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Join us AT MEMPHIS LISTENING LAB as we welcome PRESTON LAUTERBACH in conversation with ROBERT GORDON on FRIDAY, APRIL 4 at 6:00 PM to celebrate the release of his new book BEFORE ELVIS: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSICIANS WHO MADE THE KINGABOUT THE BOOK:
In this thought-provoking book, the Black musicians who influenced Elvis Presley's music finally receive recognition and praise.
After Baz Luhrmann's movie, Elvis, hit theaters, audiences and critics alike couldn't help but question the Black origins of Elvis Presley's music and style, reigniting a debate that has been circling for decades. In Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King, author Preston Lauterbach answers these questions definitively, based on new research and extensive, previously unpublished interviews with the artists who blazed the way and the people who knew them.
Within these pages, Lauterbach examines the lives, music, legacies, and interactions with Elvis Presley of the four innovative Black artists who created a style that would come to be known as Rock 'n' Roll: Little Junior Parker, Big Mama Thornton, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, and mostly-unknown eccentric Beale Street guitarist Calvin Newborn. Along the way, he delves into the injustices of copyright theft and media segregation that resulted in Black artists living in poverty as white performers, managers, and producers reaped the lucrative rewards. In the wake of continuing conversations about American music and appropriation, Before Elvis is indispensable.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Preston Lauterbach has long since made a place for himself as the most valuable chronicler of African-American music as a fulcrum and a center of American culture. But here, with astonishingly detailed and serpentine storytelling, with no road of intellectual inquiry ever closed, he has outdone himself. And with humor, the cool eye of a hanging judge, and the flair of a dancer, he has lifted his ongoing argument to the realm of Mark Twain, Damon Runyon, Chester Himes, and Percival Everett.―Greil Marcus, author of "Mystery Train," "Lipstick Traces," and "Folk Music"
Preston Lauterbach is author of the American music classic The Chitlin’ Circuit (2011) as well as Beale Street Dynasty (2015) and Bluff City (2019). His latest, Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King published in January of 2025. Preston has co-authored three memoirs with significant figures in Black music history, including Brother Robert (2020) with the stepsister of bluesman Robert Johnson, Timekeeper (2021) with Memphis soul drummer Howard Grimes, and the Blind Boys of Alabama biography Spirit of the Century, out in March 2024. His works have earned book of the year recognition from the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Rolling Stone.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER:
Robert Gordon is a Grammy winning writer and an Emmy winning filmmaker. His films include Best of Enemies and William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton. His books include It Came From Memphis and Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
387 Perkins Ext, Memphis, TN, United States, Tennessee 38117
