Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'N' Roll - Softcover

Escott, Colin; Hawkins, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312081995 ISBN 13: 9780312081997

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 1992

Synopsis

Memphis, Tennessee. The early 1950s. The Mississippi rolls by, and there's a train in the night. Down on Beale Street there's hard-edged blues, on the outskirts of town they're pickin' hillbilly boogie.

At Sam Phillips' Sun Records studio on Union Avenue, there's something different going on. "Shake it, baby, shake it!" "Go, cat, go!" "We're gonna rock..."

This is where rock 'n' roll was born-the record company that launched Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Carl Perkins. The label that brought the world, "Blue Suede Shoes," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," "Breathless," "I Walk the Line," "Mystery Train," "Baby, Let's Play House,' "Good Rockin' Tonight." Good Rockin Tonight is the history, in words and over 240 photographs, of Sam Phillips' legendary storefront studio, from the early days with primal blues artists like Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King to the long nights in the studio with Elvis and Jerry Lee. As colorful and energetic as the music itself, it's a one-of-a-kind book for anyone who wants to know where it all started.

About this title

About the Author:

Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins have conducted twenty years of research on Sun Records as catalog and reissue specialists. Escott lives in Toronto, Hawkins in London.

From Library Journal:

This culmination of a work in progress since 1971 follows the authors' earlier Catalyst: The Sun Records Story ( 1975) and Sun Records: The Brief History of the Legendary Record Label ( LJ 2/15/81) as their most detailed and critically astute evaluation of the seminal Sun Records and its founder and creative genius Sam Phillips. The developments of Sun and the nascent rock 'n' roll phenomenon in the early 1950s are inextricably entwined through Phillips's recordings of Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis, all of whom began their careers at Sun. In explicating the "Sun sound," Escott and Hawkins also document Phillips's mistakes, flaws, and failures. The stories individually are wonderful, and collectively they form a lush composition of a significant slice of rock 'n' roll history. Numerous pictures, newspaper clippings, and other scrapbook paraphernalia complement the text, along with a Sun Records discography. For all libraries with even a passing interest in the history of popular music. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/90.
- Barry Miller, Austin P.L., Tex.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0312081995
• ISBN 13: 9780312081997
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288