and studying them, trying to decipher them. I'd go to Roxbury and, you know, go to these buyers and stuff. I couldn't order a drink.

I mean, I'd get bloated on ginger ale. So the black neighborhood in Roxbury, Matapan, was pretty black at that time, too, right? Yeah, the jazz clubs were along Mass Ave. We had it down to Columbus, and there would be battles with the blues and stuff.

And this was in the early 60s? Yeah. But the big revelation in my life when it came to that, and I don't want to answer the question about why I started writing about music, but it was when the Soul Show started to come to town. And that was around 64 when WILD, which was the first black station in Boston, opened up, and Early Bird was there.

He was a DJ? He was a DJ. He ruled Boston. And he moved to Renton, in Washington, some time ago.

And I've stayed there before my life. My second wife came from. Her parents were right outside of Renton. Well, for some reason, Early Bird thought the future was in Renton, which didn't turn out to be the case.

That did not turn out to be the case. He wanted a job at Boeing at the time. No, I think he had an EMP in mind for some reason. He sort of fronted a couple of shows, but that was about it.

So these Soul Shows, who were those touring actors? The first show I saw was The Summer Shower of Stars in 1964. And it was Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Elvis Redding, Sugar Padisano, The Tams, oh man, one of those great, Garrett Mims. It was incredible.

I ran into a girl that I'd known before I'd grown up with. She was going out with a low-level mafia guy who had something to do with putting on the shows. She says to me, how would you like to usher the show? And I said, I mean, I jumped out.

I was scared. But these are all black audiences, I'm assuming. They were all black audiences, yeah. And you were just this little wiry kid who was sitting there taking it in.

Yeah, I was sitting there like this. I can picture him. I can picture him. I'm going to just project a night of life onto you by who you are right now.

Well, then I started ushering the show. So free ticket? Free ticket. I might have gotten $10 or $15.

I'm not sure. I was the worst usher in history. I mean, because the cat usher would say, usher, usher, usher, to the balcony. They're breaking in off the fire escape.

And everybody would be heading to the balcony. I'd be heading to the bathroom or something. They're not going to get involved. We're showing people, you know, showing this nice-looking couple, this nice couple to their seats and having these two hired guys with their arms crossed saying, what are you going to do about it?

Oh, I'm going to go find somebody to help. But I'd get backstage and I'd see Jackie Wilson backstage. There was no connection other than observing. And I would, you know, Little Richard would be playing piano.

So you felt the heat and the excitement of show business and, you know, these guys who were able to put out that type of sound and that type of music. Well, and it taught me that the blues was a living thing. I mean, I knew the blues was a living thing, but it didn't exist in my life. I'd see Leighton Hopkins as the first blues.

So you see the sound moving through the generations of music. Well, yeah. I mean, I didn't make a distinction. I went to see black music in a way.

Yeah. And eventually Waylon Jennings. I mean, it led me to Waylon. I saw the Staples things.

I'll end with Waylon. I saw the Staples things going up against the Mighty, Mighty Clouds of Joy. And I thought, man, the Mighty Clouds of Joy is just going to destroy them. And I saw Mavis just command this again with an all-black audience.

Just pulverize the audience with the power of her voice. And so it was that kind of thing. So this stuff just moved you to the point where you couldn't make sense of it with your brain. And that was exciting.

Yeah, I wasn't looking for brain. No, never. I mean, I was writing my novels. I was doing that.

Seeing the Soul Show. Then I started seeing Muddy Waters because they were just not anywhere near where I was. Around the same time I drove all night to New York to see Muddy Waters. I drove back to go to work in the morning.

Like what, 65? It might have been 64, 65. Yeah, he was coming back from the American Folk Blues Festival in Europe. And with a full band?

With a full band and before his automobile accident and when he does What was it? Little Walter? No, it was James Cotton. I know this fan, probably S.P.

Leary on drums. I can't remember exactly. And it was incredible. And he had his automobile accident.

So when he does Mojo working, he does his jiribuy thing on stage. Wow, that's what he was doing now. But I mean, the whole point was it had to come to life for me. And in that same time period, within a couple of years, all these blues singers like Skip James and Son House of Mississippi, John Hurt.

Came out of the wild, wherever they were. Yeah, yeah, they were rediscovered in various places. Skip James, man. You know, that sound is so haunting and so amazing.

Like I read the, it wasn't your book. I don't know why you didn't write it, but what is it? The Devil and Skip James? Was that the name of the book?

Yeah. And it was sort of fascinating to me that so many of these artists sort of just laid dormant for years in a way. Right. And then kind of like, well, because of a new interest, they were kind of found.

Well, they weren't waiting to be found. They weren't, you know, it's like, I forget what Mississippi John Hurt was doing down in Avalon, but it was like herding sheep or something. Right. It was similar to that.

Right. And they weren't expecting it at all. But actually, the first story I ever wrote, I mean, I did not set out to write on music, but I was so compelled by the power of Skip James' music that I think around 65, so I was 21 then. Yeah.

I saw him out. I represented myself as being from the magazine Blues Unlimited. I got up. Dick Waterman, who's become a great friend since then.

And I said, I'm doing a story for Blues Unlimited. He said, that's funny. They just ran a seven-part series on Skip James. But I pursued it.

I continued. I said, Blues World. I'm doing it for Blues World. But Blues, you want to be at the magazine.

