View allAll Photos Tagged GoodReads
“Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/present-moment
The following is a brief biography of Fredric Brown (1906-1972) from the Goodreads website (at www.goodreads.com/author/show/51503.Fredric_Brown):
"Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was one of the boldest early writers in genre fiction in his use of narrative experimentation. While never in the front rank of popularity in his lifetime, Brown has developed a considerable cult following in the almost half century since he last wrote. His works have been periodically reprinted and he has a worldwide fan base, most notably in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in France, where there have been several recent movie adaptations of his work. He also remains popular in Japan.
"Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons."
I think she's reading Murder She Wrote: Gin and Daggers but in some strange, weird, eccentric language that nobody knows (Italian).
By the way, are any of you on Goodreads? If so, a link to your profile would be lurvvelly. I can add you to my list of contacts and we can raise eyebrows at each others' choice of books.
The girl who modeled as Eve in my composite requested I take a few photographs in different styles for her. This was her more punk one.
This piece was also one of my Extras in my Hallmark Institute of Photography final portfolio.
© Julia Grace Arts
Do NOT reproduce, use, or distribute without permission. Check out my usage guidelines here.
Please DO Feature on dA, Pin, Share, or Tweet my work!
Quick Links
Gallery | Profile | Journal | My Website | Store | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | Pinterest | Goodreads
quotes about love
quotes about change
quotes about life
quotes about strength
quotes about friends
quotes about happiness
quotes about snow
a quotes pll
a quotes about life
a quotes about love
a quotes for a friend
a quotes about smile
a quotes for sister
a quotes about beauty
a quotes for your crush
a quotes of the day
a quotes on friendship
quotes by famous people
quotes by rappers
quotes by marilyn monroe
quotes by walt disney
quotes by women
quotes by rumi
quotes by mark twain
quotes by gandhi
quotes by george washington
quotes by maya angelou
quotes b&w
quotes b r ambedkar
quotes b.i ikon
quotes b day
quotes b f skinner
quotes b.a.p
cardi b quotes for instagram
option b quotes
plan b quotes
b'day quotes for brother
quotes christmas
quotes cute
quotes coloring pages
quotes creator
quotes change
quotes christmas vacation
quotes calligraphy
quotes crush
quotes christian
quotes courage
c quotes in string
c quotes funny
c quotes escape
quotes c s lewis
quotes c.s. lewis love
quotes c g jung
quotes c wright mills
quotes c'est la vie
quotes c ronaldo
quotes c v raman
quotes definition
quotes de amor
quotes de la vida
quotes deep
quotes depression
quotes disney
quotes dr seuss
quotes drawings
quotes death
quotes dreams
d quotes nyse
d quotes from chance
quotes d'amour en francais
quotes d.o exo
quotes d'amour pour lui
quotes d'amour pour elle
quotes d.va
quotes d h lawrence
quotes d l moody
quotes en español
quotes education
quotes einstein
quotes eleanor roosevelt
quotes examples
quotes encouragement
quotes edgar allan poe
quotes eyes
quotes everyone should know
quotes explained
e quotes about life
e quotes about love
e quotes insurance
e quotes in hindi
e quotes walga
e quotes funny
quotes e.t
quotes e-commerce
quotes e.h
quotes e m forster
quotes for her
quotes from elf
quotes from the office
quotes for girls
quotes from the grinch
quotes funny
quotes from the bible
quotes from songs
f quotes on friendship
quotes of life
f quotes about love
quotes f scott fitzgerald
quotes f scott fitzgerald love
quotes of the day
quotes f scott fitzgerald great gatsby
quotes f scott fitzgerald tender night
quotes f is for family
quotes of attitude
quotes gratitude
quotes god
quotes goodreads
quotes girls
quotes generator
quotes gandhi
quotes gate
quotes great gatsby
quotes gif
quotes george washington
g quotes sfv
g quotes on love
g quotes life
g quotes tumblr
quotes g dragon
quotes g k chesterton
quotes g b shaw
quotes g herbo
quotes g i jane
quotes g w bush
quotes happy
quotes hope
quotes harry potter
quotes hard work
quotes hashtags
quotes helping others
quotes home
quotes halloween
quotes html
quotes helen keller
h quotes images
h quotes in hindi
h quotes about love
h quotes tumblr
h quotes wallpaper
quotes h l mencken
quotes h c andersen
quotes h p lovecraft
quotes h g wells
quotes h jackson brown
quotes in spanish
quotes inspirational
quotes in french
quotes instagram
quotes inside quotes
quotes in to kill a mockingbird
quotes in calligraphy
quotes in mla format
quotes in fahrenheit 451
quotes in arabic
i quotes about life
i quotes about me
i quotes in english
i quotes images
i quotes for instagram
i quotes in hindi
i quotes goodreads
i quotes and sayings
i quotes tumblr
i quotes about love
quotes joy
quotes jesus
quotes journal
quotes journey
quotes jealousy
quotes john muir
quotes james baldwin
quotes justice
quotes j cole
quotes jk rowling
quotes j k rowling
quotes j r r tolkien
quotes j krishnamurti
quotes j cole songs
quotes j f kennedy
quotes j d salinger
quotes j m barrie
quotes j hope bts
quotes j edgar hoover
quotes kindness
quotes kids
quotes karma
quotes kevin gates
quotes keep going
quotes knowledge
quotes on
quotes kanye west
quotes king lear
quotes kpop
k quotes funny
k quotes tumblr
k' quotes kof
k' quotes snk wiki
k quotes wallpapers
k quotes anime
k quotes in urdu
k quotes on life
kdrama quotes
kpop quotes
quotes love
quotes life
quotes leadership
quotes latex
quotes lord of the flies
quotes letting go
quotes lds
quotes light
quotes loyalty
quotes lonely
l quotes about life
l quotes monsters
l quotes from death note
l quotes in hindi
l quotes about love
l quotes death note monster
l quotes about friendship
l quotes tumblr
l quotes on death
quotes l lawliet
quotes motivation
quotes meaning
quotes maya angelou
quotes mla
quotes martin luther king
quotes moving on
quotes meme
quotes music
quotes mother teresa
quotes mark twain
m quotes james bond
m quotes tennyson in skyfall
m quotes skyfall
m quotes casino royale
m quotes bond
m quotes about life
quotes m scott peck
quotes m ali
quotes m l king
quotes m shadows
quotes nature
quotes never give up
quotes new year
quotes night
quotes new beginnings
quotes nelson mandela
quotes new york
quotes nietzsche
quotes nightmare before christmas
quotes nice
n quotes pokemon
n quotes sayings
quotes in hindi
quotes on love
quotes n notes
quotes nd notes instagram
quotes n notes images
quotes n images
quotes n thoughts
quotes n quiz
quotes on change
quotes on strength
quotes on gratitude
quotes of encouragement
quotes on leadership
quotes on family
o quotes movie
quotes on friends
quotes positive
quotes pinterest
quotes pictures
quotes perseverance
quotes punctuation
quotes peace
quotes patience
quotes princess bride
quotes png
quotes pain
p quotes wallpapers
quotes p t barnum
quotes p nk
quotes p.s i love you
quotes p g wodehouse
quotes p ramlee
quotes p. j. o'rourke
quotes p.s i still love you
quotes p diddy
quotes p v sindhu
quotes queen
quotes quotes
quotes quiz
quotes questions
quotes question mark
quotes quran
quotes quiet
quotes quality
q quotes star trek
q quotes sf3
q quotes skyfall
quotes relationships
quotes reddit
quotes rumi
quotes rappers
quotes respect
quotes rupi kaur
quotes regarding change
quotes ralph waldo emerson
quotes relatable
quotes rules
r quotes in string
r quotes within quotes
r quotes in paste
r quotes warm bodies
r quotes escape
quotes r.h sin
quotes r.m drake
quotes r us
quotes r&b
quotes r.i.p
quotes short
quotes sad
quotes synonym
quotes strength
quotes success
quotes smile
quotes self love
quotes spanish
quotes symbol
quotes sports
s quotes about life
s quotes images
s quotes about love
s quotes and sayings
quotes s&p 500
s'mores quotes
s radhakrishnan quotes
s town quotes
s diary quotes
s mcnutt quotes
quotes tumblr
quotes to make you think
quotes to inspire
quotes to make you smile
quotes tattoos
quotes that make no sense
quotes to get you through the day
quotes to keep going
quotes to motivate
t quotes about life
t-quotes llc
t quotes about love
quotes t shirt
quotes t shirts myntra
quotes t shirts online
quotes t shirt india
quotes t shirt online shopping india
quotes t shirt design
quotes t s eliot
quotes uplifting
quotes unknown
quotes unique
quotes unconditional love
quotes upside down
quotes universe
quotes unrequited love
quotes understanding
quotes unity
quotes under 20 characters
quotes u are my everything
quotes u hurt me
quotes u dont know me
quotes u r special
quotes u make me happy
quotes u dont deserve me
quotes u can do it
quotes u deserve better
quotes u left me alone
quotes u mean the world to me
quotes vs italics
quotes vsco
quotes vs '
quotes veterans
quotes vines
quotes voting
quotes voltaire
quotes vs italics for titles
quotes v for vendetta
quotes vince lombardi
v quotes bts
v quotes dmc
v quotes mystic messenger
v quotes pynchon
v quotes macbeth
v quotes about love
quotes v for vendetta movie
quotes v for vendetta comic
quotes v s naipaul
quotes or quotation
quotes wallpaper
quotes within quotes
quotes with pictures
quotes with meaning
quotes with flowers
quotes website
quotes with drawings
quotes women
quotes work
quotes winter
w quotes kdrama
w quotes about life
w quotes gif
quotes w c fields
quotes w.e.b. dubois
quotes w b yeats
quotes w h auden
quotes w. edwards deming
quotes w clement stone
quotes w two worlds
quotes xxxtentacion
quotes xmas
quotes xanga
quotes xoxo gossip girl
quotes xmas funny
quotes xero
quotes xi jinping
quotes xmas greetings
quotes xmas wishes
quotes xmas love
x quotes about love
x quotes from songs
xmas quotes
malcolm x quotes
monsta x quotes
project x quotes
malcolm x quotes media
professor x quotes
quotes you
quotes yellow
quotes yogi berra
quotes yoga
quotes yearbook
quotes young frankenstein
quotes yoda
quotes you can do it
quotes you are beautiful
quotes you got this
y quotes images
quotes y tu mama tambien
i love u quotes
quotes and captions
quotes by anna wintour
curren$y quotes
funny quotes
y'shaarj quotes
y me quotes
x+y quotes
quotes zig ziglar
quotes zen
quotes zora neale hurston
quotes zodiac signs
quotes zoolander
quotes zendaya
quotes zombieland
quotes zelda
quotes zhuangzi
quotes zero dark thirty
z quotes love
z quotes antz
z quotes from the bible
quotes z for zachariah
quotes z nation
jay z quotes
jay z quotes about life
dragon ball z quotes
jay z quotes about money
jay z quotes about hustling
quotes 0n education
quotes 0n friendship
quotes 0f the day
quotes 0n love
quotes 007
quotes 0n life
quotes 007 james bond
quotes 0n success
quotes 0n happiness
quotes 0f jesus
yakuza 0 quotes
0 tolerance quotes
mood 0 quotes
tosh.0 quotes
0 effort quotes
size 0 quotes
type 0 quotes
0 sentimientos quotes
0 love quotes
number 0 quotes
quotes 1984
quotes 100
quotes 10 things i hate about you
quotes 1920s
quotes 101
quotes 1984 with page numbers
quotes 18th birthday
quotes 12 years a slave
quotes 1000 splendid suns
quotes 1800s
quotes 1 line
quotes 1 muharram
quotes 1 year anniversary
quotes 1 word
quotes 1 year together
quotes 1 year anniversary boyfriend
quotes 1 year death anniversary
quotes 1 month anniversary
quotes 1 year old birthday
quotes 1 november
quotes 2018
quotes 2019
quotes 2pac
quotes 2018 funny
quotes 20 characters or less
quotes 20 letters or less
quotes 2001 space odyssey
quotes 21 jump street
quotes 21st birthday
2 quotes from the giver
2 quotes from the declaration of independence
2 quotes from the 95 theses
2 quotes from george washington
2 quotes from john locke
2 quotes in one sentence
2 quotes from the crucible
2 quotes from the great gatsby
2 quotes on standing up to bullies
2 quotes from the tell tale heart
quotes 3 words
quotes 365
quotes 300
quotes 30 characters or less
quotes 3 lines or more
quotes 30 rock
quotes 30th birthday
quotes 365 days of wonder
quotes 33 years old
quotes 30 years old
3 quotes from the outsiders
3 quotes from the crucible
3 quotes from to kill a mockingbird
3 quotes in python
3 quotes from night by elie wiesel
3 quotes from house on mango street
3 quotes from the great gatsby
3 quotes from the hate u give
3 quotes from macbeth
3 quotes about friendship
quotes 48 laws of power
quotes 451 fahrenheit
quotes 4 words or less
quotes 40th birthday
quotes 4 instagram
quotes 40 year old virgin
quotes 40 characters or less
quotes 4k wallpaper
quotes 4 words
4 quotes to describe mr hyde
4 quotes to describe dr jekyll
quotes 4 best friend
quotes 4 husband
quotes 5 words or less
quotes 50th birthday
quotes 5sos
quotes 50 first dates
quotes 50 shades of grey
quotes 50th anniversary
quotes 50th law
quotes 50 years old
quotes 50th wedding anniversary
quotes 500 days of summer
5 quotes to live by
