It Came from Memphis by Robert Gordon

by Peter Guralnick

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.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, 20th Century, Biography, Collections, American

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Peter Guralnick is an acclaimed American music critic, author, and screenwriter best known for his deeply researched works on the history of rock and roll. He earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Boston University and soon began writing about blues, country, soul, and early rock music. His two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, is considered a definitive account of the singer’s life. Guralnick also authored landmark biographies of Sam Cooke and Sam Phillips, earning praise from critics and musicians alike. He has written liner notes for legends like Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich, winning a Grammy for his notes on Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club. His documentary scripts include Sam Cooke – Legend and Feel Like Going Home, directed by Martin Scorsese. Guralnick’s writing stands apart for its straightforward, unembellished style, earning him a reputation as one of rock’s most respected storytellers. He has taught at Vanderbilt University since 2005 and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2010. His recent works include Looking to Get Lost and a forthcoming biography of Colonel Tom Parker. Guralnick lives with his wife, Alexandra, and their family. His extensive archive is housed at the University of North Carolina’s Wilson Library.

Reviews

[Aaron Brame · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been on my why haven't I read this yet? list for years (c.f. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored History of Punk.) When I got a copy of of It Came From Memphis in a box of donations to my school library, I snatched it up and started reading.

I was amazed at how much I learned from this book. You would think that if there was one thing I was fairly well educated about, it would be the history of the outsider music scene in Memphis. Once I got into it, though, I realized how clueless I was about so much that had gone on in my city in the last fifty years. Below are of a few things I learned about from reading this book.

* The center of the "beatnik" or "underground" music scene in the 1960s was a coffeeshop called "The Bitter Lemon" that was located on Madison where the long-defunct French Quarter hotel now stands mouldering into ruin. I must post a picture of it.
* Another hot spot that I had never heard of was Procape Gardens. Ask 100 Memphis hipsters to tell you where this place, a haunt for Alex Chilton, William Eggleston and Sid Selvidge, was located, and I'd be surprised if three could tell ya.
* Dewey Phillips's "Red Hot and Blue" radio show. I had never heard of him!
* I had likewise never heard of Phineas Newborn, the fantastic jazz pianist whose star shone brightly for a brief period before fading. His sound was more Manhattan than Memphis, but, man, could he play that piano. I would like to get more recordings from this guy.
* Furry Lewis doing "When I Lay My Burden Down."
* The Ellis Auditorium was apparently the place to hear amazing music. The first concert I ever saw (The Black Crowes, with The Jayhawks opening) was at the Ellis, and I was present for the last ever concert there (Bruce Springsteen solo.) However, I didn't realize what a large part it played in Memphis music history. Everyone from Elvis to Led Zeppelin played there. To quote Gordon, "In the early spring of 1966, Dylan played Ellis Auditorium, previewing his Blonde on Blonde material with the Hawks." Wow.
Cordell Jackson!

I learned much more from reading this book and buying the two compilation CDs that go along with it, but what I have listed above will give you some idea of how much information there is to dig into. Check it out, and then come down to Memphis for a visit. I'll put you up.

[Still · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read all I needed to read.
Great reference material for those interested in the history of Memphis based rock & roll.

[Danimal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm heading to Memphis for the first time, so I figured this would be a great way to get some of the musical history beforehand. And it is. Because Gordon has a love for the gritty underbelly of soul, blues, rock, and garage, he digs into the city where other people haven't before. And yet I still found myself skippy around -- mainly because I didn't like his writing style so much. I didn't feel like he wrote about the music very well. The people, though, he understood. And if you dig Big Star or Jim Dickinson's many projects, you'll find stuff to love here. Worth rooting around in (and digging up the soundtracks for the book).

[Zach Meyers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this to complement a trip to Memphis. It’s filled with colorful characters and stories that added context to my understanding of Memphis’s cultural history. As the stories and characters continued to compile, my reading experience began to feel a bit tedious. Overall I appreciated the energy and spirit of the collection even if I did a bit of skimming to get to the finish.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kimley and I discuss "It Came From Memphis as well as interviewing Robert Gordon on our podcast BOOK MUSIK: You can hear it here: Book Musik podcast

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't finish; stopped midway. I needed more familiar people to hang my interest on.