But I mean, I had to drag myself out of the car. I remember parking the car in. Because you were nervous. I was just so scared.

And I had a tape recorder with me. My father said, real reporters don't use tape recorder because he had been the editor of his college news. Right. I said, man, real reporters didn't have tape recorder.

They hadn't been invented with you. But I wound up leaving the tape recorder in the car because it was one more self-conscious burden to carry on. And Skip was so gracious to me. And I'm asking these stupid questions.

And I wasn't writing for publication. I went to interview him. Because in my mind, great and such as this will not pass my way. And I felt compelled.

A year earlier, two years earlier, I sought out the English author, Henry Green. I was in England. And he wrote, caught back, blindness, living, loving, don't be concluding. Great, great writer.

And I wrote to him. And he said, well, come visit me in some fancy neighborhood. And I did. And I spent about four hours with him.

And he drank the afternoon away. And it was just so thrilling. And I did. And I wrote up everything.

And eventually, years later, I wrote a story. But really, I had no business at all, except for the same reason Skip James. Great and such as this will not be. What did you want to know from him?

What did you think you were going to get? It wasn't that. I just wanted to be around him and be in his presence. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

I wanted to, in some way, get a glimpse, get an insight into what it was that created or represented this genius. And what did you get? What did you find? What did you walk away with?

What were the answers to that question? Well, I think the answer to that question was there were no answers, which I knew going in. But no, for me, it was enthralling. And I would say there hasn't been a single...

I've never written about anybody or anything that I didn't love. That doesn't diminish him at all in my eye. I'm interested in him as a creator. You probably hang out for a couple of hours until you annoyed him.

Well, you know, it's hard to say. I've hung out for him for just a few minutes and annoyed him, and I've hung out for a long time and hung in there. But, you know, the point is that I knew from the beginning. Again, you can imagine my body language.

I'm a person. Now I can talk, and there's a number of reasons I could. Then I couldn't. And I'm just like, you know, this little...

But, you know, I forced myself. I just, you know, forced myself to... And with Merle, what I wasn't interested in... I wasn't interested in the external.

I wasn't interested in the persona that's being put out. I was interested in what was behind that. And then talking to Merle, for instance, on the enhanced e-book of Last Highway, where we got a chapter on Merle, I included something like 21 or 24 minutes of Merle talking about creativity, about songwriting. That was what interested me.

That was what I got from Skip James, who talked about when his father got superannuated. He retired from the ministry. I mean, I just dug that. What does superannuated mean?

Too old. Okay. I think at this point I may be superannuated. No, no, you're jamming.

So, like, well, it's interesting how much of that music came from the church at some point. I mean, and how it connected it was to the church. Well, it came from the church in the cotton fields. Yeah.

I mean, The Fire Next Time really speaks more than anything about the genius, not of individual people, but of African-American culture, and the way in which every moment is prized, and every moment has to be prized, and by being thrown back on their own resources, African-Americans created a culture different, and some might say superior, of a charitarian culture. That was a very, I don't know if it was an influential book, but it really, it was an exotatory book, I mean, to me, it was an exotatory book, but I still assign that to students in the American. Which book? The Fire Next Time.

No More Water, The Fire Next Time. True words when air spoke. We're seeing The Fire right now. But I think, like, now, that's right.

But I think now, like, you know, with this new book, The Man Who Invented Rock and Roll, Sam Phillips, about Sun Records, is that this was a guy that intuitively, you know, had his sort of fingers on the pulse of that, and was the first guy to really, I think, integrate it in mainstream music, no? No, totally, but I mean, you've got to understand, he had a vision of what the music was and would be, and the force it would have, and the changes it would, you know, bring about. He had a vision long before he opened the studio. He saw music, you know, some people say, I'm more of a wink at Ami, I, you know, Love Conquers All.

Well, he said Music Conquers All, Why didn't you put that on there? I should have, but I've got Sam arguing against the title and for the title in the prologue, but the point is that he, the reason that I felt that it was apropos, in a sense, was that he envisioned a music, he envisioned bringing African-American music into the popular marketplace, and he envisioned it conquering, bringing down the walls of segregation. As I say, before he started recording it, that was his vision. And this is a guy that grew up in the South.

He grew up in the South. He knew, like, you know, he was, I would imagine, relatively rare in his views of how society should be. Relatively rare in his family, who did not like hearing an eight, nine-year-old kid talking about the racial disparities and inequities that existed. I mean, he was working out in the field.

His father rented a farm, a 323-acre farm, which was really his vision of Eden. He lost the farm when depression came and became a signal man on the bridge, but nebulized his love of nature. But, you know, Sam, his relatives from Sam's generation spoke, I mean, Sam would say to me, now listen, I'm talking about an eight, nine-year-old kid, and what came to convince me that he was speaking of espousing those views was talking to relatives who were not altogether approving. I'm not saying they were prejudiced, but they were not altogether approving of the views that Sam espoused when he was a small child.

Yeah, rebel kid, yeah, yeah. That would kill Meek and Myel, from a family of Meek and Myel. He said, I had the personality of a green pursuant. And his brother, Judd, he said, was the one with the personality.

He was really charismatic. He could draw anyone to him. He never met a stranger. Sam wasn't interested in that.

He was elected president of the junior class, which was last year in high school because his father died. But he was elected president. He was captain of the band. But he saw it as the outgrowth of his determination, not of his charm, not of his...