5 quotes about happiness
5 quotes from the red badge of courage
5 quotes from fahrenheit 451
5 quotes from animal farm
5 quotes from shakespeare
5 quotes from macbeth
5 quotes about boredom
5 quotes from frankenstein
5 quotes about love
quotes 6 words
quotes 6lack
quotes 60th birthday
quotes 6ix9ine
quotes 65 birthday
quotes 69
quotes 60 birthday
quotes 6 month relationship
quotes 60th birthday humor
quotes 60 years birthday
6 quotes from to kill a mockingbird
6 quotes on communication
6 quotes from davos on the future of education
6 quotes drake
quotes 6 pack abs
quotes 70th birthday
quotes 7 habits
quotes 75th birthday
quotes 7 month anniversary
quotes 70th birthday wishes
quotes 70s
quotes 7 petala cinta
quotes 7th birthday
7 quotes of life
7 quotes to live by
7 quotes of jesus on the cross
7 quotes about love
7 quotes for birthday
7 quotes movie
7 quotes friends
quotes 80s movies
quotes 80th birthday
quotes 876
quotes 80s
quotes 88 love life
quotes 8 month anniversary
quotes 80s songs
quotes 80th birthday funny
quotes 80 years old
quotes 8 mile
8 quotes to live by from the greatest showman
8 quotes that inspire volunteering
8 quotes from the notebook
quotes 8 words or less
quotes 9/11
quotes 9 11 brainyquote
quotes 90s
quotes 9n friends
quotes 9gag
quotes 90th birthday
quotes 90s movies
quotes 90an
quotes 9 months anniversary
quotes 90s songs
9 quotes from christopher robin
9 quotes that will bring peace
9 quotes for 9 months of pregnancy
9 11 quotes never forget
district 9 quotes
Memphis, TN, est. 1819, pop. 650,000
• in the 1950s, in a small studio on Union, Ave., Sam C. Phillips (1923-2003) recorded music that is "one of the true touchstones of American culture" —Escott, Hawkins, Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'N' Roll
• this two-story corner bldg. is located in Memphis's Edge district • before becoming the Sun Studio Café, the 1st floor housed Taylor's Fine Food restaurant (1948-1981) [photo] • owned by Dell Taylor (1911-2003) & husband, Carlos (1914-1976) • 2nd floor was a rooming house
• the 1908 bldg. shares a partywall with a 1-story storefront at no. 706, built in 1916 [photos] • this small adjacent structure became Memphis Recording Service & later, Sun Studio [discography], where Elvis Presley (1935-1977) began his recording career
"Dell M. Taylor served up country fried steak and gentle mothering to the emerging stars of Sun Studio… Mrs. Taylor saw to it that Elvis Presley, Rufus Thomas, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich and Carl Perkins, — along with the mechanics and other workers from the auto dealership row on Union — had the freshest greens and vegetables… Many a song was written in the booths, as the musicians would come in to eat during a break in recording at Sun Studio next door… Sun Studio founder Sam Phillips, credited with discovering Elvis and others, often did his bookkeeping at the restaurant." —Chris Conley, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 24 Feb., 2003
• Sam Phillips, who claimed he didn't have a desk, had his own booth at Taylor's to pore over paperwork • "That's where all the guys did their writing and talking, and that's where the Sun sound was really born." –Jack Clement (1931-2013), Sun Studio producer
• exhausted musicians often spent the night in one of "Miss Taylor's" upstairs rooms • while recording at Sun the mid-1950s, Roy Orbison had a two-room apartment there
• the bldg. now serves as visitor center for the recording studio, which is open to the public for tours
Marker: Elvis Presley and Sun Records
In July 1954 Sun Records released Elvis Presley's first recording. That record, and Elvis' four that followed on the Sun label, changed popular music. Elvis developed an innovative and different sound combining blues, gospel, and country. That quality made Elvis a worldwide celebrity within two years. He went on to become one of the most famous and beloved entertainers in history. Sun Records introduced many well known people in all fields of music. Generations of musicians have been affected by those who recorded here and especially by the music Elvis Presley first sang at Sun Records
National Historic Landmark Nomination: (unedited version with citations available here)
Marion Keisker (1917-1989), Phillips's sole assistant & employee when he started his business said he "would talk about this idea he had, this dream, I suppose, to have a facility where black people could come and play their own music, a place where they would feel free and relaxed to do it. One day we were riding along, and he saw that spot on Union, and he said, 'That's the spot I want.' With many difficulties we got the place, and we raised the money, and between us we did everything. We laid all the tile, we painted the acoustic boards, I put in the bathroom, Sam put in the control room—what little equipment he had always had to be the best." — quoted by Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
Phillips started his own record company, Sun Records, in 1952, "the first great rock 'n' roll record label." • Some of the artists Phillips recorded would redefine the musical genres in which they worked. Many of them made for Phillips not only their first recordings but also their best.
Before World War II most black music was blues, and a lot of those were country blues of the Mississippi Delta, the raw, gut-wrenching folk music of rural African Americans… Black migration out of the rural South accelerated during the First World War and exploded after World War II when manual cotton picking came to an end. Synthetic materials took over the market after the discovery of nylon in 1939, and the mechanical cotton picker, able to do the work of fifty people, arrived soon after. "The main musical result of the great migration was the blues came to town, and not to any old town: to Memphis, which acted as the local focus for migration from the Delta." — Sir Peter Hall, Cities in Civilization
In Memphis, WDIA started out in 1947 as a popular and country music radio station. The station switched formats in 1948 and began programming for a black audience after the success of a show called "Black America Speaks," hosted by Memphis's first black on-air personality, Nat Williams (1907-1983) [editorial: Color the Issue, A Point of View by Nat L. Williams]
Also in 1948, Dewey Phillips (1926-1968), a white radio announcer from rural Tennessee, began to host a show on WHBQ. "Red Hot and Blue" [listen] expanded from fifteen minutes to three hours daily during its first year on the air. Phillips played "an eclectic mix of blues, hillbilly, and pop that would become an institution in Memphis, and his importance to the cross-cultural miscegenation that became Rock 'n' Roll is incalculable." By 1951, word began to spread that white kids were buying "race records."
Sam Phillips was born on January 5, 1923 in the northwest corner of Alabama near Florence, about 150 miles east of Memphis. He got his first radio job in 1940 at WLAY in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and later took correspondence courses in radio engineering. He worked at WMSL in Decatur, Alabama, and at WLAC in Nashville before moving to Memphis in 1945.
In January 1950, Phillips started his own recording business in addition to his regular jobs. The Memphis Recording Service opened at 706 Union Avenue, about a mile east of the downtown area. The small one-story brick building had a reception area/office at the front of the building, a recording studio in the middle section, and a small control room in the rear. The entire building is only about 18 feet wide and 57 feet long. Phillips's business card read "We Record Anything—Anywhere—Anytime." Initially that included weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, advertisements for radio, etc., in addition to musicians in his studio.
"I opened the Memphis Recording Service with the intention of recording singers and musicians from Memphis and the locality who I felt had something that people should be able to hear. I'm talking about blues—both the country style and the rhythm style—and also about gospel or spiritual music and about white country music. I always felt that people who played this type of music had not been given the opportunity to reach an audience . . . My aim was to try and record the blues and other music I liked and to prove whether I was right or wrong about this music. I knew, or I felt I knew, that there was a bigger audience for blues than just the black man of the mid-South. There were city markets to be reached, and I knew that whites listened to blues surreptitiously." —Escott, op. cit.
Phillips also functioned as a folklorist, documenting music that was fading into the past. "With the jet age coming on, with cotton-picking machines as big as a building going down the road, with society changing, I knew that this music wasn't going to be available in a pure sense forever."
Recording the Blues
video: Sam Phillips: The Man who Invented Rock & Roll Part 1 (44:22) & Part 2 (45:59)
His first deal, with 4 Star/Gilt Edge Records, was a song by a blind pianist from south Memphis. Lost John Hunter's "Boogie for Me Baby" [listen] was "a crude boogie blues that could pick up some southern juke coin," according to the review in Billboard, a record business trade publication.
In late summer 1950, Phillips launched his own record company with partner Dewey Phillips (the hot Memphis radio announcer, no relation) in order to issue and promote his own products. They called their label Phillips, but it only lasted a few weeks, issuing three hundred copies of Joe Hill Louis's "Boogie in the Park" in August 1950 [listen]
Phillips soon began working with Modern Records of Los Angeles, owned and operated by the Bihari brothers. Their new subsidiary, RPM Records, was looking for "new music with a down- home feel." Jules Bihari sent a guitar player from Indianola, Mississippi, to Sam Phillips to record. Riley King was already popular locally and known as B.B. King (for Blues Boy, or more likely, Black Boy). Phillips recorded King, one of the first artists on the new RPM label, from mid-1950 until mid-1951 [listen].
Even at this early stage in his career, Sam Phillips used recording techniques that were soon recognized as hallmarks of his records. He put up-tempo boogies on the front sides of records, slow numbers on back sides, and overamplified on faster songs to get a primitive fuzzy sound… These early recording sessions with King also document Phillips's skill as a record producer. King's version of a Tampa Red song had an explosiveness missing from the original record.
"Rocket '88'," a song about a hot Oldsmobile, is one of the contenders for the title "first rock 'n' roll record." It featured Jackie Brenston, the singer, and Ike Turner, the bandleader, on piano. "Rocket '88'" [listen] was released in April 1951. It hit number 1 on Billboard's R&B chart in June and eventually became the second biggest R&B hit of the year. According to Sam Phillips, "Rocket '88'" was the record that really kicked it off for me as far as broadening the base of music and opening up wider markets for our local music." Phillips resigned from WREC in June 1951 after "Rocket '88'" became a hit. — [more] on the history of “Rocket 88”
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 28 Mar, 1951: "[Sam Phillips] has agreements with two recording companies to locate and record hillbilly and race music. Race numbers are those tailored for the Negro trade. Sam auditions musicians with original songs. When he finds something he's sure will sell, he gets it on acetate and sends it to one of the companies. He doesn't charge the musicians anything . . . Sam may branch out one day, so he says if anyone wants to bring him a pop song, he'll be glad to look it over." • full article
• Sam Phillips first recorded Chester Burnett (The Howlin' Wolf) in the spring of 1951. Born near Aberdeen, Mississippi, Howlin' Wolf (1910-1976) was a singer who gave the traditional Delta blues another dimension. They recorded "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years" [listen] in August 1951… In Phillips's estimation, the Wolf was his greatest discovery.
• Even though he preferred the creative side of the business, Phillips started his own record company early in 1952… With his own label, Phillips could run the business like he wanted and release records that other labels rejected.
"When I was leasing to other labels, they wanted me to compromise. They wanted a fuller blues sound than I did. They were selling excitement. I was recording the feel I found in the blues. I wanted to get that gut feel onto record. I realized that it was going to be much more difficult to merchandise than what Atlantic or Specialty, for example, were doing, but I was willing to go with it."
