SAM PHILLIPS. THE MAN WHO INVENTED ROCK'N'ROLL - PETER GURALNICK

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elrockandrollyyo.blogspot.com

Little, Brown and Company

Let's be clear from the beginning: if you like Rock'n'Roll and Rockabilly (and Blues, and Rhythm'n'Blues too), a Sam Phillips' biography is a must read book. More than that, if that bio is written by Peter Guralnick, then it becomes something else.

I mean, who probably is the best Rock'n'Roll biographer, writing about the life of who probably is the most important person in the whole History of Rock'n'Roll: the man who created, for instance, the Memphis Recording Service and Sun Records. The man who discovered, or gave the opportunity to show their talent, to artists such as Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner, The Prisonaires, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis or, of course, Elvis Presley, to name just a few.

The book is very well written indeed, as you can expect coming from Peter Guralnick, and along its 661 (plus some more of footnotes at the end) we read about Sam Phillips' musical side, but also about his radio days, his family, his other business and so on. Really interesting and entertaining.

The only negative point I've found is that those above-mentioned footnotes that we get at the end of the book are numbered... but the main text does not have any numbers referring to them, which makes a little annoying to find out to which part each note refers to. Anyway, not a big deal in comparison with the great quality of Mr. Guralnick's work.

It's said at the beginning: a must read book.