And he was not interested in social acceptance. And it's interesting because, you know, you see as he gets older that he sort of takes on this, almost this personality of a prophetic person, of a person that deserves respect as an elder, almost a mythological character, Sam Phillips is. Well, I met him in 79. He was doing no interviews.

He had done virtually. He thought that I was the first person to interview him outside of Memphis Reporters and the Trades. There were two or three others, which he conveniently... And did he ever...

Like, he maintained the sort of the rights... Like, he managed himself well. He was not... Did he lose everything and screw everything up at some point?

Well, I mean, he had a terrible struggle starting out. Right. No, ultimately, he... From his perspective, there was no more record.

There was no more opportunity for the independent record label or distributor. And that's why he really left the music business in 60. But he held on. And by the end of the decade, all the independent labels, but he held on to the song publishing and he continued in radio, which was his first love.

And he saw those as the two viable ways to make a living as an independent business. Music publishing and radio. Yes. Well, yeah, that was right at the time.

Music publishing still. Yeah, and the family still owns the publishing. And no, he was a very canny person in that way. It wasn't his first priority.

But his first priority was to... You know, put food on the table for his family, which included his deaf mute aunt Emma in Florence, his widow's mother until she died in 52 or 51, and his wife and two kids. And he was determined, whatever happened, he was not going to leave them home. But he started on radio.

Started on radio. Understood the power. Yeah, so that is a vehicle for communication. In fact, when WSM changed the transmitter in 61, Sam bought the transmitter.

And to this day, the family is paying rent on it because he believed it was such an historic thing. It had reached so many people out in the rurals. It had brought so much, including Grand Ole Opry, but not limited to the Grand Ole Opry, to people all over the country who otherwise would never have the opportunity to hear or know these things. And so he bought it.

He tried over the years to give it to the Smithsonian, to the Country Music Hall of Fame. No, the actual transmitter. But it's too big. Nobody would take the Country Music Hall of Fame.

No, no, no. They can't put it in a lot of it. He couldn't find any takers. And I've announced it in many places looking for somebody who might come up and, you know...

So in a sense, that Sam Phillips, ideologically, really laid down some of the foundation for what became, you know, the point of view of music in the 60s, the point of the idea that music was some sort of bonding force of all people. Yeah, an integrating force that broke down categories, not just racial, but all categories. And he was, you know, an unabashed liberal all his life, which few people claim anymore. Yeah, and did he get flack throughout his career from people?

Because, you know, it's very easy to think that outside of, like, the earlier acts, but, you know, those guys, the original crew, you know, Perkins, Lewis, Presley, the guys, the hitmakers who were white acts, you know, there is some sort of idea that maybe there was a redneck-y kind of feel to it. Well, I don't know if there was a redneck-y feel. Well, yeah, I mean, it went back and varied. For instance, Elvis, you know, Samson was the most unprejudiced person he'd ever met.

And Elvis, as Samson, fully embraced Sam's ideal of breaking, you know... Those were conversations that were had. No, they were not conversations, but he said Elvis was not the kind of person who would articulate that. And the big thing also about Sam was what he got most of all were insults from the people in the industry.

And he was not inclined to... Insults. For hanging around with those people. The black people.

Black people, yeah, yeah. For corrupting the youth. This is from people in the music industry. And Nashville, most of all, set itself against them.

For commercial reasons, as much as anything else, they tried to get his records banned from the charts. You know, the records by Elvis, by Jerry Lewis, by Kyle Perkins, and Paul Ackerman, who was one of... Sam had very few close friends. Paul Ackerman, Dewey Phillips, brother-in-law Jimmy Connolly, but it's Kenneth Wilson, who started Holly Ann.

But Paul Ackerman wrote an editorial denouncing the Nashville establishment, the country music establishment, saying we're not going to be dictated to here. Paul Ackerman was the editor of Billboard. Because at that point, what you're telling me, that most of this, you know, quote-unquote black music was being played by these white performers. This wasn't the issue.

The issue was that the records that Sam Phillips was putting out were cutting into country music sales. But they had to draw a line. What was the reason? They couldn't say that.

In terms of the national establishment of country music, the line was money. Okay, and they would say that. They didn't slander him. They slandered him as somebody who was violating the classic tenets of, you know, country music.

So you could say it had raised, but the point was Sam encountered direct and angry responses, you know, calling him, you know, a lover of people that he shouldn't be loving. Right. So let's talk about those, you know, the first recordings and the black artists because I'm a big Howlin' Wolf fan. Oh, this is where the solo man ever does.

How could you not be? Yeah, yeah. I got a picture of him right there. I love that picture.

It's right over the desk there of him on the floor doing his thing. Yeah, in his older days. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, where does Sam, once he's doing radio, where does he start coming in contact with the...

He doesn't. He can't, why did he come to Memphis? He came to Memphis because at 16, he insisted that his classmates were driving to Dallas for a revival meeting. He insisted that they go by Beale Street on the drive from Florence to Dallas.

I don't think there was anybody else in the car who wanted to go to Beale Street. When they're on Beale Street, he says, you know, and this is probably less than what it actually was, he says his friends from high school were amused by the antics or whatever. But Beale Street was an outdoor area that had been there and there was a lot of music there, a lot of bars at that time. Well, it was Black America's main street.

Okay. It was, you know, it was all black in every type. I mean, at that time, what you see now is like a movie set. Yeah, I know, yeah.