Phillips named his new company Sun Records and selected an eye-catching record label [photo] designed by John G. Parker (1925-2012), who also designed the tiger stripe helmet for the Cincinnati Bengals football team and packages for Alka-Seltzer and Super Bubble gum… "The sun to me—even as a kid back on the farm—was a universal kind of thing. A new day, a new opportunity." —Sam Phillips
The first record issued on the new Sun label (March 27, 1952), Sun number 175, was an original instrumental, "Drivin' Slow," by alto saxophonist Johnny London.
"Even on this first release, all the hallmarks of a Sam Phillips Sun record were in place: the raw sound, the experimental origin, the dark texture, even the trademark echo. Phillips and London created the illusion of a sax heard down a long hallway on a humid night by rigging something like a telephone booth over London's head while he played. The record's appeal had more to do with feeling than virtuosity—in short, it offered everything music buyers could expect from Sun for the remainder of the decade." [listen]
The first recording on the Sun label considered to be a classic was Easy, an instrumental released in March 1953 by Walter Horton (1921-1981) (Little Walter, and later, Big Walter).
". . . Horton played the same theme five times, with mounting intensity. By the fourth chorus, he was playing with such intensity that his harmonica sounded like a tenor saxophone. Phillips' virtuosity with tape delay echo was rarely used to better advantage: he made three instruments [harmonica, guitar, drums] sound as full as an orchestra. Any other instrument would have been redundant." [listen]
Sun Records had its first national hit in the spring of 1953 with "Bear Cat," [listen] which went to number 3 on the national R&B chart. It was an "answer song" to "Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton aka Willie Mae Thornton (1926-1984), sung by local radio announcer Rufus Thomas. "Bear Cat" was the first record to make money for Sun Records and it put the company on the map. "Feelin' Good" by Little Junior's Blue Flames (released in July 1953), was also commercially successful, reaching number 5 on the national R&B chart.
Sun's next hit was "Just Walkin' in the Rain" [listen] by The Prisonaires, a black vocal group of five inmates from the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville. They sang close-harmony gospel style and came under armed guard to record at 706 Union on June 1, 1953. As part of the warden's rehabilitation program, they were allowed to perform on radio, in concerts, and at the Governor's mansion, but "Just Walkin' in the Rain" was their only hit.
Phillips recorded a number of important blues artists in the early 1950s, including "Sleepy" John Estes, Little Milton Campbell, Rosco Gordon, Dr. Ross, Harmonica Frank Floyd, Willie Nix, Billy "The Kid" Emerson, and Bobby "Blue" Bland.
". . . It's safe to say that the blues has never sounded as mean, raw, or intense as it did on countless days and nights at 706 Union Avenue. Amplifiers were cranked way past the point of distortion, guitars slashed like straight razors, rickety drum kits were pounded with fury and abandon, and the stories both sung and shouted spanned the gamut of the black Southern experience…
"Even if he'd never issued a record on the shining yellow Sun label, even if Elvis Presley had never entered his small recording studio..., Phillips would rank as one of the most visionary record producers of our time on the basis of his early fifties blues work." —John Floyd, Sun Records: An Oral History
In May 1954, Phillips recorded "Cotton Crop Blues" with James Cotton on vocals and Auburn "Pat" Hare on guitar. This was "one of the truly great blues recordings," but recording of traditional blues at 706 Union fell off in 1954 with the growing popularity of R&B music. Sun Records soon became synonymous with rock 'n' roll, overshadowing Phillips's role in blues recording "and the insight that [he] brought to recording the blues. He worked hard to get the best from his artists . . . Phillips would sit behind his tape deck until sunup if he thought the musicians on the studio floor might capture the sound that he heard in his head."
Phillips struggled to make money in the record business for almost six years. Eventually he saw that the market at that time was too small for the kind of music he was recording.
"The base wasn't broad enough because of racial prejudice. It wasn't broad enough to get the amount of commercial play and general acceptance overall—not just in the South . . . Now these were basically good people, but conceptually they did not understand the kinship between black and white people in the South. So I knew what I had to do to broaden the base of acceptance." —Escott, op. cit.
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley graduated from Humes High School in north Memphis on June 3, 1953 and went to work at M.B. Parker Machinists on July 1. Later that summer, he recorded a personal record at the Memphis Recording Service. Presley paid $3.98 for an acetate with two sides, both ballads. While he was there, Presley talked with Marion Keisker, a long-time Memphis radio personality who helped Sam Phillips run his businesses at 706 Union, and asked if she knew of a band that needed a singer.
He made an impression on Keisker which she later remembered well, especially his answer to her question about which hillbilly singer he sounded like: "I don't sound like nobody." At that time, Presley had a child's guitar that he played in the park, on his porch steps, and in a band with his buddies around their housing project. He soon aspired to be a member of the Songfellows, an amateur church quartet. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Presley dropped by 706 Union a number of times after that initial meeting to see if Ms. Keisker had any leads for him. In January 1954, Presley paid for a second personal record, and tried out for a professional band that spring. Eddie Bond (1933-2003), the band leader, told him to keep driving a truck because he would never make it as a singer. Presley later revealed that Bond's rejection "broke my heart." —Guralnick, op. cit.
". . . There is little question that he stepped through the doorway [at 706 Union] with the idea, if not of stardom . . . at the very least of being discovered. In later years he would always say that he wanted to make a personal record "to surprise my mother." Or "I just wanted to hear what I sounded like." But, of course, if he had simply wanted to record his voice, he could have paid twenty-five cents at W. T. Grant's on Main Street . . . Instead, Elvis went to a professional facility, where a man who had been written up in the papers would hear him sing." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Marion Keisker finally called Presley on Saturday, June 26 to set up an appointment, almost a year after he recorded his first personal disc. On a recent trip to Nashville, Phillips had gotten an acetate of a song that reminded him of Presley's voice. They worked on "Without You" [listen] for a long time that afternoon, and Phillips had Presley sing a number of other songs after his unsuccessful attempts with "Without You."
A week later, Phillips set Presley up with two members of the Starlite Wranglers [photos], Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black (bass), and the three of them went to the studio on Monday, July 5 so Phillips could hear them on tape. Nothing special happened at the session until they took a break and Presley began fooling around and playing an old blues song by Arthur Crudup, "That's All Right [Mama] [listen]."
"Sam recognized it right away. He was amazed that the boy even knew Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup—nothing in any of the songs he had tried so far gave any indication that he was drawn to this kind of music at all. But this was the sort of music that Sam had long ago wholeheartedly embraced . . . And the way the boy performed it, it came across with a freshness and an exuberance, it came across with the kind of clear-eyed, unabashed originality that Sam sought in all the music that he recorded—it was "different," it was itself." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Phillips got his friend and kindred spirit, disc jockey Dewey Phillips, to play "That's All Right" [listen] on his radio show "Red Hot and Blue," then near the height of its popularity. The response was immediate—hundreds of phone calls and telegrams. Dewey played the song a number of times that night and also interviewed Presley during the show.
By the time the record was pressed and ready for release, there were 6,000 orders for it locally. Sun record number 209 was released on Monday, July 17, 1954. Phillips had been "looking for something that nobody could categorize," and this song did not sound exclusively black or white or country or pop. Initially, many people who heard the song thought that Presley was a black man. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Elvis Presley's first big public appearance with Scotty and Bill, the Blue Moon Boys, was on Friday, July 30 at Memphis's outdoor amphitheater in Overton Park [photos]. The show featured Slim Whitman, a star from the Louisiana Hayride, which some called the Grand Ole Opry's "farm club." He drew a hillbilly crowd, but they went wild when Elvis shook and wiggled his legs, his natural way of performing.
The new record made Billboard's regional charts by the end of August, but it was the B side that was more popular. Phillips backed "That's All Right" with an unorthodox version of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" [listen], a waltz that was a hit in 1946 for Bill Monroe, country music's elder statesman. By early September, "Blue Moon" was number 1 on the Memphis C&W chart and "That's All Right" was number 7. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Sun released Presley's second record in late September. "It was . . . an even bolder declaration of intent than the first, especially the strident blues number 'Good Rockin' Tonight' [listen], which rocked more confidently than anything they could have imagined in those first, uncertain days in the studio." The original jump blues version was written and recorded by Roy Brown in 1947 [listen]
Presley's growing popularity enabled Phillips to arrange a guest appearance on the Grand Ole Opry for October 2, even though the Opry had never before scheduled a performer at such an early stage in his career. The performance of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" by Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill received a "polite, but somewhat tepid, reception," and the Opry's manager told Phillips that Presley "just did not fit the Opry mold."
It was a big disappointment for Elvis. But soon they were off to Louisiana for Presley's first appearance on the Louisiana Hayride, "the Opry's more innovative rival in Shreveport" that had a show every Saturday night. On the third Saturday of the month the show broadcast with a 50,000 watt signal that reached up to twenty-eight states.48 After only one guest appearance, Presley signed a standard one year contract to be one of the Hayride's regular members, and he and his band quit their day jobs. —Guralnick, op. cit.
For the next year, Elvis Presley and the Blue Moon Boys toured almost constantly... Presley took his first airplane flight and first trip to New York City on March 23, 1955 to try out for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts contest, but he did not pass the audition. [A] tour with Hank Snow/Jamboree Attractions began on May 1 in New Orleans, visiting twenty cities in three weeks, including a number of stops in Florida. There was a "riot" backstage after the concert in Jacksonville …
The audiences had never heard music like Presley played before, and they had never seen anyone who performed like Presley either. The shy, polite, mumbling boy gained self-confidence with every appearance, which soon led to a transformation on stage. People watching the show were astounded and shocked, both by the "ferocity of his performance,"49 and the crowd's reaction to it.
Even in the early days, Elvis almost always stole the show from the headliners, and concert lineups had to be rearranged accordingly. Nobody followed Elvis. Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time in Odessa, Texas: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing . . . I just didn't know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it."—Guralnick, op. cit.
"'He's the new rage,' said a Louisiana radio executive… 'Sings hillbilly in R&B time. Can you figure that out? He wears pink pants and a black coat . . .'" —Guralnick, op. cit.
Elvis caused a great commotion everywhere he went. Throughout the South, Presley had girls screaming and fainting and chasing after him.
Sam Phillips was also on the road constantly after the Overton Park performance in July 1954, promoting the new records to distributors, disc jockeys, record store owners, and jukebox operators. His experiences, however, were entirely different. Time and again, disc jockeys who were old friends and/or long-standing business associates told Phillips they could not play the Presley records. A country deejay said "Sam, they'll run me out of town." To an R&B deejay, "That's All Right" was a country song. A major pop station disc jockey told Phillips, "your music is just so ragged. I just can't handle it right now. Maybe later on." —Guralnick, op. cit.
WELO in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley's hometown, would not even play the record, in spite of many requests from teenagers, because the deejay did not like the new music. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Sam Phillips persevered in spite of all the rejection he was getting, and kept trying to turn it around. "I needed the attention that I got from the people that hated what I was doing, that acted like: 'Here is somebody trying to thrust junk on us and classify it as our music.'"—Guralnick, op. cit.
"He was a man swept up by a belief, in a sound and in an idea. And as discouraged as he might sometimes get, as harsh as the reality of selling this new music might be, he never strayed from his belief, he never allowed himself to be distracted from his main goal. Which was to get them to listen." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Phillips could feel a revolution was on the way. There were already lots of country boys coming to his studio to play the new music, which initially got the name rockabilly. "Sam knew that a day was coming . . . when the music would prevail." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Presley was still a regional sensation and unknown to the national market when he got the record industry's attention. By the summer of 1955, almost all the major and independent record labels were inquiring about him. Sam Phillips had mixed feelings about selling Presley's contract, but his operations could not accommodate the Presley phenomenon, his finances were very tight, and he had other artists who needed his attention.
Presley's parents signed a contract in August which soon forced the issue. Col. Tom Parker (1909-1997) became "special adviser to Elvis Presley." He was the head of Jamboree Attractions, one of the major promoters and bookers of country and western talent, and had booked Presley on the Hank Snow package tours earlier that year. At that time, Parker was known as the best promoter in the business. In October Parker asked Phillips to name his price for Presley's contract, and Parker made sure that it was met.
