Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'N' Roll

New condition black boards with copper spine lettering contained in a near fine condition non price-clipped photographic and color illustrated dust jacket. Includes List of Other Books by Peter Guralnick; Author Dedication; Preliminary Page "Play In One Scene", including Quotes by Henri Matisse and Joseph Conrad from Lord Jim; Author's Note; Notes; Bibliography; A Brief Discographical Note; Acknowledgments; Index and About the Author. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs. A one half inch repaired closed tear at the upper jacket spine edge; the jacket is otherwise in new condition (see photographs). "I'd always thought that Sun Records and Sam Phillips himself created the most crucial, uplifting, and powerful records ever made. On Sun Records the artists were singing for their lives and sounded like they were coming from the most mysterious place on the planet. If you walked away and looked back at them, you could be turned into stone." - Bob Dylan, from Chronicles. "A monumental biography of the larger-than-life loner who fought for the acceptance of black music and discovered an extraordinary group of poor, country-boy singers whose records would transform American popular culture.A wonderful story that brings us deep into that moment when America made race music its own and gave rise to the rock sound now heard around the world." - Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review). "The author of the critically acclaimed Elvis Presley biography Last Train to Memphis brings us the life of Sam Phillips, the visionary genius who singlehandedly steered the revolutionary path of Sun Records. The music that Sam Phillips shaped in his tiny Memphis studio with artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Howlin' Wold, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ike Turner, and Johnny Cash introduced a sound that had never been heard before. He brough forth a singular mix of black and white voices unabashedly proclaiming the primacy of the American vernacular tradition while at the same time declaring, once and for all, a new, integrated musical world. With extensive interviews and firsthand personal observations extending over Peter Guralnick's twenty-five-year acquaintance with Phillips, along with wide ranging interviews with nearly all the legendary Sun Records artists, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll gives us an ardent, intimate, and unrestrained portrait of an American original as compelling in his own right as such other homegrown creative spirits as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Thomas Edison." - from the inner front jacket flap. "Peter Guralnick isn't just a music writer or a biographer - he's one of the essential chroniclers of American popular culture, and his work illuminates some of the crucial components of our national identity: race, religion, fame and the big business of having fun. In this epic biography, Guralnick bears witness to the birth of rock and roll and the cultural revolution it inspired. It's not only an unforgettable portrait of an eccentric visionary, it's a testament to the power of ordinary people to change the world." - Tom Perrotta, author. "When Elvis Presley stepped into a Memphis recording studio with producer Sam PHillips in 1954, they defined rock 'n' roll as we know it. Peter Guralnich already gave us Elvis's story in two landmark books. He now returns with a brilliant, intensely human look at PHillips, the endlessly fascinaging figure who also recored Johnny Cash, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and Jerry Lee Lewis. It's a bold, insightful work that tells us in novelistic detail about the obsessions and struggles of the man who presided over the uneasy birth of rock 'n' roll." - Robert Hilburn, author. "Sam Phillips is an epic biography, at once sweeping and personal, in which the gifted writer Peter Guralnick captures the voice and life of a transformational figure in American music." - Jess Walter, author.