Forum de rock6070

Certains se posent la question : Quand le Rock'n'Roll est t'il né ???

La réponse est simple, c' est le 10 Octobre 1949 ! Oubliez Ike Turner et son "Rocket 88", Alan Fredd et son émission de radio à Cleveland (en 1949, il passait encore de la musique classique ! ) et même Bill Haley et son Rock Around The Clock !

Nulle part ailleurs qu'à Memphis, bien sur, la ville de WC Handy, Howlin Wolf, BB King, le King justement mais aussi Otis Redding ou Isaac Hayes ne pouvait se produire un tel prodige !

Un disk jokey blanc, sur une radio blanche, consacre d'abord un quart d'heure puis le succès venant une partie de la fin de soirée/nuit à la musique Rythm and Blues, et le plus fort, c'est que les noirs de Memphis l'adorent ! (et rapidement les teen-agers blancs aussi), son nom, hélas oublié par la masse : Dewey Phillips !

(Dewey sera le premier à diffuser, en 1954, le That's All Right d'Elvis sur les ondes...12 fois de suite, et le premier à l'interviewer "en direct live" )

Daddy-O" Dewey Phillips (May 13, 1926 – September 28, 1968) was one of rock 'n' roll's pioneering disk jockeys, along the lines of Cleveland's Alan Freed, before Alan Freed. Starting his radio career in 1949 on WHBQ-AM in Memphis, he was the city's leading radio personality for nine years and was the first to simulcast his "Red, Hot & Blue" show on radio and television.

Phillips' on-air persona was a speed-crazed hillbilly, with a frantic delivery and entertaining sense of humor. However, he also had a keen ear for music the listening public would enjoy, and he embraced both black and white music, which was abundant in post-World War II Memphis, a booming river city which attracted large numbers of rural blacks and whites (along with their musical traditions). He played a great deal of rhythm and blues, country music, boogie-woogie, and jazz as well as Sun Records artists. In July 1954, he was the first DJ to broadcast the young Elvis Presley's debut record, "That's All Right/Blue Moon Of Kentucky" (Sun 209), and got Presley to reveal his race in an interview by asking which high school the 19-year-old singer attended (knowing that, because of segregation, his audience would readily know what race attended which schools).

Though Phillips was not involved in the payola scandals of the time (as was Freed), he was fired in late 1958 when the station adopted a Top 40 format, phasing out his freeform style. He spent the last decade of his life working at smaller radio stations, seldom lasting long. A heavy drinker and longtime drug user (mainly painkillers and amphetamines, which contributed to his manic on-air behavior), Phillips died of heart failure at age 42.

Dewey live on the radio :



And on TV avec Jerry Lee :

Le CD qui va bien et est un véritable document historique :




http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/mus ... &+Blue.htm




Although Alan Freed is more famous, Dewey Phillips arguably did more to invent the prototype of the rock & roll DJ. His Memphis show, Red Hot and Blue, possibly the first major radio show by a white disc jockey to play R&B, integrated the airwaves in 1952. And if that's not enough, he deserves legendary status for being the very first disc jockey to ever play an Elvis Presley record. Of course, that epochal moment isn't here on this hourlong collection of airchecks from 1952 to 1964, but this disc does do an excellent job of presenting Phillips' singular style. Phillips liked to gab, and throughout this disc he often riffs over the records as they play, his quirky non sequiturs sounding like he's overindulged on the fine products of his primary sponsor, Champagne Velvet beer. At least, that's how he sounds at the beginning. By the end, Phillips sounds tired and disenchanted with the music he's playing -- it's not an accident that these tapes end with the year the British Invasion came calling on these shores. With pure R&B in decline and his hipster broadcasting style out of favor, Phillips is a man out of time by the end of this disc. Annoyingly, this collection of tape fragments is programmed as one hourlong cut, which makes it difficult to examine how completely Phillips' style had changed over the years. ~ Stewart Mason

Dewey Phillips brought black rhythm and blues music to white teenagers in Memphis two years before Freed started doing the same in Cleveland. He brought rock'n'roll to television a year before Dick Clark's American Bandstand. And while segregation was imposed on virtually every aspect of life in the streets, "Daddy-O" Dewey gleefully integrated the airwaves of the South. These selections offer a glimpse into this unique performer during his rise, at his peak, and in the decline of his career. It is a voice that has not been heard before and will not likely be heard again - a voice which changed the social landscape of Memphis and the musical landscape of the world. One Hour of live broadcasts from 1952-1964.

Un autre extrait de l'émission "Red Hot and Blue" :

Le livre pour tout savoir :




From Publishers Weekly
Two years before Alan Freed "discovered" rock 'n' roll, deejay Dewey Phillips was introducing white audiences to largely unfamiliar "race" music by Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and B. B. King and becoming Memphis's most popular white disc jockey as a result. Dewey was also the first major deejay to play Elvis on the air, sparking one of the greatest music careers of the 20th century. Cantor's study of the influential disc jockey begins roughly when Dewey launched his "Red, Hot and Blue" show on WHBQ in 1949, and the book is as much a biography of Memphis as it is of Dewey Phillips. Sam Phillips (no relation), founder of Sun Studio, is a central figure and Beale Street, Memphis, comes to life as a meeting point of black and white communities and the site of Home of the Blues Records. Cantor, who knew Elvis in high school, makes a case for further study of Phillips as a pivotal figure in the dissemination of early rock 'n' roll. Well-researched and meticulously annotated, his volume draws on personal interviews, secondary sources and preserved oral histories to create an authoritative, readable and lively portrait of both the person and the time that launched the sound of rock 'n' roll. 14 pages of b/w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


http://www.amazon.com/Dewey-Elvis-Times ... 025202981X

(Elvis, fidèle en amitié, assistera à son enterrement en 1968...)

Allez, encore un extrait de "Red, Hot and Blue" :

Passionnant !