What it is to then where... The urban renewed it. Exactly. What do you call urban destruction?

Yeah, yeah. But, so he's 16 years old. He goes down to Beale Street and he says, this was the most inspiring thing I've ever seen. You know, old black man sitting on a curb, you know, drinking out of a paper bag.

And this is something you can relate to with your experiences as an usher and having those moments. I guess so, yeah, yeah. That your mind is blown by a culture and a way of life that is outside of you and by a sound that you can't be denied. Well, he said, it really wasn't the music.

He said, I saw a vision of freedom there because every single person, the young hipsters, the old guys, the people who had saved up for months to come into the country, every single person was there because they wanted to be there. They felt a sense of belonging and I wish that everybody in America could have that, could see that, could envision freedom. But, so at 16, he decides, I'm going to live in Memphis someday and the reason he took the job at WREC in Memphis was not because he was at LIC in Nashville, which was a much bigger station, but because at the age of he moved to Memphis when he was 22 because he had to be in Memphis. Well, let me ask you something.

How much of this, in your encounters with him, which I imagine were a lot, I mean, how much, because he seemed like a guy that at some point became very aware of the mythology around him and he seems like an earnest guy, but did you feel that in his first love radio and he had lots to do every day. But he was much more soft-spoken when I first met him. Anyway, he created a public persona as he went out and started doing this, but the persona didn't have to do with a revisionist view of himself. Almost everything that he said can be found in his correspondence back in 1551 in his public utterances, in his championing when Elvis made it and all of a sudden he is where he came from, National Lewis and he's an RCA.

People ask him about what he does and he says, well, man, you should have heard Howlin' Wolf, you should have heard Walter Gordon, you should have heard, he always put them in the front. And that wasn't revisionist. What he saw himself as from the time I met him. He created a persona to teach the teachings, to preach the preachings.

Not to glorify himself, but to preach the power of music. Yeah, freedom. And how did him and Wolf come together? This is 1951.

He opened a studio in 1950, about a year and a half after he opened it. Who was he recording right out of the gate? Out of the gate, he had a rough time because he didn't have outreach. He didn't have any way of reaching the black community.

Beale Street is right behind the Hotel Peabody where the radio station was. There was the Ducks. I've seen the Ducks. Yeah, the Ducks, they were all even now.

I should stay there one night. Not anyone did that journey. Yeah, but Beale Street is like another world even though it's just one street over. And he went on Beale Street, I mean he was on Beale Street, bought a record for the radio station, but basically these are two different worlds.

So he's playing what I guess you would call, what was it, he was playing black music on his radio station. No, not at all. Dewey Phillips, who was another one of his closest friends. We had the Red Hot and Blue show on WHBQ.

Dewey Phillips was playing black music and that's what tied them together and he saw Dewey as a brother and he supported Dewey when Dewey fell in hard times to the end of his life in 1968 and then supported his wife afterwards. But he, no, he's on a high class station in REC in the Hotel Peabody. He opens a studio on January 2nd, 1950 on Union Avenue. How does he get these great black artists of the South for whom he's opened a studio?

He makes that statement contemporaneously. This is, you know, to record some of the great black performers who have no other place to go. But he seemed to have sort of like an Alan Lomax. No, no, no, no.

He wasn't there to catwalk? No, he saw himself totally as Sam Phillips and as somebody whose emphasis was on sound, whose emphasis was on creating the sound that reflected a reality that was even more real than the reality around it. Just like I understand where he was creating dialogue. And also unheard at the time.

Unheard, totally unheard. I mean, and he believed that once it was heard by a mainstream audience, they would be won over and there would be no turning around. But the first way he started to get African-American performers to come in was a guy named Joe Hill-Lewis who's a one-man band who played on Beatles who just wandered in one day early on. And he said, what are you doing here?

And Sam explained, they were building the studio. And Joe Hill-Lewis, who seems to have been quite a charming man, but he's quite a charming guy, he says, you know, that's just what Memphis needs, a recording studio. And he went out and he brought in people like Walter Horton, Jack Kelly, some of the earliest people who came in and the word spread in the community and people would come out and see this little white guy who didn't know what the hell he was doing. But he's recording people.