[Jacob Rosen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It starts out as you might expect for a book about Memphis, detailing some of the more familiar and eccentric characters (such as Dewey Phillips, Lash LaRue, Furry Lewis and Sputnik Monroe) of the Forties and Fifties who helped create and solidify the unique mix of racial and cultural sensibilities that makes the town important and iconic. The mix of blues and rhythm sensibilities that formed to make the Memphis sound, in all its diverging glories, is traced to the rural fields surrounding the city and the dangers inherent to the music are described very entertainingly by the author, the critic Robert Gordon, most notably when discussing the bars and road houses across the river in West Memphis, Arkansas, which was definitely not a place for the weak but crucial to the music's development. Yet as the book moves forward, as it enters the Sixties, the characters become...well, whiter, and the influences begin to, if not exactly recede, then take less space; Gordon begins to focus on characters who, while subversive in the music they create, are not as compellingly daffy as the earlier days (Tav Falco being the exception). It's here you realize that what Gordon is trying to create is more of a stand-along to books about more recognizable Memphis genres, such as Stax and Sun Records, and the path it goes down may be more for readers who are already fluent in those sounds and are looking for something that scours the edges. Gordon is a passionate, concerned writer (if occasionally prone to eye-rolling expressions of outrage at corporate greed and ignorance) and his encyclopedic knowledge of the subject is a joy to behold. (In fact, the detailed chapter notes at the end are as essential as the main text--very illuminating and an excellent source for further research.) While it loses its urgency as it progresses, "It Came From Memphis" is well worth reading for its deeper dive into the subterranean cultures that sprang from what was once a subversive mixture now mainstream.

[Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I re-read this book at least once a year. Gordon is everything that most music writers aren't: knowledgeable, funny, and an honest-to-god fan of the music he writes about. This book is about the wildness that is Memphis music ca.1950s to right now (or then, as this came out in '95) and has THE BEST accounts I've read about the circumstances surrounding the creation of Big Star's "Sister Lovers" and Chilton's "Like Flies on Sherbert," both holy grails of mine. Even if you could care less about Big Star and Alex Chilton, this book's got something for you, especially if you want to know more about what was going on in Memphis that didn't involve Elvis. In fact, there's not a whole lot of Elvis here, but there ARE two different "IT Came From Memphis" cds that serve as the perfect accompaniement to the story being told. Robert Gordon is one of those people that I wish would put out a book every couple of months. Supposedly there's a video that goes with this, but I've never been able to find it or know if it really exists. The book, however, is alive and monstrous. If you've ever wondered why so much great and twisted music has come from Memphis, this book will make the scales fall from your eyes.

[Phil Overeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a music fan and thinking about going to Memphis for the first time, please do two things first:

1) Please read this book and listen to its companion CDs: It Came from Memphis and It Came from Memphis, Volume 2

2) Get The Kreature Comforts Lowlife Guide to Memphis (on $5 a Day) . And if you insist on taking a tour, The Ultimate Memphis Rock and Roll Tour with Sherman Wilmott cannot be beat. Tell 'im Phil, the teacher from Columbia, MO, sent you!

[Diener · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came across an earlier edition of this book a few weeks ago while I was sitting in the lobby of the Central Station hotel in Memphis. I read the foreword and the first chapter, laid the book back down where I found it, and promptly ordered a copy of the updated edition on Amazon. When I arrived home a week later, it was waiting for me. I tore open the package in which it arrived and promptly devoured the first 75-80 pages. Then it become a real slog. Too esoteric for me. And at around page 200, after skimming entire chapters, I reminded myself of how finite of a resource time is and finally gave up. I give it three stars because I admire the author’s passion for his subject. In the end, or really about 100-plus pages before the end, I realized I did not share that passion. I have too many other books in my queue to spend any more time with this one.