The deal was signed at 706 Union Avenue on November 21, 1955. RCA-Victor bought Elvis Presley's contract from Sun Records for $35,000, plus $5,000 in back royalties owed to Presley. The story ran in the Memphis Press-Scimitar the next day:
"Elvis Presley, 20, Memphis recording star and entertainer who zoomed into big- time and the big money almost overnight, has been released from his contract with Sun Record Co. of Memphis . . . . Phillips and RCA officials did not reveal terms but said the money involved is probably the highest ever paid for a contract release for a country-western recording artist. 'I feel Elvis is one of the most talented youngsters today,' Phillips said, 'and by releasing his contract to RCA-Victor we will give him the opportunity of entering the largest organization of its kind in the world, so his talents can be given the fullest opportunity.'" —quoted in Guralnick, op. cit.
Sam Phillips never regretted his decision to sell Elvis Presley's contract. In many ways, Presley's departure was like a new beginning for Sun Records. Many country musicians aspiring to play rockabilly began to make their way to 706 Union Avenue. As Johnny Cash said many years later, "Elvis was a beacon that brought us all there." —Peter Guralnick, "Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll," VHS (A&E Biography, 2000)
Sun Studio
After Sam Phillips moved his companies to the new location on Madison Avenue, 706 Union Avenue housed a number of different businesses in the 1960s and 1970s, including a barber shop, an auto parts store, and a scuba shop. The building was vacant in 1985 when it became the site of a family reunion of sorts. An album entitled “Class of '55: Memphis Rock 'n' Roll Homecoming“ was recorded here to celebrate and remember the "Class of '55" on their 30th "anniversary." Record producer Chips Moman convened Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison to record together for the first time at the Sun studio in September 1985.
Not long after that event, 706 Union Avenue became a stop for visitors on tours to Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, which opened to the public in 1982. The building opened as the Sun Studio for tours in 1987—the name Sun Records and the original Sun record label design still belong to Shelby Singleton, who bought the company in 1969. The current property owner also purchased the adjacent two-story brick building that housed a café and a boarding house in the 1950s. That building now serves as a soda shop, gallery, and gift shop for visitors to Sun Studio.
The Sun Studio also operates as a full service 24-track recording studio for professional musicians, as well as anyone who wants to make a personal record, just like Elvis. In 1987, the Irish rock band U2 recorded several songs here for their album "Rattle and Hum," including "When Love Comes to Town" featuring B.B. King. Several hundred thousand visitors have made the pilgrimage to this extraordinary place.
• National Register # 03001031, 2003 • designated a National Historic Landmark, 2003
Memphis, TN, est. 1819, pop. 650,000
• in the 1950s, in a small studio on Union, Ave., Sam C. Phillips (1923-2003) recorded music that is "one of the true touchstones of American culture" —Escott, Hawkins, Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'N' Roll
• this two-story corner bldg. is located in Memphis's Edge district • before becoming the Sun Studio Café, the 1st floor housed Taylor's Fine Food restaurant (1948-1981) [photo] • owned by Dell Taylor (1911-2003) & husband, Carlos (1914-1976) • 2nd floor was a rooming house
• the 1908 bldg. shares a partywall with a 1-story storefront at no. 706, built in 1916 [photos] • this small adjacent structure became Memphis Recording Service & later, Sun Studio [discography], where Elvis Presley (1935-1977) began his recording career
"Dell M. Taylor served up country fried steak and gentle mothering to the emerging stars of Sun Studio… Mrs. Taylor saw to it that Elvis Presley, Rufus Thomas, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich and Carl Perkins, — along with the mechanics and other workers from the auto dealership row on Union — had the freshest greens and vegetables… Many a song was written in the booths, as the musicians would come in to eat during a break in recording at Sun Studio next door… Sun Studio founder Sam Phillips, credited with discovering Elvis and others, often did his bookkeeping at the restaurant." —Chris Conley, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 24 Feb., 2003
• Sam Phillips, who claimed he didn't have a desk, had his own booth at Taylor's to pore over paperwork • "That's where all the guys did their writing and talking, and that's where the Sun sound was really born." –Jack Clement (1931-2013), Sun Studio producer
• exhausted musicians often spent the night in one of "Miss Taylor's" upstairs rooms • while recording at Sun the mid-1950s, Roy Orbison had a two-room apartment there
• the bldg. now serves as visitor center for the recording studio, which is open to the public for tours
Marker: Elvis Presley and Sun Records
In July 1954 Sun Records released Elvis Presley's first recording. That record, and Elvis' four that followed on the Sun label, changed popular music. Elvis developed an innovative and different sound combining blues, gospel, and country. That quality made Elvis a worldwide celebrity within two years. He went on to become one of the most famous and beloved entertainers in history. Sun Records introduced many well known people in all fields of music. Generations of musicians have been affected by those who recorded here and especially by the music Elvis Presley first sang at Sun Records
National Historic Landmark Nomination: (unedited version with citations available here)
Marion Keisker (1917-1989), Phillips's sole assistant & employee when he started his business said he "would talk about this idea he had, this dream, I suppose, to have a facility where black people could come and play their own music, a place where they would feel free and relaxed to do it. One day we were riding along, and he saw that spot on Union, and he said, 'That's the spot I want.' With many difficulties we got the place, and we raised the money, and between us we did everything. We laid all the tile, we painted the acoustic boards, I put in the bathroom, Sam put in the control room—what little equipment he had always had to be the best." — quoted by Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
Phillips started his own record company, Sun Records, in 1952, "the first great rock 'n' roll record label." • Some of the artists Phillips recorded would redefine the musical genres in which they worked. Many of them made for Phillips not only their first recordings but also their best.
Before World War II most black music was blues, and a lot of those were country blues of the Mississippi Delta, the raw, gut-wrenching folk music of rural African Americans… Black migration out of the rural South accelerated during the First World War and exploded after World War II when manual cotton picking came to an end. Synthetic materials took over the market after the discovery of nylon in 1939, and the mechanical cotton picker, able to do the work of fifty people, arrived soon after. "The main musical result of the great migration was the blues came to town, and not to any old town: to Memphis, which acted as the local focus for migration from the Delta." — Sir Peter Hall, Cities in Civilization
In Memphis, WDIA started out in 1947 as a popular and country music radio station. The station switched formats in 1948 and began programming for a black audience after the success of a show called "Black America Speaks," hosted by Memphis's first black on-air personality, Nat Williams (1907-1983) [editorial: Color the Issue, A Point of View by Nat L. Williams]
Also in 1948, Dewey Phillips (1926-1968), a white radio announcer from rural Tennessee, began to host a show on WHBQ. "Red Hot and Blue" [listen] expanded from fifteen minutes to three hours daily during its first year on the air. Phillips played "an eclectic mix of blues, hillbilly, and pop that would become an institution in Memphis, and his importance to the cross-cultural miscegenation that became Rock 'n' Roll is incalculable." By 1951, word began to spread that white kids were buying "race records."
Sam Phillips was born on January 5, 1923 in the northwest corner of Alabama near Florence, about 150 miles east of Memphis. He got his first radio job in 1940 at WLAY in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and later took correspondence courses in radio engineering. He worked at WMSL in Decatur, Alabama, and at WLAC in Nashville before moving to Memphis in 1945.
In January 1950, Phillips started his own recording business in addition to his regular jobs. The Memphis Recording Service opened at 706 Union Avenue, about a mile east of the downtown area. The small one-story brick building had a reception area/office at the front of the building, a recording studio in the middle section, and a small control room in the rear. The entire building is only about 18 feet wide and 57 feet long. Phillips's business card read "We Record Anything—Anywhere—Anytime." Initially that included weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, advertisements for radio, etc., in addition to musicians in his studio.
"I opened the Memphis Recording Service with the intention of recording singers and musicians from Memphis and the locality who I felt had something that people should be able to hear. I'm talking about blues—both the country style and the rhythm style—and also about gospel or spiritual music and about white country music. I always felt that people who played this type of music had not been given the opportunity to reach an audience . . . My aim was to try and record the blues and other music I liked and to prove whether I was right or wrong about this music. I knew, or I felt I knew, that there was a bigger audience for blues than just the black man of the mid-South. There were city markets to be reached, and I knew that whites listened to blues surreptitiously." —Escott, op. cit.
Phillips also functioned as a folklorist, documenting music that was fading into the past. "With the jet age coming on, with cotton-picking machines as big as a building going down the road, with society changing, I knew that this music wasn't going to be available in a pure sense forever."
Recording the Blues
video: Sam Phillips: The Man who Invented Rock & Roll Part 1 (44:22) & Part 2 (45:59)
His first deal, with 4 Star/Gilt Edge Records, was a song by a blind pianist from south Memphis. Lost John Hunter's "Boogie for Me Baby" [listen] was "a crude boogie blues that could pick up some southern juke coin," according to the review in Billboard, a record business trade publication.
In late summer 1950, Phillips launched his own record company with partner Dewey Phillips (the hot Memphis radio announcer, no relation) in order to issue and promote his own products. They called their label Phillips, but it only lasted a few weeks, issuing three hundred copies of Joe Hill Louis's "Boogie in the Park" in August 1950 [listen]
Phillips soon began working with Modern Records of Los Angeles, owned and operated by the Bihari brothers. Their new subsidiary, RPM Records, was looking for "new music with a down- home feel." Jules Bihari sent a guitar player from Indianola, Mississippi, to Sam Phillips to record. Riley King was already popular locally and known as B.B. King (for Blues Boy, or more likely, Black Boy). Phillips recorded King, one of the first artists on the new RPM label, from mid-1950 until mid-1951 [listen].
Even at this early stage in his career, Sam Phillips used recording techniques that were soon recognized as hallmarks of his records. He put up-tempo boogies on the front sides of records, slow numbers on back sides, and overamplified on faster songs to get a primitive fuzzy sound… These early recording sessions with King also document Phillips's skill as a record producer. King's version of a Tampa Red song had an explosiveness missing from the original record.
"Rocket '88'," a song about a hot Oldsmobile, is one of the contenders for the title "first rock 'n' roll record." It featured Jackie Brenston, the singer, and Ike Turner, the bandleader, on piano. "Rocket '88'" [listen] was released in April 1951. It hit number 1 on Billboard's R&B chart in June and eventually became the second biggest R&B hit of the year. According to Sam Phillips, "Rocket '88'" was the record that really kicked it off for me as far as broadening the base of music and opening up wider markets for our local music." Phillips resigned from WREC in June 1951 after "Rocket '88'" became a hit. — [more] on the history of “Rocket 88”
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 28 Mar, 1951: "[Sam Phillips] has agreements with two recording companies to locate and record hillbilly and race music. Race numbers are those tailored for the Negro trade. Sam auditions musicians with original songs. When he finds something he's sure will sell, he gets it on acetate and sends it to one of the companies. He doesn't charge the musicians anything . . . Sam may branch out one day, so he says if anyone wants to bring him a pop song, he'll be glad to look it over." • full article
• Sam Phillips first recorded Chester Burnett (The Howlin' Wolf) in the spring of 1951. Born near Aberdeen, Mississippi, Howlin' Wolf (1910-1976) was a singer who gave the traditional Delta blues another dimension. They recorded "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years" [listen] in August 1951… In Phillips's estimation, the Wolf was his greatest discovery.
• Even though he preferred the creative side of the business, Phillips started his own record company early in 1952… With his own label, Phillips could run the business like he wanted and release records that other labels rejected.
"When I was leasing to other labels, they wanted me to compromise. They wanted a fuller blues sound than I did. They were selling excitement. I was recording the feel I found in the blues. I wanted to get that gut feel onto record. I realized that it was going to be much more difficult to merchandise than what Atlantic or Specialty, for example, were doing, but I was willing to go with it."
Phillips named his new company Sun Records and selected an eye-catching record label [photo] designed by John G. Parker (1925-2012), who also designed the tiger stripe helmet for the Cincinnati Bengals football team and packages for Alka-Seltzer and Super Bubble gum… "The sun to me—even as a kid back on the farm—was a universal kind of thing. A new day, a new opportunity." —Sam Phillips
The first record issued on the new Sun label (March 27, 1952), Sun number 175, was an original instrumental, "Drivin' Slow," by alto saxophonist Johnny London.
"Even on this first release, all the hallmarks of a Sam Phillips Sun record were in place: the raw sound, the experimental origin, the dark texture, even the trademark echo. Phillips and London created the illusion of a sax heard down a long hallway on a humid night by rigging something like a telephone booth over London's head while he played. The record's appeal had more to do with feeling than virtuosity—in short, it offered everything music buyers could expect from Sun for the remainder of the decade." [listen]
The first recording on the Sun label considered to be a classic was Easy, an instrumental released in March 1953 by Walter Horton (1921-1981) (Little Walter, and later, Big Walter).