But Wolf, how did he get to Wolf? A friend of his, a guy who was engineering over at KWM in West Memphis, which had a very weak signal at that time, called him up and somewhat disparagingly, I would say, you know, there's somebody on the station here who has a noon show selling fireman implements and advertising. appearances you know he plays the kind of music that you like which this guy was so sam tuned down yeah and he said it was a terrible signal and he said through it all he heard somebody he heard a voice and it led him to say you know this is it this is what i'm looking for this is where the soul man never dies then he calls up that was just the wolf on acoustic guitar right no he had a great great guitarist everybody should go out and add to their willy johnson collection pre-hubert uh wait for you who hubert saw wolf on a gig in parkinson i think parkinson and was standing at the wind on wolf and vitamin he was about 15 or 16 years old at the time yeah but uh so sam gets in touch with wolf at the station yeah invites him to come by the studio and uh he uh and doesn't want to put any pressure it's not a recording session he's just you know meet and greet and uh but wolf comes in with this willy johnson willy steel sets up and sam says you know make yourself comfortable just and sam is in the control room doing you know busying himself yeah yeah and he said all of a sudden it's just he snaps through it's just like a sound that is so powerful i mean it's like he never heard anything i'm excited and and he comes out into the yard of the floor yeah and he gets there and he says for one of the few times in my life or maybe i said for one of the few times he had no idea what to do he had no he had no and he fools around with the mic placement trying to act like he's in charge but he just he's just doing it he's just so overwhelmed by the music and that was the setup for his recording wolf oh i can't wait it's almost been just electric man yeah it was incredible i mean great show on my in on earth in my studio just watching wolf sitting in a chair and watching the devastation come over him as he's saying it's on watching this total adoption he's a big man too yeah he's about uh six three maybe at that point he probably went about 235 so wait at newport they built a like a fake juke joint yeah i always made this little movie and you have a drunken son house as wolf is singing and uh wolf knew johnson way back and he's waving his arms and talking son house is pre-wolf pre-wolf and then wolf is saying you know sit down old man don't embarrass yourself and the pats paraphrase what was that weird i had a copy of that video of it was a show done in germany you know what i'm talking about that's the american folk blues festival i'm sure but they set up all those environments yeah yeah they had like uh yeah like porches and stuff exactly it was kind of disturbing but like jd one why was on there yeah and uh i think john lee hooker i saw it was a pretty amazing thing and i remember they know wolf was the most powerful performer i've ever seen and i just say solemn burke and wolf i'm not gonna where'd you see wolf i saw wolf i just saw him so many times because i'm in chicago i saw him in boston i saw him at club 47 that was probably the first time i saw him at newport uh he just i would go over and go anywhere to see wolf and i would give up uh i'm not a collector in any way i know but i bought a lot of records to listen to them and let's say i have 7,000 records i'd give everyone a month just for the opportunity to see wolf one more time oh it was just it just you know but sam it was a different time zone with wolf man i mean you know like even when you listen to him like the stuff that doesn't necessarily you know the sort of rolling blues that doesn't necessarily have a chorus or a turn like you know where you know he didn't move through that rhythm and that rhythm was completely his own and the vocal power of it all and the way it was mixed and nothing sounds like it but you know you know wolf was just boom i mean the first time i saw him i think was at club 47 which was in a cellar and until they had these um posts to hold up the roof and wolf got up against the post and he said at this point he's about 300 pounds oh really 300 pounds of heavenly joy yeah and he's he's banging away on the post you know he emphasized the thing and i said oh my god it's samson delilah and i had my way i tear this building down i thought the roof was gonna come down in our heads oh that's on i just never ever but the point is with sam yeah of all the people he recorded yeah wolf was the first he would bring up from sam's point of view and from my point of view too wolf was the most profound artist that he ever recorded now wolf now uh you know um elvis might be the most charismatic jerry lewis was the most purely talented and he had a superlative for everyone he loved them all johnny cashier norms but wolf was the most profound along with charlie rich which is really interesting because these are two almost opposites in terms of music that's weird because when i find when i come to charlie rich and my knowledge of country music is women well so was charlie's they play them in country music and that was the worst thing that ever happened to all those things that made him a star but yeah but i think my memory of him and even after reading like i read some tasha's stuff too you know you two are the guys that i think that showed me some things in terms of your writing but uh we have different styles yes you do of life and of writing how would you distinguish a style well it seems like you you are um you know a historian as well as a guy well nick is a very good story he's got a more emphatic style i just i didn't mean to also he's gunning for the darkness well nick's theme is there's no there there and every book says there's no there there yeah and my theme although i tend to believe that probably nick is right and my theme is i'm looking for the light so you're not gonna you're not gonna say that nick is is by going by saying there's no there there that is a dark place it is i mean i think nick would tell you that he's no i think he would admit to and proclaim the title of nihilist yeah yeah oh yeah and you know i mean what how could you top dino as far as oh you don't you love that fucking book oh it's unbelievable you can say fucking on your show sure because i had lots of things that i chipped around there you never said say it say it say it okay but the name of the show is what the fuck well i know that but i let you only see it as what wtf i didn't know well let's let's say like so charlie rich by the time i you know i don't even have a charlie rich record and now you're making me feel like i should because i have a lot of country and by the time i'm a kid charlie rich has big hits yeah but i closed doors most beautiful girl hits on which he didn't play piano and which didn't sue the style but which sold millions of copies and cause he was an original sun artist he was an original yeah he was an philips which was a subsidiary of it but remember what did stardom lead to for charlie richard's led to him burning the card that announced john denver as uh entertainer of the year at the nationally telecast country music he snapped huh he was his only exit from the life his only exit from the world i mean you know i people wanted to say what's because he was stones because he was drunk because he was this it really he needed to us he needed an escape he was done yeah not done with music i mean i i made an album with him and just before his death about pictures and paintings in which he cut some of the songs he'd been carrying around with him all these years originals you know uh standards like i can't get started which he played two or three times a night every week at these i don't even know this charlie richard i really feel like i need to know listen to i don't know if you uh if you have uh the uh the two cd centers yeah and listen to who the next fool will be so that comes that comes out in in collusion is that the word i want with the book that you can get the soundtrack of the book so to speak yeah no no it's definitely and you should listen to that as you're reading the book i don't know that you should do what you want no i think i've done that one i would be usually if i'm reading a book about one person i'll inundate myself with me like your book about sam cook you know turn me on to you know that all his gospel stuff and that shit changed my life yeah it's incredible and then when you go to uh live at the um that elliot the shrine uh-huh that 55 concert you hear sam cook you've never you would never here before since he did not even live you know who else was sam cook that who i just had in here was herb albert oh well he worked with yeah i know and just like he and he and lou adler work together again and uh they have the co-writer i should say sam has the co-writer in wonderful world right and uh it really was a song they'd written as a little ditzy high school thing yeah and sam started something else i love those beautiful moments where like like magic is you know the alchemy happens and i think that's really what you're talking about with sam with phillips in this book is that that that alchemy that he somehow managed you know by dealing with these artists is really the beginning of of rock and roll and it's not that long ago no no no and you think about how elvis started and you think about this did he do rocket 88 too yeah he did rocket 88 before wolf right and and why do you talk about taking what you're yeah uh and you know he says you know we were sitting there on track tracks walking by down in florence and he said look at that that's where it's happening that's where it's happening you know he just uh so he embraced with rocket 88 what happens i turner shows up with his group of kings of rhythm who renamed jackie brentson and is built a cat by sam much to uh to i turn his uh high dungeon yeah because sam um gave jackie brentson vocal like jackie brentson's vocal right which should not say well i did all right kind of oh yeah and he and sam ended up with friends i mean that was one of the artists sam was closest to in his last years but the point was they show up