[Jason McKinney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Gordon's 2001 expose on Memphis, Tennessee and its colorful music scene people with interesting underground characters included is like an oral tradition teaching session. It's nearly 300 pages of back porch gossip and factual chatter. And I mean that in a good way. Gordon chronicles the underside of the city's musical life; the aspects of it that not as many people know about. Especially if you're not a native. My Dad lives in Memphis, so I figured I knew the city to a certain extent. Man, I don't know anything! Gordon starts out with the early bluesmen and works his way right up to Big Star and Alex Chilton. The book gets to be a little slow in spots and it does veer towards tedium a couple of times. However, it's still a worthy read if you're a music fan of any kind.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

read chunks of this for an essay on sputnik monroe that i wrote for the outline. gordon's work is great, at least the parts i read: detailed interviews with many people who are now dead ensure that this is the definitive history of memphis during the period when it achieved its greatest cultural significance.

to read the monroe profile, visit this link:

https://theoutline.com/post/1606/sput...

[Scott Murphy · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it could have been written better, and certainly would have benefited from more editing and more cohesion, this book serves as a fine history of Memphis music, that's basically indispensable in some ways. I'd recommend it to anyone who cares about blues, early rock music or Big Star, but would warn them not to expect Faulkner.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

"......What do you call it when whites try to play the blues? As a definition for rock and roll, I suggest: Rock and roll was white rednecks trying to play black music. Their country music background hampered them and they couldn't do it. That's why we don't call what they made rhythm and blues."
That quote pretty much sums up what this book is about.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly a love story to his city, the author takes a very detailed journey through the late 20th century Memphis music scene, covering so many people, shows, and songs that it's a little hard for an outside to keep up. But music is a big part of the city and Gordon captures its musical journey colorfully. and I have a great new playlist to explore from this book.

[Emily Ayden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm an admitted "Chiltonian", so of course I found it irresistible in parts. Didn't hold my attention through it's entirety but, I wouldn't mind picking it up on occasion to revisit certain sections.

[Benjamin Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent look into the unstable radioactive substance that is Memphis music.

[Paul M · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s good. It’s not great. I have some specific complaints, but overall they can be summed up with: this is a book written by someone who clearly believed he had a far more universally compelling story to tell than anyone outside his circle did. That’s not to say that the story of Memphis’s unsung heroism in the ongoing, organic, and trailblazing development of modern culture isn’t compelling; rather, it’s that Robert Gordon thinks it’s as compelling, maybe even more compelling, than, say, the fall of the Nazis, the Great Depression, the Roman Empire, or the construction of the Egyptian pyramids. And, again, I feel I must reiterate my own words to avoid being misquoted: the story is what Robert Gordon thinks is so compelling, not necessarily the actual events or impact. He goes into such intimate detail about people and events that don’t seem that important or unique, that the place, time, and purpose of the narrative is often lost on the non-Memphian reader, the prose is written in the same vernacular as the conversational casualness of someone whose almost-perfected hip lingo peaked and never progressed after 1970, and the self-righteous descriptions of Memphis’ underground culture betrays itself when the photographs and characters contained in the book are mostly white, while Memphis is 61% Black. Plenty of homage is given to the invaluable influence of Black musical pioneers from in and around Memphis, but the book should be titled “How Me and My Weird Friends Thanked The Blacks of Memphis While Continuing The Black Cultural Appropriation Perfected By Our White Supremacist Ancestors.” That is not to say I think the writer and his friends are the problem, or even a problem, but the book is written from the perspective of white hippies, freaks, artists, and bikers who, breaking racial barriers, helped proliferate the counterculture and eventually the mainstream culture of modern day, and were never acknowledged for it, rather than an objective and informational historical exploration.

[Joe Lunday · Rating 2 out of 5]

I admire Gordon’s journalism and enthusiasm for his city, but found this book really frustrating. It’s too discursive and Gordon does a poor job of guiding the reader through his large cast of Memphis creatives and eccentrics over multiple decades. In many cases, I found myself wanting a dramatis personae to keep track of the significance of people who come and go through the narrative. In another odd handling of his subjects, Randall Lyon, a non-musical player of some significance in the scene, is introduced with a florid passage about a third of the way through the book, but later receives a second introduction 80 or so pages later in a different context, as if he hadn’t been mentioned every few pages in the narrative between. Everyone is simultaneously the realest and the craziest, epitomized by a long section about a violent bouncer who is built up into a larger than life tall tale figure. Gordon repeats some of the worst authenticity cliches of rock culture, romanticizing an enduring music underground vs. the industry, and repeating the simplistic and false notion that rock and roll derives in a direct lineage from Mississippi Delta blues. Despite my misgivings, I’m still tempted to bump the rating up because Gordon provides some solid music recommendations in the appendix. If you are interested in musicians like the Dixie Flyers, the Insect Trust, Jim Dickinson, and Alex Chilton, there is first hand testimony about them here, and unless you were deeply embedded in the scene described, you’ll likely learn of others with whom you aren’t familiar. But overall I found the text challenging to stick with because of Gordon’s undisciplined writing.