". . . Horton played the same theme five times, with mounting intensity. By the fourth chorus, he was playing with such intensity that his harmonica sounded like a tenor saxophone. Phillips' virtuosity with tape delay echo was rarely used to better advantage: he made three instruments [harmonica, guitar, drums] sound as full as an orchestra. Any other instrument would have been redundant." [listen]
Sun Records had its first national hit in the spring of 1953 with "Bear Cat," [listen] which went to number 3 on the national R&B chart. It was an "answer song" to "Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton aka Willie Mae Thornton (1926-1984), sung by local radio announcer Rufus Thomas. "Bear Cat" was the first record to make money for Sun Records and it put the company on the map. "Feelin' Good" by Little Junior's Blue Flames (released in July 1953), was also commercially successful, reaching number 5 on the national R&B chart.
Sun's next hit was "Just Walkin' in the Rain" [listen] by The Prisonaires, a black vocal group of five inmates from the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville. They sang close-harmony gospel style and came under armed guard to record at 706 Union on June 1, 1953. As part of the warden's rehabilitation program, they were allowed to perform on radio, in concerts, and at the Governor's mansion, but "Just Walkin' in the Rain" was their only hit.
Phillips recorded a number of important blues artists in the early 1950s, including "Sleepy" John Estes, Little Milton Campbell, Rosco Gordon, Dr. Ross, Harmonica Frank Floyd, Willie Nix, Billy "The Kid" Emerson, and Bobby "Blue" Bland.
". . . It's safe to say that the blues has never sounded as mean, raw, or intense as it did on countless days and nights at 706 Union Avenue. Amplifiers were cranked way past the point of distortion, guitars slashed like straight razors, rickety drum kits were pounded with fury and abandon, and the stories both sung and shouted spanned the gamut of the black Southern experience…
"Even if he'd never issued a record on the shining yellow Sun label, even if Elvis Presley had never entered his small recording studio..., Phillips would rank as one of the most visionary record producers of our time on the basis of his early fifties blues work." —John Floyd, Sun Records: An Oral History
In May 1954, Phillips recorded "Cotton Crop Blues" with James Cotton on vocals and Auburn "Pat" Hare on guitar. This was "one of the truly great blues recordings," but recording of traditional blues at 706 Union fell off in 1954 with the growing popularity of R&B music. Sun Records soon became synonymous with rock 'n' roll, overshadowing Phillips's role in blues recording "and the insight that [he] brought to recording the blues. He worked hard to get the best from his artists . . . Phillips would sit behind his tape deck until sunup if he thought the musicians on the studio floor might capture the sound that he heard in his head."
Phillips struggled to make money in the record business for almost six years. Eventually he saw that the market at that time was too small for the kind of music he was recording.
"The base wasn't broad enough because of racial prejudice. It wasn't broad enough to get the amount of commercial play and general acceptance overall—not just in the South . . . Now these were basically good people, but conceptually they did not understand the kinship between black and white people in the South. So I knew what I had to do to broaden the base of acceptance." —Escott, op. cit.
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley graduated from Humes High School in north Memphis on June 3, 1953 and went to work at M.B. Parker Machinists on July 1. Later that summer, he recorded a personal record at the Memphis Recording Service. Presley paid $3.98 for an acetate with two sides, both ballads. While he was there, Presley talked with Marion Keisker, a long-time Memphis radio personality who helped Sam Phillips run his businesses at 706 Union, and asked if she knew of a band that needed a singer.
He made an impression on Keisker which she later remembered well, especially his answer to her question about which hillbilly singer he sounded like: "I don't sound like nobody." At that time, Presley had a child's guitar that he played in the park, on his porch steps, and in a band with his buddies around their housing project. He soon aspired to be a member of the Songfellows, an amateur church quartet. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Presley dropped by 706 Union a number of times after that initial meeting to see if Ms. Keisker had any leads for him. In January 1954, Presley paid for a second personal record, and tried out for a professional band that spring. Eddie Bond (1933-2003), the band leader, told him to keep driving a truck because he would never make it as a singer. Presley later revealed that Bond's rejection "broke my heart." —Guralnick, op. cit.
". . . There is little question that he stepped through the doorway [at 706 Union] with the idea, if not of stardom . . . at the very least of being discovered. In later years he would always say that he wanted to make a personal record "to surprise my mother." Or "I just wanted to hear what I sounded like." But, of course, if he had simply wanted to record his voice, he could have paid twenty-five cents at W. T. Grant's on Main Street . . . Instead, Elvis went to a professional facility, where a man who had been written up in the papers would hear him sing." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Marion Keisker finally called Presley on Saturday, June 26 to set up an appointment, almost a year after he recorded his first personal disc. On a recent trip to Nashville, Phillips had gotten an acetate of a song that reminded him of Presley's voice. They worked on "Without You" [listen] for a long time that afternoon, and Phillips had Presley sing a number of other songs after his unsuccessful attempts with "Without You."
A week later, Phillips set Presley up with two members of the Starlite Wranglers [photos], Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black (bass), and the three of them went to the studio on Monday, July 5 so Phillips could hear them on tape. Nothing special happened at the session until they took a break and Presley began fooling around and playing an old blues song by Arthur Crudup, "That's All Right [Mama] [listen]."
"Sam recognized it right away. He was amazed that the boy even knew Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup—nothing in any of the songs he had tried so far gave any indication that he was drawn to this kind of music at all. But this was the sort of music that Sam had long ago wholeheartedly embraced . . . And the way the boy performed it, it came across with a freshness and an exuberance, it came across with the kind of clear-eyed, unabashed originality that Sam sought in all the music that he recorded—it was "different," it was itself." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Phillips got his friend and kindred spirit, disc jockey Dewey Phillips, to play "That's All Right" [listen] on his radio show "Red Hot and Blue," then near the height of its popularity. The response was immediate—hundreds of phone calls and telegrams. Dewey played the song a number of times that night and also interviewed Presley during the show.
By the time the record was pressed and ready for release, there were 6,000 orders for it locally. Sun record number 209 was released on Monday, July 17, 1954. Phillips had been "looking for something that nobody could categorize," and this song did not sound exclusively black or white or country or pop. Initially, many people who heard the song thought that Presley was a black man. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Elvis Presley's first big public appearance with Scotty and Bill, the Blue Moon Boys, was on Friday, July 30 at Memphis's outdoor amphitheater in Overton Park [photos]. The show featured Slim Whitman, a star from the Louisiana Hayride, which some called the Grand Ole Opry's "farm club." He drew a hillbilly crowd, but they went wild when Elvis shook and wiggled his legs, his natural way of performing.
The new record made Billboard's regional charts by the end of August, but it was the B side that was more popular. Phillips backed "That's All Right" with an unorthodox version of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" [listen], a waltz that was a hit in 1946 for Bill Monroe, country music's elder statesman. By early September, "Blue Moon" was number 1 on the Memphis C&W chart and "That's All Right" was number 7. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Sun released Presley's second record in late September. "It was . . . an even bolder declaration of intent than the first, especially the strident blues number 'Good Rockin' Tonight' [listen], which rocked more confidently than anything they could have imagined in those first, uncertain days in the studio." The original jump blues version was written and recorded by Roy Brown in 1947 [listen]
Presley's growing popularity enabled Phillips to arrange a guest appearance on the Grand Ole Opry for October 2, even though the Opry had never before scheduled a performer at such an early stage in his career. The performance of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" by Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill received a "polite, but somewhat tepid, reception," and the Opry's manager told Phillips that Presley "just did not fit the Opry mold."
It was a big disappointment for Elvis. But soon they were off to Louisiana for Presley's first appearance on the Louisiana Hayride, "the Opry's more innovative rival in Shreveport" that had a show every Saturday night. On the third Saturday of the month the show broadcast with a 50,000 watt signal that reached up to twenty-eight states.48 After only one guest appearance, Presley signed a standard one year contract to be one of the Hayride's regular members, and he and his band quit their day jobs. —Guralnick, op. cit.
For the next year, Elvis Presley and the Blue Moon Boys toured almost constantly... Presley took his first airplane flight and first trip to New York City on March 23, 1955 to try out for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts contest, but he did not pass the audition. [A] tour with Hank Snow/Jamboree Attractions began on May 1 in New Orleans, visiting twenty cities in three weeks, including a number of stops in Florida. There was a "riot" backstage after the concert in Jacksonville …
The audiences had never heard music like Presley played before, and they had never seen anyone who performed like Presley either. The shy, polite, mumbling boy gained self-confidence with every appearance, which soon led to a transformation on stage. People watching the show were astounded and shocked, both by the "ferocity of his performance,"49 and the crowd's reaction to it.
Even in the early days, Elvis almost always stole the show from the headliners, and concert lineups had to be rearranged accordingly. Nobody followed Elvis. Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time in Odessa, Texas: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing . . . I just didn't know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it."—Guralnick, op. cit.
"'He's the new rage,' said a Louisiana radio executive… 'Sings hillbilly in R&B time. Can you figure that out? He wears pink pants and a black coat . . .'" —Guralnick, op. cit.
Elvis caused a great commotion everywhere he went. Throughout the South, Presley had girls screaming and fainting and chasing after him.
Sam Phillips was also on the road constantly after the Overton Park performance in July 1954, promoting the new records to distributors, disc jockeys, record store owners, and jukebox operators. His experiences, however, were entirely different. Time and again, disc jockeys who were old friends and/or long-standing business associates told Phillips they could not play the Presley records. A country deejay said "Sam, they'll run me out of town." To an R&B deejay, "That's All Right" was a country song. A major pop station disc jockey told Phillips, "your music is just so ragged. I just can't handle it right now. Maybe later on." —Guralnick, op. cit.
WELO in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley's hometown, would not even play the record, in spite of many requests from teenagers, because the deejay did not like the new music. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Sam Phillips persevered in spite of all the rejection he was getting, and kept trying to turn it around. "I needed the attention that I got from the people that hated what I was doing, that acted like: 'Here is somebody trying to thrust junk on us and classify it as our music.'"—Guralnick, op. cit.
"He was a man swept up by a belief, in a sound and in an idea. And as discouraged as he might sometimes get, as harsh as the reality of selling this new music might be, he never strayed from his belief, he never allowed himself to be distracted from his main goal. Which was to get them to listen." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Phillips could feel a revolution was on the way. There were already lots of country boys coming to his studio to play the new music, which initially got the name rockabilly. "Sam knew that a day was coming . . . when the music would prevail." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Presley was still a regional sensation and unknown to the national market when he got the record industry's attention. By the summer of 1955, almost all the major and independent record labels were inquiring about him. Sam Phillips had mixed feelings about selling Presley's contract, but his operations could not accommodate the Presley phenomenon, his finances were very tight, and he had other artists who needed his attention.
Presley's parents signed a contract in August which soon forced the issue. Col. Tom Parker (1909-1997) became "special adviser to Elvis Presley." He was the head of Jamboree Attractions, one of the major promoters and bookers of country and western talent, and had booked Presley on the Hank Snow package tours earlier that year. At that time, Parker was known as the best promoter in the business. In October Parker asked Phillips to name his price for Presley's contract, and Parker made sure that it was met.
The deal was signed at 706 Union Avenue on November 21, 1955. RCA-Victor bought Elvis Presley's contract from Sun Records for $35,000, plus $5,000 in back royalties owed to Presley. The story ran in the Memphis Press-Scimitar the next day:
"Elvis Presley, 20, Memphis recording star and entertainer who zoomed into big- time and the big money almost overnight, has been released from his contract with Sun Record Co. of Memphis . . . . Phillips and RCA officials did not reveal terms but said the money involved is probably the highest ever paid for a contract release for a country-western recording artist. 'I feel Elvis is one of the most talented youngsters today,' Phillips said, 'and by releasing his contract to RCA-Victor we will give him the opportunity of entering the largest organization of its kind in the world, so his talents can be given the fullest opportunity.'" —quoted in Guralnick, op. cit.
