It Came From Memphis
by Robert Gordon, Peter Guralnick
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Book Summary Information
Author: Peter Guralnick, Robert GordonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-10-30
ISBN: 0743410459
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Atria Books
Book Reviews of It Came From Memphis
Book Review: An indispensable masterpiece of music history.
Summary: 5 Stars
Robert Gordon has performed a valuable service to music history in penning "It Came From Memphis" and correctly amplified attention to names known to cognoscenti but are overshadowed by the overly familiar. Indeed, Gordon could increase his scope for a second and third volume with little trouble. Gordon's focus on the offbeat musical offerings paired with the critically respected Chilton, Dickinson, and Lewis, captures the spirit of Memphis music that emerges in the rich melange of swamp trash culture overlaid with bourgeois convention and its anti-thesis of rebellion. In many ways this is Gordon's point: this music could only have come from Memphis. The casual reader may wonder why this matters, and the simple answer is that between the clean sounds and production values of Los Angeles, Nashville, and New York City, Memphis's Sun Studios, Stax Records, and Ardent Studios emerged as birthplaces of something that was much more than merely "The Memphis Sound." Indeed the Memphis sound could not be circumscribed. Gordon's proper emphasis on the commercially overlooked is also appropriate. For the tragedy of Memphis music is also rooted in its curse: Memphis Music is nearly always damned with commercial failure yet critical success. Today, musicologists speak in reverential tones about Dickinson's work with Ry Cooder, and hold Big Star 3rd and The Scruffs as mortal products that now abide as music for gods; such is the influence of these masterpieces that lack the airplay and exposure of even Elvis's "Clambake." Commercial success of Memphis music is a binomial model, either you are elder god like Elvis and W.C. Handy, or you have a number one hit record like "The Letter" but still end up a flophouse habitude and washing dishes in New Orleans. Yet the influence of these Memphis artists abides and, like the Snopes, they endure. Gordon has brought our attention to Memphis music and corrected the oversight of history with this foundational work, and it merits inclusion in the music reference section of every library. We owe Gordon our thanks.
Summary of It Came From Memphis
Robert Gordon begins where most chroniclers of the music world end and spins a magical fairy tale peopled with Delta bluesmen, a peanut vendor, a matinee cowboy, a professional wrestler, and a manic deejay. It Came From Memphis doesn't focus on Elvis, Al Green, or the Sun/Stax studios. Instead it creeps into the shadows cast by those institutions, concentrating on artists like Jim Dickinson and Alex Chilton, and bands like the MarKeys and Big Star. Gordon limns, with respect and the fascination born of true devotion, the story of white teenagers caught in the middle of an extraordinary confluence of music, entrepreneurship, to usher in an exciting new musical form. The result is a rock 'n' roll and Memphis -- its alma mater.Perhaps no other city in America has provided more grist for the music sociology mill than Memphis, Tennessee. While Memphis has been the muse for some truly classic books (Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music, to name just one), the rhetoric surrounding "The Birthplace of Rock & Roll"--also "The Home of the Blues"--can be as daunting as a walk down the ravenously gentrified blues theme park that is Beale Street.
Enter Robert Gordon, a Memphis native and keen chronicler of the city's secret history. Gordon's It Came from Memphis all but ignores the Bluff City's oft-cited musical hierarchy--B.B. King, Elvis, Al Green et al.--in favor of its great unheralded eccentrics. You might not be familiar with the Insect Trust or Mudboy and the Neutrons, but Gordon argues--with empathy and wit--that you should be.
But music is only part of the story here. Whether it's Memphis's wrestling legend Sputnik Monroe, or the city's esoteric patron saint, artist-professor John McIntire, Gordon's shrewd eye sees the mojo in them all. In a way, Gordon's book is even more vital than the classic volumes on Memphis music that predate it. Where Guralnick interprets a musical tradition that is already firmly embedded in the American psyche, Gordon gives voice to a clandestine tradition that otherwise might go forgotten. --Matt Hanks
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