at the studio which they drive by three times which is a storefront and looks like a barbershop yeah and uh they on their way on their way up from um uh from clark's tail they get stopped several times for the crime of driving while black you know an old story yeah they also have a flat tire when they take the tire out of the trunk because tires were still in trunks in those days uh they drop the amplifier and when they get to the studio they find that the tube is shattered and uh there's a buzz in the thing and they just they've crestfallen because there isn't time to get another ampers and they just figured they've blown their big opportunity sam listens to and he says no so that's original yeah that's that's different that's going to give you an original sound on the record you get some paper from ms uh ms taylor's next to the restaurant you know in the amp and you can hear that buzz all the way through and that to sam it wasn't that he would have planned it that way but he was fully prepared to take advantage and you know it's like jack harrow well sure it's organic and it's authentic by virtue of the fact that you can see it as a problem or you can see it as a gift yeah and and like you know like he was intuitive enough to know like it doesn't sound bad yeah and he sounded great it sounded great it sounded different he blew up the last session he produced was uh two songs on john prine on an album that uh pink alack that uh his sons nox and perry were producing and one of them was saigon and sam blew up the uh guitarist amp in the echo chamber because he wanted to create the sound of uh flying fragments of metal flying through the air did he get it he got it and john prine was so proud of that album that he first and only time in his life first and last time he took the album out once it had been mastered out to electro asylum uh you know in california and presented to them in a listening session and they just looked at him with a worried look and they said well john that's okay we're gonna have to go back and re-record this whole thing you know there's a buzz going through that thing so it's back to this is like uh 29 years later after rocket 88 sam created the you know the distortion uh and um john prine was so but see like to me that's the whole thing's fascinating so like you know rocket rocket 88 for some people is the first rock and roll song i mean categorically some historians believe that do you believe that no i don't think it's the first come on peter come on nothing comes from nothing okay frank stokes downtown blues 1927 the driving rhythm of that might as well be the first rock and roll song okay big maceo's uh some of big maceo's uh kind of boogie woogie numbers just uh okay so what differentiates it then why did somebody decide rock and roll is here that was just a branding thing yeah okay i mean the point is it was paul akerman probably was the first one and who's a great champion and sam's great friend who's a guy with a phd in english literature maybe just a master's especially he was on the 17th i think the 17th century um poets english poets no it couldn't be from a greater difference of background yeah but uh and a very scholarly area that guy who edited billboard he i think he saluted rocket 88 his first rock and roll song after rock and roll had to hit oh so it's a retro so it has to be right because there was no rock and roll time but sam had his vision of rock and roll he didn't know how it was going to turn out exactly he didn't know what uh but he knew it was going to be the music that rock and roll turned into a music that could reach a mass audience he believed he believed that rocket 88 which sold 100,000 copies almost entirely in the black market was a huge sale yeah he believed it was going to cross over and was quoted in the paper saying that he told me and probably other people too that howling wolf could have been as big as elvis presley with white kids as well as with black and i don't ask me how that could have been i don't know how it could have been i don't share that i didn't as much as i share sam's admiration and memory for wolf but that's that's what he believed when you listen to some of the driving rhythm numbers that he does on wolf he saw that as as reaching an audience that the audience well it's weird because it actually had to go to england and then come back before it actually became blues but he wasn't thinking it was blue no i did that was amazing but the point was he saw it as becoming the mainstream uh he's getting mainstream you're doing what elvis and verily lewis but in the aftermath part of his vision was yeah when he realized he could never break that uh that race barrier uh with his eyes with little junior parker who could be seen as the birth of rockabilly right he listened to love my baby why didn't this thing make it was with little junior parker was black but it has every element and he realized at this point as he was going bankrupt he realized the only way i can reach that mass audience a white audience is if i could put a white face find a white man with a negro sound but much more important a negro feel and that that was when the audience would once they responded to the music then then the doors would open wide and that essentially is the story of rock and roll once there was the acceptance of a few of these white artists elvis first uh primarily then all these great uh black artists like ray charles batts found a little richard chuck barry bow didley they came through those doors you know at 100 miles an hour and they became not uh race stars not r&b stars they became pop stars and they you know who was and who went to the rock and roll band first right but most of those guys you know still had a little bit of a chip on their shoulder about their treatment and and the well as they should i mean we live in america yeah i know how do you spell america how do you spell it well i'm not going to i leave it to listen so like let's talk a little bit about the you know in the time you know we have here there's so much to talk about and obviously i guess i'm you know i'm looking for that that poetic magic that happened and you know you're so thorough and i don't think you miss it but you know i want to know you know that moment where like in my mind you know it's on records you know all these guys were they knew each other that you know wolf you know and you was hanging out with elvis and there was not so much but wolf and luigi parker especially were inspirations among many others but they never crossed paths they never you know there was never a sort of a like sort of thank you or or uh you know show me a lick well elvis openly endorsed uh artists like bobby bland like luigi parker appeared in the papers picture appeared in the paper then went down to the dia goodwill review just like i went to summer shower of stars you know the only white and in all black audience came out on stage uh you know put his arm around db king and spoken in the white newspapers the mainstream newspapers of how great this music was and how great these people were so sure there was a crossover but not not in the sense that they collaborated in the studio why didn't they they weren't there at the same time it was years later it wasn't years later it was a year later that's it yeah i mean it was uh and sam was what we better remember was a one-man operation who uh why did johnny cashley have signed he left it as much as anything because he was jealous of the attention that sam was uh giving to jerry lewis who was a hot hand at that moment if you're one person operating a business and you're selling millions of records you can't you it's pretty easy to spread yourself too thin and sam was not going to do that and how what was it what was the year span of when all this sort of happened i mean how many like from what to what was it sam opened up in january 50 by 1960 he had pretty much extricated himself from the business he no longer saw the future in many different ways but you wanted to defend her statement about what i'm missing there no just that you know that that moment where you know you can track if we're not going to go there's no there there i mean there was a moment and i imagine it was the first elvis hit that that all of it came together and sam was able to realize his vision no i think he realized his vision with wolf and i think that wolf was a living reification a living visualization of everything that he ever wanted music and had he been able to cross wolf over in the way that this was 51 so it was out of his hands he thought that wolf was the guy and that you know what the culture did with it was out of his hands but in terms of his own personal thing but if you want to say what we had sam turned it see you said is it i think a marketing term or something it's just a pure kind of music and putting the name rock and roll on it was a way to sell that music and uh but if you're looking for what turned sam's label around turned sam it was the success of blue suede shoes which he was able to not only elvis or perkins perkins no elvis just covered it and actually asked permission to cover it but made it hit again right not really no it was on an ep i mean it was everything elvis put out but no cal perkins sam put out cal perkins blue suede shoes about this almost exactly the same time that that rca put out elvis's first single in rca heartbreak hotel which sam called a morbid mess i don't agree but i and the public what was his reasoning it was uh it was nihilistic wasn't sound and and and and message uh so i don't know you know but if nick had spoken to him he might have a different view but the point was that the two of them uh blue suede shoes started going up the charts and made it to the top of the charts of the r b country and pop which had never happened before and heartbreak hotel did the same thing within weeks rca given had lost faith in elvis because of the explosive success of cal perkins but with the success of cal perkins but elvis was at sun first i mean what was it but elvis was a regional star on sun i know but what was the relationship between sam i mean how many songs did sam do with elvis before he lost elvis uh he put out five singles and he did Was that aprimonious? No, no, not at all.