Sam Phillips never regretted his decision to sell Elvis Presley's contract. In many ways, Presley's departure was like a new beginning for Sun Records. Many country musicians aspiring to play rockabilly began to make their way to 706 Union Avenue. As Johnny Cash said many years later, "Elvis was a beacon that brought us all there." —Peter Guralnick, "Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll," VHS (A&E Biography, 2000)
Sun Studio
After Sam Phillips moved his companies to the new location on Madison Avenue, 706 Union Avenue housed a number of different businesses in the 1960s and 1970s, including a barber shop, an auto parts store, and a scuba shop. The building was vacant in 1985 when it became the site of a family reunion of sorts. An album entitled “Class of '55: Memphis Rock 'n' Roll Homecoming“ was recorded here to celebrate and remember the "Class of '55" on their 30th "anniversary." Record producer Chips Moman convened Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison to record together for the first time at the Sun studio in September 1985.
Not long after that event, 706 Union Avenue became a stop for visitors on tours to Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, which opened to the public in 1982. The building opened as the Sun Studio for tours in 1987—the name Sun Records and the original Sun record label design still belong to Shelby Singleton, who bought the company in 1969. The current property owner also purchased the adjacent two-story brick building that housed a café and a boarding house in the 1950s. That building now serves as a soda shop, gallery, and gift shop for visitors to Sun Studio.
The Sun Studio also operates as a full service 24-track recording studio for professional musicians, as well as anyone who wants to make a personal record, just like Elvis. In 1987, the Irish rock band U2 recorded several songs here for their album "Rattle and Hum," including "When Love Comes to Town" featuring B.B. King. Several hundred thousand visitors have made the pilgrimage to this extraordinary place.
• National Register # 03001031, 2003 • designated a National Historic Landmark, 2003
Fiction Week! Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho If you like MPoC, you’re probably going to like this novel. I consider it to be the second-best book of 2015. Why is that? Well, this is what happens when you take characters who are relentlessly marginalized in Alternate History genre novels and make them the center of the story, the Hinges of History, the Fate of the Universe resting in their hands, and a partridge in a pear tree. It’s A M A Z I N G. This book could have gone off the rails very easily at a few important plot points. Instead, it steers itself back to where it needs to be by introducing several painfully uncomfortable emotional questions and faces necessary moral quandaries, as well as showing how there really isn’t a difference to speak of between the two. Zacharias Wythe is the titular Sorcerer Royal, new-minted head of the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers, and inheritor of a very confounding problem. You see, there just isn’t as much magic around as there used to be, and it’s in the Society’s best interests if this problem is somehow fixed without anyone else ever finding out about it. Everyone around him is waiting for him to fail because he is Black and they are old, white racists with too much power. If he doesn’t ruin everything on his own, well, they’re ready, able and willing to ensure his failure by any means at their disposal. Zacharias is also in the very unfortunate position of having been named successor immediately after his benefactor/adopted “father”‘s death….death being not quite as final as most of us have been led to believe. Prunella Gentleman, meanwhile, is the mixed race and illegitimate daughter of a… well, a gentleman, and has grown up in a school of sorcery for women-in which the main objective is to make absolutely sure that none of the young ladies who graduate ever show the slightest hint of magical ability. Chafing under the restrictions she’s been living under and facing the reality of her own unprecedented magical abilities, she must uncover the secrets of her parentage and her inheritance before she can move forward to save her country, the world, and also fix racism and sexism while she’s at it. I’ve seen a lot of people comparing this book to Austen, Fforde, and Heyer because they’re fans of that type of work. I personally am not a fan of that type of work; I’m much more into Epic or Medieval Fantasy but let me tell you, I Loved. This. Story. If the whole Regency England Hoity Toity Drama of Manners thing puts you off, trust me, you still are going to want to read this. I don’t think it really comes off as that type of work at all, but I can still see how fans of that genre would find it very appealing. If you want that book that’s not too long or too short, not too wordy or too shallow, not overly ‘delightful’ and not too much of a downer; in short, if you want that novel that will be 100% just right, this is The One. Amazon | Goodreads | Barnes and Noble If you want to get into the content a little more, here are some other reviews: Magic, Murder, and Microaggressions in Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown by Alex Brown Sorcerer to the Crown Review at The Book Smugglers: thebooksmugglers.com/2015/09/book-review-sorcerer-to-the-...
St. Louis, MO (est. 1764. pop. ~300K) • Laclede's Landing
• Peper Building, aka Raeder Place Building • 6-story Victorian/ Italianate style tobacco warehouse, built on a site originally bought from American Indians for a yoke of oxen, plow, cow & 2 sows.• designed by Frederick Wiliiam Raeder (b.1832) for fellow German immigrant Christian Peper (1826-1903), founder of Christian Peper Tobacco Co., 1852
• a significant St. Louis cast-iron structure, one of the largest cast-iron front buildings in the U.S., listed in Source Book of American Architecture: 500 Notable Buildings from the 10th Century to the Present
• by the end of the 19th c., St. Louis was the largest processor of chewing & pipe tobacco in the U.S. • building’s plank floors were slanted so workers could roll large tobacco barrels down toward the Mississippi • in 1906, the company produced a series of racy cards for their Turkish brand Kadee cigarettes—one of the first uses of artistically-posed nude models for advertising [photo] • company was acquired by the Bloch Brothers Tobacco Co., early 1950s —Laclede's Landing Architecture
• Peper was the pioneer St. Louis tobacco merchant • had lived in the U.S. since age 13 • went into the grocery business then, in 1848, partnered in a tobacco firm which lasted 4 yrs. • founder & sole owner of Christian Peper Tobacco Co. • built an early cotton press [postcard, cotton compress c. 1905] • founded Peper Cotton Press Co. • St. Louis became a leader in the cotton trade • served as president of the Broadway street railroad for 35 yrs. • one of the 1st contributors to a fund to initiate the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 St. Louis World's Fair) —Connie Nisinger, Find a Grave
Marker:
"On this site stood the Old Missouri Hotel [photo]. The first legislature convened here under the first state constitution on September 18, 1820. The year before Missouri was admitted to the Union. It was also the site of the inauguration of the first governor of Missouri, Alexander McNair and of the election of the state’s first U.S. Senators David Barton and Thomas Hart Benton."
• In 1831, the hotel’s owner, Major Thomas Biddle (1790-1831), engaged in a dual with U.S Congressman Spencer Pettis (1802-1831) on Bloody Island, a Mississippi River sandbar • both were mortally wounded —An Affair of Honor on the Western Frontier
• with the exception of cornice removal, the bldg. has remained intact [photo] • remodeled 1976 by architectural firm Kimble A. Cohn Associates as part of Laclede’s Landing redevelopment • recently housed Peper Lofts residential apartments, multiple options for loft living in Downtown in St. Louis, the Old Spaghetti Factory, & the offices of Abstrakt Marketing Group
• Christian Peper Building, City Landmark # 31, 1971
• Laclede's Landing Historic District, National Register # 76002262, 1976
Vicksburg, Mississippi est. 1825, pop. (2013) 23,542 • MS Delta
• site crowns the highest hill in Vicksburg • land donated by the family of the city's founder, Newitt Vick • built by the Weldon Brothers, immigrants from County Antrim, Ireland • Greek Revival design attributed to William Weldon in collaboration with slave John Jackson, a noted draftsman & artist who "drew the plans for many of the public buildings erected by [the Weldon's], including the courthouses still standing at Raymond and Vicksburg." —"The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest: Mississippi, 1770--1860," John Hebron Moore, 1988
"The Weldon Brothers... Well known in Mississippi as large building and bridge contractors, owned and educated to mechanic pursuits, 100 slaves, many of whom are now residing in the river counties of the State, and most of them are well-to-do. Their draughtsman, John Jackson, a natural genius in that line, lives now at Port Gibson, the scene of much of the work of the Weldons. He painted the handsome drop curtain at Odd Fellow’s Hall, Port Gibson, and assisted in drawing the plans of the handsome Court house at Vicksburg, which the Weldons built in 1858.
"The writer had large dealings with these brothers in the days of their activity, and knows that while they were strict and exacting with their slaves, they were yet kind in their treatment; feeding and clothing them well; and they were not unmindful of their proper enjoyment; the suppers and music at their Christmas balls costing sometimes as much as $600. Tom Weldon was a very passionate man, as well as powerful and brave. Sometimes he would strike the negroes with his fist, and if they showed fight, it was his boast that he always gave them a white man’s chance, and fought fairly with them to the end. He had a fine mind, and but for his profanity was an eloquent talker.
"He equipped a company for the war at Natchez – the Weldon rebels [Co. L, 44th Mississippi Reg., C.S.A.] – but was employed, himself, chiefly in the secret service of the Confederate Government. George, the oldest of the three brothers, was very loquacious, and a great reader. William was a milder mannered man than the others, and very intelligent." —"Random Recollections of Early Days in Mississippi", Horace Smith Fulkerson, 1885
• Thomas Weldon (1816-1865) is said to have been instrumental in developing an electric spark underwater torpedo (naval mine) • on 12 Dec, 1862 it sank the USS Cairo, the first US warship ever destroyed by this type of weapon • "USS Cairo gunboat sunk by an IED" —Standing Well Back
• the Weldons utilized ~100 highly skilled slave artisans at the job site to burn brick & erect the $100K courthouse • the Ionic capitals were cast by Baker Iron Company, Cincinnati & transported to the site by river boat • stucco finish applied to exterior, 1907 • bldg. retains original iron doors & shutters
• Jefferson Davis (1808-1889), a local planter who became president of the Confederacy, launched his political career on these grounds • bldg. targeted by Union warships on Mississippi River during the American Civil War's 47-day Siege of Vicksburg • became the symbol of Confederate resistance • following the city's surrender, 4 July, 1863, Union soldiers under Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant replaced the Confederate flag with the Union flag on the Courthouse cupola [photo]
• U.S. Presidents Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley & Theodore Roosevelt spoke here, as did woman's suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt & black American icon Booker T. Washington
• bldg. was neglected after the completion of the New Warren County Courthouse (1940) • damaged by the 1953 Vicksburg Tornado • demolition considered • aware of the building's historical significance, Eva ("Miss Eva") Whitaker Davis (1892-1974) established the Vicksburg & Warren County Historical Society in order to to preserve it • on 3 June, 1948, the courthouse reopened as the Old Courthouse Museum • exhibits reflect the heritage of the area from pre-historic Indians through the present day • has one of the largest Civil War collections in the U.S.A.
• named one of the 20 most outstanding courthouses in America by the American Institute of Architects • Old Courthouse History • Court House Lagniappe Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Historic Vicksburg District • HABS MS-119 • designated Mississippi Landmark, 1986 • National Register 68000029, 1968 • designated National Landmark, 1968
Joe Servello's art is reminiscent of a classic paperback book cover:
www.flickr.com/photos/57440551@N03/12331859333/in/album-7...
The following is a brief biography of Fredric Brown (1906-1972) from the Goodreads website (at www.goodreads.com/author/show/51503.Fredric_Brown):
"Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was one of the boldest early writers in genre fiction in his use of narrative experimentation. While never in the front rank of popularity in his lifetime, Brown has developed a considerable cult following in the almost half century since he last wrote. His works have been periodically reprinted and he has a worldwide fan base, most notably in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in France, where there have been several recent movie adaptations of his work. He also remains popular in Japan.
"Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons."
I didn't have much time to think of anything creative today, so this was a five minute photo effort this morning before I had to run off to do a hundred different things.
This is the book I'm reading for my monthly book club. I started reading it yesterday and so far I'm enjoying it. I love books...a day doesn't feel complete unless I've lost myself in some or other story. I'd love to write one myself (heaven knows I've got enough good material!), it's just not easy to find six months or more to dedicate to writing something that no one might ever want to publish!
Our Daily Challenge:
BOOK TITLE is the topic for Saturday, October 22, 2022
On the Waterfront
From goodreads:
"Schulberg’s acclaimed and bestselling novel, based on a classic of American cinema
In 1955, Budd Schulberg adapted his Academy Award–winning screenplay into an exhilarating novel. Suspenseful and emotional, the novel presents a more complex—and perhaps bleaker—portrait of ex-boxer Terry Malloy’s corrupt and stunted world on the docks of Hoboken. Narrated by Father Pete Barry, the novel shifts focus to the courageous priest who stands up to the Mob, as well as his own church, in order to redeem the souls of his hardscrabble and unloved constituents.