[Randee Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think if you truly enjoy Memphis music and have a good basis on the artists that were here, then this is your book. I myself didn't know a lot of these artists, but I did enjoy the history that I learned.

If you want to learn more about Alex Chilton and Big Star then this has a lot of information on him/them. Robert Gordon does an amazing job at writing about the history of these artists, and puts a lot of detail in it.

There were a lot of times where I was bored, and some of the information was reoccurring. Still though, it gave me a lot of history that I would have never known.

There's a little bit of information on a lot of people and places like: Sputnik Monroe, Elvis Presley, The Sun Studio, Dewey Phillips, Sam Phillips. Jerry Lee Lewis, Otis Redding, The Memphis Horns, Hi Records, Antenna Club, Three Six Mafia, and Future artists. (All things and people that make Memphis, Memphis).

[caro · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Memphis is a town of donut shops and churches. Whatever musical achievements it claims are achievements in spite of the city, not because of it. A Beale Street merchant, Abraham Schwab, whose family business has been in the same location for over one hundred years, has a saying: Memphis has torn down more history than most other cities even have.”

back in the fall of 2023 i roadtripped through the south with my dad and we stopped in memphis after driving for 14 straight hours. we were both a little out of it but walked through beale street and into bars and clubs. the next morning we stopped by old recording studios and looked through the windows. there’s a picture of me looking so tired but pointing at the sun studio sign that was covered w stickers from other hopeful musicians. anyway. loved this book

[Christie Hancock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been on my list to read forever.
Great writing, very imaginative and descriptive. Learned about a ton of Memphis “characters.”
It was heavy and dense, but I think that’s just non fiction which I don’t read often.
I definitely feel inspired and excited to check out new music. Like Furry Lewis, Phineas Jr, Mudboy, Mar-keys, solo Alex Chilton.
Also need to watch this Eggleston movie and find a book of his photography.

[Eldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is am amzing book. Gordon provides incredible detail about decades of Memphis music as well as multiple diversions into related social and cultural connections. It is encyclopedic. It took me some time to read it. Some paragraphs have so much in them that they could have been chapters. I read it once but I know there is much more to mine in this book over the coming months. I have only been to Memphis once. This book will guide me when I go again.

[Nicki Hutchens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and engaging for the first 175 pages or so, but then was like eating your vegetables - you know you have to (if you want to finish the book) and it's good for you, but you don't always look forward to it. Lots of nice snapshots of what made the Memphis sound and interesting characters/events in the beginning, but tiresome for the last 6 chapters. This would be a good reference book for Memphis music aficionados.

[Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson · Rating 4 out of 5]

(And, as Dickinson liked to say, "If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much space.")

or

"It was almost bad to bring up his name," Crosswaithe says, "because then he would show up at your door and live with you until you were out of food and nerves and everything else." One surmises he was more fun to watch than encounter.

[Ian Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deep dive into the cultural underbelly of the Memphis arts and music scene, Gordon's book is one of the strongest music non-fiction works that I've ever read. Stax, Sun, and Elvis are just supporting characters in the accounts of the true eccentrics who made the Memphis-scene so unique. :-)

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know this would have had more impact on me 12-15 years ago when I was reading Peter Guralnick and Nick Tosches and such. But there’s lots of colorful stories. The chapter on Sputnik Moore integrating the city via pro wrestling is something else.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book made me want to make a beeline to … well, not exactly Beale Street, but somewhere nearby, where the blues and cold brews flow all night. Where crisp power pop collides with a funky horn part. Yeah, that’s where I want to be.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book; especially if you're from Memphis. I would give it a higher grade if it covered more if the Antenna Club scene in the 80's and 90's. But altogether excellent context for the crazy music (and other cultural touchstones) that came from Memphis.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read of the early days of rock and roll from the blues influence to the beginnings of punk in a little town you may have heard about