When I say he was going broke, he was on the very good bankruptcy when he sold Elvis' contract. He had been on the very good bankruptcy ever since he started the label. You know, the worst thing that can happen, if not to a small business, certainly to a small label at that time, is a hit. And Elvis wanted to go and he needed the money so it worked out.

It wasn't really to do with Elvis. It was more to do with what he needed. Elvis wanted to go because of Colonel Parker. But that was neither here nor there.

The real thing was, Sam not only would not have survived in business, he would have lost the, well, he just would have lost the business altogether. Not the business, but his dream. And so with the $35,000 he got for Elvis' contract, and with the $5,000 that he got, or that Elvis got, it was a payout for the royalties due, which Sam kept scrupulous track on, but he didn't have the money to pay. And with that $35,000 that he got, he was able to reconstitute the company.

He was able to promote and put everything he had behind Blue Sweat Shoes. And RCA called shortly after when Blue Sweat Shoes hit the tarot. Steve Scholes and RCA called and said, we signed the wrong guy. In terms of thinking of Elvis.

So no, I mean, people would say to him, did you ever regret it? Or some people would say that's the worst business decision in history, which doesn't even rival at least in reselling for a hundred million dollars. But the point is that, no, Sam, it was a great business decision. Sam never had any regrets at all because it led to everything else he did.

Right, so with that, from there, from Blue Sweat Shoes, you get to the Jerry Lee Lewis hits, right? Yeah, I mean, Johnny Cash. I Walk the Line. Yeah, you had Johnny Cash and you had all these other artists coming in from the beginning, from throughout the year 56, all coming in because they had been so inspired actually by Elvis' music.

I mean, many of them signed up for the originality. But I like what you said about it, that it could be folk music because the thing that keeps pounding through my brain in terms of what we're talking about, your experience at the beginning with the records you had and talking about Sam Phillips and the belief that there's some sort of alchemy, there's some sort of wild card that could happen that is raw and real. Because against Delta 88, you've got Rock Around the Clock, which is an overproduced, almost a big band album. Yeah, it was really Western swing.