On the Waterfront is a potent retelling of an iconic American story that stands apart as an unforgettable vision of crime, politics, and class in the twentieth century."
Bibles and... books.
If you don't like the new Flickr Beta sign this Petition petitions.moveon.org/sign/change-flickr-back?source=c.url...
"The New Nature Library" 1916 Doubleday, Page & Company New York
American food and game fishes : a popular account of all the species found in America, north of the equator, with keys for ready identification, life histories and methods of capture / by David Starr Jordan and Barton Warren Evermann ; with photos. from life by A. Radclyffe Dugmore
entry from Trove...
Reference see. openlibrary.org/
I think this image must get nearly 100 views a day because I have the word "Naked" in the title! Weird! or maybe it is "Everywoman"...
Decided to delete the title with Naked, must be something else that attracts the views, then nobody comments!
deleted Naked to drop the search numbers.... The views keep coming, so I may as well return the title to its rightful place! ."Naked Came I"
P4290287
© Miguel Ángel Vilela (miguev.net)
_____________________________________________________________________________
about a dozen books, some in a hurry, others taking it so easy it's been already years, but I hadn't been so comfortable with reading several books at the same time.
Not that having a baby gives you time to read... it makes you wish you had four (or more) prehensile hands, or developed extra pairs of arms. I set up for this shot in a couple of minutes, when Emma seemed to be sleeping, but after a handful shots there was a knock on the door, I knew the shoot was over...
So, how comes? Goodreads — best social network ever ;)
Precisely because my time to read has dropped significantly, I find it more efficient to read each time a bit of whichever book I feel like. Different mood, different book. Page by page, slowly but comfortably, I've gotten around to read 3 books in a month —January. I had never done that before!
If you enjoy reading books, even if you're not currently reading any, have a look at Goodreads and give it a go ;)
_____________________________________________________________________________
unos doce libros, algunos con prisas, otros con tanta calma que llevan años ahí, but nunca me había sentido tan cómodo leyendo varios libros al mismo tiempo.
No es que tener un bebé te dé tiempo para leer... te hace desear que tuvieras cuatro (o más) manos prensiles, o que te salieran más pares de brazos. Preparé este montaje en un par de minutos, cuando parecía que Emma dormía, pero tras un puñado de tomas tocaban a la puerta, supe que se había terminado...
Entonces, ¿a qué viene esto? Goodreads — la mejor red social ;)
Precisamente porque mi tiempo para leer se ha reducido drásticamente, me resulta más eficiente leer en cada momento un trozo del libro que me me apetezca en ese momento. Distinto ánimo, distindo libro. Página a página, despacito pero cómodamente, me acabé leyendo 3 libros en un mes —enero. ¡No lo había conseguido nunca!
Si te gusta leer libros, aunque ahora mismo no estés leyendo ninguno, échale un vistazo a Goodreads y pruébalo ;)
_____________________________________________________________________________
Camera Info: Nikon D700 | 85mm(ƒ/1.8) | ƒ/1.8 | 1/200s — Tripoded and tethered
Strobist info: SB-600 1/8 @14mm into white shoot-through 45" umbrella, 5' left and up from books, triggered with pop-up flash as commander.
Processed with Raw Therapee for slight crop, exposure and color temperature tweaks.
No GIMP to fake black background this time — it's a real black background, at last :)
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته،
أحباب الفلكر، كنت ولا زلت الصديق لكم، ولا زال هذا الموقع الأول بالنسبة لي في مجال التصوير الضوئي لأن فيه يجتمع الأجاويد من محترفين وهواة.
واسمحوا بتقديم إصداري الأول بعنوان: يوسف عليه السلام القصة الكاملة.
تفاصيل الكتاب وآراء القراء هذا على هذا الرابط
Salam Dear Flickrs
I miss you !
I'm working now on a new Arabic series books about the prophets.
The first book is about prophet Joseph and it contains articles about prophets' history and egyptology. Later, there will be another editions in English and other languages.
=-)
A small part of my collection. I am a fifth generation Texan. My g-g-grandfather founded the town of Comfort in 1851. I married a Hoosier whom I met in Washington, DC. Our first twenty years of marriage were spent in northern Virginia, Mexico City, and Costa Rica. I thought I needed to provide training material for my wife when we moved, with two kids still in high school, to Texas. Actually, the best instruction was found in "Being Dead is No Excuse", a book from a writer in Mississippi, who describes how southern women organize funerals. It is hysterical and absolutely true to life, and it includes recipes! By the way, my wife required no tutelage from me to master the delicate art of preparing seven layer avocado dip for social functions. Our Mexican and Californian and Texan friends would gather like locusts to consume this delicacy and they had very sharp elbows with which to contend with interlopers.
The following is a brief biography of Fredric Brown from the Goodreads website (at www.goodreads.com/author/show/51503.Fredric_Brown):
"Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was one of the boldest early writers in genre fiction in his use of narrative experimentation. While never in the front rank of popularity in his lifetime, Brown has developed a considerable cult following in the almost half century since he last wrote. His works have been periodically reprinted and he has a worldwide fan base, most notably in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in France, where there have been several recent movie adaptations of his work. He also remains popular in Japan.
"Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons."
Jackson, MS (est. 1821, pop. 165,000)
Trumpet Records
• in 1949 Lillian McMurry (1921-1999) & her husband Willard (both white) decided to open a furniture store in Jackson Mississippi's largest African American neighborhood • they chose this building to house it • while cleaning out the interior, Lillian found a pile of 78 rpm R&B "race records" left behind by the previous tenant • one of them, she later recalled, was "All She Wants to do is Rock" (2:32) by Wynonie Harris • Lillian played the records & fell in love:
"It was the most unusual, sincere and solid sound I'd ever heard. I'd never heard anything with such rhythm and freedom." —Lillian McMurry
• sometime later she decided to build a record counter to sell recordings by black artists • it eventually took over the entire store, which she renamed The Record Mart
• in 1950, Lillian established Trumpet Records, the first Mississippi record label to gain national exposure through distribution & radio airplay • she scouted talent at the nearby Alamo Theatre, her shop’s listening booths, where customers often sang along, & through word-of-mouth • produced hits like Elmore James' "Dust My Broom" (2:55), which made the April, '52 Billboard rhythm & blues charts • discovered Big Joe Williams [listen] & Willie Love [listen]
• after hearing about harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson II, she tracked him down • Sonny recorded a number of songs for Trumpet from 1951 to 1955, including Eyesight to the Blind (3:03) • according to Marc Ryan, in his book Diamonds on Farish Street, Sonny Boy had such respect for Lillian that he obeyed her requests to leave all weapons outside the recording studio & avoid foul language on the Trumpet premises
• in 1953, McMurry installed recording equipment in the store, which operated as Diamond Recording Studio • Trumpet ceased operations in 1955 —Jackson Free Press
The Farish Street Historic District
“but out of the bitterness we wrought an ancient past here in this separate place and made our village here.” —African Village by Margaret Walker (1915-1998)
• during the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War, white Southerners struggled to reclaim their lives as millions of black Southerners sought new ones • with the stroke of a pen, the Emancipation Proclamation had transformed African slaves into African Americans & released them into a hostile, vengeful & well-armed white community amid the ruins of a once flourishing society
• the antebellum South had been home to over 262,000 rights-restricted "free blacks" • post-emancipation, its free black population soared to 4.1 million • given that the South had sacrificed 20% of it's white males to the war, blacks now comprised well over half the total population of many southern states • uneducated & penniless, most of the new black Americans depended on the Freedman's Bureau for food & clothing
• the social & political implications of the sudden shift in demographics fueled a violence-laced strain of conventional American racism • in this toxic environment, de facto racial segregation was a given, ordained as Mississippi law in 1890 • with Yankees (the U.S. Army) patrolling the city & Maine-born Republican Adelbert Ames installed in the Governor's Mansion, the Farish Street neighborhood was safe haven for freedmen
• as homeless African American refugees poured into Jackson from all reaches of the devastated state, a black economy flickered to life in the form of a few Farish Street mom-and-pops • unwelcome at white churches, the former slaves built their own, together with an entire neighborhood's worth of buildings, most erected between 1890 & 1930
• by 1908 1/3 of the district was black-owned, & half of the black families were homeowners • the 1913-1914 business directory listed 11 African American attorneys, 4 doctors, 3 dentists, 2 jewelers, 2 loan companies & a bank, all in the Farish St. neighborhood • the community also had 2 hospitals & numerous retail & service stores —City Data
• by mid-20th c. Farish Street, the state's largest economically independent African American community, had become the cultural, political & business hub for central Mississippi's black citizens [photos] • on Saturdays, countryfolk would come to town on special busses to sell produce & enjoy BBQ while they listened to live street music • vendors sold catfish fried in large black kettles over open fires • hot tamales, a Mississippi staple, were also a popular street food —The Farish District, Its Architecture and Cultural Heritage
“I’ve seen pictures. You couldn’t even get up the street. It was a two-way street back then, and it was wall-to-wall folks. It was just jam-packed: people shopping, people going to clubs, people eating, people dancing.” — Geno Lee, owner of the Big Apple Inn
• as Jackson's black economy grew, Farish Street entertainment venues prospered, drawing crowds with live & juke blues music • the musicians found or first recorded in the Neighborhood include Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson II & Elmore James
• Farish Street was also home to talent scouts & record labels like H.C. Speir, & Trumpet Records, Ace Records • both Speir & Trumpet founder Lillian McMurry were white Farish St. business owners whose furniture stores also housed recording studios • both discovered & promoted local Blues musicians —The Mississippi Encyclopedia
• Richard Henry Beadle (1884-1971), a prominent Jackson photographer, had a studio at 199-1/2 N. Farish • he was the son of Samuel Alfred Beadle (1857-1932), African-American poet & attorney • born the son of a slave, he was the author of 3 published books of poetry & stories
• The Alamo Theatre was mainly a movie theater but periodically presented musical acts such as Nat King Cole, Elmore James & Otis Spann • Wednesday was talent show night • 12 year old Jackson native Dorothy Moore entered the contest, won & went on to a successful recording career, highlighted by her 1976 no. 1 R&B hit, "Misty Blue" [listen] (3:34)
• in their heyday, Farish Street venues featured African American star performers such as Bessie Smith & the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington & Dinah Washington played Farish Street venues —Farish Street Records
• on 28 May, 1963, John Salter, a mixed race (white/Am. Indian) professor at historically black Tougaloo College, staged a sit-in with 3 African American students at the "Whites Only" Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Jackson • they were refused service • an estimated 300 white onlookers & reporters filled the store
• police officers arrived but did not intercede as, in the words of student Anne Moody, "all hell broke loose" while she and the other black students at the counter prayed • "A man rushed forward, threw [student] Memphis from his seat and slapped my face. Then another man who worked in the store threw me against an adjoining counter." • this act of civil disobedience is remembered as the the signature event of Jackson's protest movement —L.A. Times
"This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s and is the most publicized. A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I'm covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things." —John Salter
• the Woolworth Sit-in was one of many non-violent protests by blacks against racial segregation in the South • in 1969 integration of Jackson's public schools began • this new era in Jackson history also marked the beginning of Farish Street's decline —The Farish Street Project
"Integration was a great thing for black people, but it was not a great thing for black business... Before integration, Farish Street was the black mecca of Mississippi.” — Geno Lee, Big Apple Inn
• for African Americans, integration offered the possibility to shop outside of the neighborhood at white owned stores • as increasing numbers of black shoppers did so, Farish Street traffic declined, businesses closed & the vacated buildings fell into disrepair
• in 1983, a Farish St. redevelopment plan was presented
• in 1995 the street was designated an endangered historic place by the National Trust for Historic Preservation
• in the 1990s, having redeveloped Memphis' Beale Street, Performa Entertainment Real Estate, was selected to redevelop Farish St
• in 2008, The Farish Street Group took over the project with plans for a B.B. King's Blues Club to anchor the entertainment district
• in 2012, having spent $21 million, the redevelopment — limited to repaving of the street, stabilizating some abandoned buildings & demolishing many of the rest — was stuck in limbo —Michael Minn
• 2017 update:
"Six mayors and 20 years after the City of Jackson became involved in efforts to develop the Farish Street Historic District, in hopes of bringing it back to the bustling state of its heyday, the project sits at a standstill. Recent Mayor Tony Yarber has referred to the district as “an albatross.” In September of 2014, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sanctioned the City of Jackson, the Jackson Redevelopment Authority, and developers for misspending federal funds directed toward the development of the Farish Street Historic District. Work is at a halt and "not scheduled to resume until December 2018, when the City of Jackson repays HUD $1.5 million." —Mississippi Dept. of Archives & History
• Farish Street Neighborhood Historic District, National Register # 80002245, 1980
WATCH ONLINE >> Nightmare Alley [1947]
www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F9A4C226B31C2373
****
Nightmare Alley [1947] @ American Film Institute
Production Date: 19 May--late Jul 1947; addl scenes early Oct 1947
Premiere Information: New York opening: 9 Oct 1947
>> DETAILED NOTES SECTION
>> EXTENSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=...