And Sam didn't disregard it, but he felt there's nothing fresh, there's nothing new in it. But raw, raw. I mean, you've got people like Elvis and you've got people like Helen Wolfe and you've got people like Jerry Lee Lewis who couldn't help but be painfully alive and in the present with their music. And look, they're the Dionysian spirit.

That's right. And that was what Sam would look Yeah, that's great. That's it, you've got the feel. And Kyle Perkins would say, but Mr.

Phillips, there's a mistake there. I can fix it, let's do another. And Sam says, no, you've got the feel. And Kyle would say, but I made a bad mistake there.

And I made a mistake there. And Sam would say, that's all right, Kyle. That's what we are here at Sun. We're just one big inspired mistake.

But it's sort of funny because even looking at someone like Johnny Cash, in comparison to whatever Johnny's problem was with Jerry Lee Lewis in terms of his success, the difference between their songs and their style is that Johnny was also painfully raw. It just had a different tone. And totally original. I mean, Sam saw him in some ways because he's an analogous to Howlin' Wolf.

Johnny Cash is nobody he admired more than Johnny Cash, both for his singing, which was, you know, unrepeated, I mean, uninimitable, and for his writing. But the other thing about Johnny Cash, he comes in with two musicians who can barely play, particularly Lucy Perkins, a guitarist. And every take they took was they didn't do splicing. Every take they took would be interrupted because Lucy Perkins couldn't make the notes.

He could play one note at a time. And he was painfully shy. And at one point, Johnny Cash says, let's do it with another guitarist. And Sam says, no, this is your sound.

This is what makes it different. This is what gives a distinction. And it was not the fact that Lucy Perkins was incompetent. I mean, he was trying so hard, and he got there eventually, but the fact that this gave him an original sound.

Because he's putting all these guys into the simple notes that he knows. That's exactly it, which is the whole point of anything creative. I mean, that's what I try to do. However simple-minded I may be, I try to put everything I've got into every word I write.

Well, that's the beauty of rock music. And I guess there's something that comes directly from the blues, and even the music that comes from Africa, previous to the blues, is that it is a simplicity just completely fueled by passion and focus and feeling. Yeah, and for Sam, because there were no genres, he could go out and see Charlie Rich, but one of the few artists, he might go out two or three times a night to see him play on Madison Avenue, and Charlie's playing jazz, which was just Charlie's first love. And to Sam, it was a passion with which he played, even though it was not the genre which he would have chosen.

So I mean, I feel like you can find it, you can find it anywhere, you know, you can find it, and different people have different tastes. I mean, as Solomon said, different strokes for different folks. But those old guys, those old singers, like the Sam Cooke thing, is that what we're talking about, we're talking about feeling, really, and about a unique voice. Because if you listen to the gospel stuff, I mean, he had a rawness as well, but he had an incredible, sort of unique sense of melody.

And a control, right? But you'll hear it one of the few times you'll hear on record, some place where he's just going all out and throwing away that control, and that was the underpinning for a great many of the very controlled pop recordings he made. Right, because ultimately, he became a fairly controlled singer, you know, and a controlled pop artist. It was the opposite of menace, where you get most of the, you know, the Sun guys were menaced, in a way, in a good way.

Well, I mean, you listen to Sonny Burgess, I mean, you listen to the end of Red-Headed Woman, which is like a train wreck, and again, Sonny, who's still performing today, I think he's 82 or 83, and he's one of the nicest guys in the world, and he's still rocking. But Sonny just begged Sam to let them redo it. You know, featured perhaps the only rockabilly trumpet in history. Oh, yeah.

But he begged Sam to let them re-record it, and Sam said, no, that had the feel. There's no reason to re-record it. You know, it doesn't matter what the mistakes were. It doesn't matter what the telephone's ringing.

That had the feel. But so you, you know, what I'm starting to see, you know, even from the, did you ever listen to those sped-up Robert Johnson records? The ones where there's a claim that... There's a claim.

I've never, I've talked to people, and I've never known... Did you listen to them? Well, I don't know what they're talking about, exactly. Well, that they recorded at slightly the wrong speed.

Well, that they re-issues were put out at a slightly higher speed, which raised Robert Johnson's voice in greater intensity. I've never seen anything to substantiate that, but I don't know. It's weird to listen to them, though. It doesn't have slowed down.

Yeah, yeah. It was a variable... The point was phone records were variable speed, and there was no true pitch as far as speed went in. I mean, I know it's been sort of discredited, but it is sort of fascinating to listen to it.

Well, it really is, and in some ways, it could give you a sense of maybe what listening to Robert Johnson on different days could be. But the sort of thing that you're chasing, and I think the thing that is not defining rock and roll as rock and roll, but this sort of this kernel of, well, we'll call it light through this music that inspired you early on, that runs through all of it. It does, it absolutely does, and it took me, that's why I say, it took me to Waylon Jennings, and the reason I say Waylon Jennings is because after Feel Like Going Home came out in 71, I wrote at the end of it, and unless you have a first edition, you won't see it phrased in this quite this way, but I wrote it, I was going to say my farewell to my brief, and I was going to go back just to appreciating music, I was going to discard the notebook in my hand, which is not my hand right now, it's my pocket, and I went back, and for two years I didn't write about music because I wrote another novel, but I felt like I was doing this out of love, and I wanted to retain the purity of it. I didn't realize that and what you mentioned before, I was also in love with the show business aspect of it, and I didn't want to admit that.