*************************************************************************************
NIGHTMARE ALLEY By WILLIAM LINDSAY GRESHAM
New York: Rinehart, 1946
MOVIE Tie-In Edition: Triangle Books, 1947
N.Y.: Signet Books, 1949 #738 - Cover By James Avati
N.Y.R.B.: 2110
*ALL* Editions - Including KINDLE
www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Alley-William-Lindsay-Gresham/dp...
AND
www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Gresham&tn=...
AND
www.goodreads.com/book/show/548019.Nightmare_Alley
*************
MOVIE Tie-In Edition: Triangle Books, 1947
www.amazon.com/Nightmare-alley-William-Lindsay-Gresham/dp...
****
NEW Edition (New York Review Books, 2110): Nightmare Alley By William Lindsay Gresham,
introduction by Nick Tosches - *Links* to buy
www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/nightmare-alley/
AND
www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781590173480
****
Cult classic 'Nightmare Alley' resurfaces more macabre than ever
Baltimore-born writer William Lindsay Gresham could be seen as an heir to Edgar Allan Poe
By Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun - michael.sragow@baltsun.com
articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-04-16/services/bs-ae-night...
" It's time for Baltimore to claim William Lindsay Gresham as one of the city's literary native sons and a proper heir to Edgar Allan Poe — and not just because he was born here in 1909. He fits the funk-art aspect of this town as well as James M. Cain or John Waters...
..."Nightmare Alley" is about a geek — but the word means something vastly different in the carnival of this novel than it does in teen comedies, where it serves as a synonym for "nerd. " For the denizens of Gresham's not-so-greatest show on earth, the geek is, in Tosches' words, "a drunkard driven so low that he would bite the heads off chickens and snakes just to get the booze he needed."
Gresham first heard about this kind of geek when he was 29 years old, waiting to return to the U.S. after defending the Republic in the Spanish civil war. The story connected so deeply with Gresham's internal agony that he said, "to get rid of it, I had to write it out."...
He later described the novel's gestation as "years of analysis, editorial work, and the strain of children in small rooms." He alleviated anxieties with liquor — and became an alcoholic. In the middle of this chaos, he wrote a fictional chart of the lowest depths of drunkenness that also included, in Tosches' estimation, "the most viciously evil psychologist in the history of literature." Along the way, Gresham managed to debunk feel-good spiritualism and pseudo-paranormal trickery. But the book isn't an Upton Sinclair-like expose. It's a lowdown American tragedy...
Tosches, who has been researching Gresham's life on and off for ten years, says over the phone from New York that he's clearer on the novel's roots than he is on Gresham's. He hasn't located a marriage certificate for Gresham's mother and father, "and the Maryland State Archives has stated categorically there isn't one for them." He knows Gresham was born on McCulloh Street and that his family moved to Fall River, Mass., when he was 7, and then to New York City. "But even though he left Baltimore at an early age, he claimed that the strongest influence on his life was his mother's mother, Amanda, whose family, the Lindsays, came from Snow Hill, and who embodied, at least to him, the spirit of the antebellum South," says Tosches. (The Greshams came from the Piney Neck area of Kent County.)..
Everything in the book emerges from observation and authentic obsession. "He had a wonderfully perverse mind," recalls his last agent, the legendary Carl Brandt. "I remember with great fondness and amusement that he took me out to lunch once with the Witch Doctor's Club, a group of magicians who would meet, as I remember, monthly, in a hardly glamorous restaurant." Brandt's father had been Gresham's magazine agent, and Brandt thinks the drying-up of the once-lucrative magazine-fiction market partly contributed to Gresham's growing despair.
In the end, Gresham shared Stan Carlisle's nightmare vision of life as a dark alley, "the buildings vacant and menacing on either side," and a light he couldn't reach at the end of it, with "something behind him, close behind him, getting closer until he woke up trembling." Tosches found "a bizarre letter" Gresham wrote a few years before his suicide. "In it he wrote: ‘Stan is the author.' "...
articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-04-16/services/bs-ae-night...
****
REVIEW
By Michael Dirda @ washingtonpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/...
" While I've known for a long time that William Lindsay Gresham's "Nightmare Alley" (1946) was
an established classic of noir fiction, I was utterly unprepared for its raw, Dostoevskian power.
Why isn't this book on reading lists with Nathanael West's "Miss Lonelyhearts" and
Albert Camus' "The Stranger"?
It's not often that a novel leaves a weathered and jaded reviewer like myself utterly flattened,
but this one did...
In the opening pages, set in the dilapidated Ten-in-One "carny," handsome blond Stan Carlisle stares at a geek, a supposed wild man who bites the heads off live chickens and drinks their blood. Stan, we soon learn, has been working as a magician and sleight-of-hand artist, but he's got dreams about the big time...
Throughout these early pages, the carny atmosphere is redolent of sweat, dust, alcohol and pent-up desire. While sex in "Nightmare Alley" is never graphically described, it is always strikingly perverse or distinctly sadomasochistic...
Like many good artists (and con artists), Gresham isn't locked into a single style: He can swiftly modulate from the colorfully vulgar conversation of the carnies to their smooth, stage-show patter, from the professional lingo of sheriffs, psychologists and wealthy businessmen to a drunk's hallucinatory stream of consciousness...
Gresham lived a colorful if troubled life. According to the biographical note to this edition, he "lost himself in a maze of what proved to be dead-ends for him, from Marxism to psychoanalysis to Christianity to Alcoholics Anonymous to Rinzai Zen Buddhism." All these contribute to the earthy richness of "Nightmare Alley." ..
Certainly, Gresham's book chronicles a truly horrific descent into the abyss. Yet it's more than just a steamy noir classic. As a portrait of the human condition, "Nightmare Alley" is a creepy, all-too-harrowing masterpiece..."
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/...
******************************************************
The Book You Have to Read:
“Nightmare Alley,” by William Lindsay Gresham
The Rap Sheet
" If noir is the stuff of nightmares--you know what I mean, the kind in which (according to the popular conference definition of the genre) you’re fucked from page one--then a one-off, nearly forgotten classic called Nightmare Alley is surely the biggest freak show of them all...
...Gresham’s book is sumptuous, rich, redolent, and literary. Fused with a classically tragic structure, the plot and characters roil and roll in your head, guests who will never leave. In some ways, it’s a bitter, cynical take on the Horatio Alger myth, a commentary on the Americans America left behind...
...In 1947, Nightmare Alley was fortunate enough to be made into one of the greatest of all film noirs.
Starring a terrific Tyrone Power (if you don’t think he could act, you’re in for a surprise) and a strong supporting cast which included the lovely ingénue Colleen Gray, Joan Blondell, and noir stalwarts Mike Mazurki and Helen Walker, the movie is available on DVD. Rent it soon and often, or better yet buy a copy.
With a crackling good script by Jules Furthman (The Shanghai Gesture, The Big Sleep), and atmospherically directed by Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel, The Old Maid--we can only wish he’d been given more crime films), Nightmare Alley is a rare example of a movie almost as good as its source material..."
therapsheet.blogspot.com/2009/11/book-you-have-to-read-ni...
*************************************************
Carnival of lost souls: Nightmare Alley
REVIEW By JB @ thephantomcountry
Nightmare Alley covers a lot of territory, both psychologically and geographically, crossing the US by truck, train, car, and on foot until Stan’s world seems not larger but smaller, shrinking to a blackened point. His carnival experience comes full circle, like the embrace of a family whose door always remains forbiddingly open, and some of Gresham’s finest passages evoke for us this family on the move, seductive and grotesque and leaving only cavities in its wake: “It came like a pillar of fire by night, bringing excitement and new things into the drowsy towns—lights and noise and a chance to win an Indian blanket, to ride on the ferris wheel, to see the wild-man who fondles those rep-tiles as a mother would fondle her babes. Then it vanished in the night, leaving the trodden grass of the field and the debris of popcorn boxes and rusting tin ice-cream spoons to show where it had been.”
thephantomcountry.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html
William Lindsay Gresham (August 20, 1909–September 14, 1962) @ Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lindsay_Gresham
AND
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley
*******************************
Fox Studio Classics – Film Noir – Nightmare Alley – Point Of View
The film Nightmare Alley laid in copyright limbo for over fifty years, a struggle between the estates of producer George Jessel, author W.L. Gresham and the 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. In that time, its cult status continued to grow. Not just from the rarity of its screenings on television and at film festivals, but from the later suicides of the book’s author and the movie’s director, and its remarkably grim, bold, and disturbing look at hucksterism and its milieu.
It was 1946 and Tyrone Power, Fox’s leading male star, had returned from service in World War II. From an acting family and a stage background, he had grown tired of the empty “pretty boy” image that had made him a matinee idol. He wanted a different role. One that would showcase his range and depth and change the public’s (and industry’s) perception of him from a toothpaste ad to a serious actor. He had leaned toward that end with his first post-war duty role by playing Larry Darrell in Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge.
Power leveraged his past success (and the considerable money he made for the studio) to make Nightmare Alley his prestige project. Studio Head Daryl F. Zanuck was against it from the start but he owed Power gratitude and a bit of artistic license so he green-lighted the film. Ultimately, Zanuck’s instincts would prove correct (as they so often did). The film failed miserably at the box office and Power ended up returning to the adventurous, swashbuckling roles that had made him famous. Interestingly, many of 20th Century Fox’s most unique and enduring pictures were made in this vein, by a proven film artist’s passionate plea and Zanuck’s begrudging nod.
War weary audiences of the late ’40s were not ready for it. Although film noir was seeping into the mainstream, an “A” picture starring the dashing and overwhelmingly handsome Tyrone Power as a greedy, manipulative charlatan was too much for them. Adding to this shock was the story, adapted from a novel immersed in the sleazy world of carny, portraying the darker realities of alcoholism, marital infidelity, religion, spiritualism and ambition by an author who was a known communist, drunkard and wife beater.
******************************
BOOKS INTO FILM: Nightmare Alley
by William Lindsay Gresham
reviewed by Jim Hitt
www.booksintofilms.straitjacketsmagazine.com/support-file...
" In the world of noir novels, Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham stands apart as a totally originally and innovative piece of literature.
As in most noir works, the protagonist Stan Carlisle is a flawed individual, and the world in which he lives is a dark world where predator and prey become one.
But Gresham's world is not the world of Cornell Woolrich where the events rush relentlessly toward the climax. On the contrary, the events in Nightmare Alley unfold in at a slower, more deliberate pace, and the construction of the novel is closer to William Faulkner than Cornell Woolrich...
...William Lindsay Gresham wrote only one more novel, the equally bleak Limbo Tower (1949) about Asa Kimball and other men slowly dying of fear, depression, and tuberculosis in hospital.
He then fought his own battles against alcohol.
His second wife Joy divorced him and taking their two sons, moved to England where she later married C. S. Lewis. Their relationship became the basis for the stage play and film Shadowlands .
When in 1962 Gresham discovered he had cancer, he checked into the run-down Dixie Hotel, registering as 'Asa Kimball,' and took his own life...
...Just before he died, Gresham, reflecting on his life, told a fellow veteran from Spain, "I sometimes think that if I have any real talent it is not literary but is a sheer talent for survival. I have survived three busted marriages, losing my boys, war, tuberculosis, Marxism, alcoholism, neurosis and years of freelance writing. Just too mean and ornery to kill, I guess."...
...Print quality : An absolutely gorgeous print. I doubt it looked this good in the theaters when it was first released.
Sound : Sharp and clear.
Extras : A theatrical trailer that appears spliced together from various scenes rather than a true trailer. Also a commentary by film historians James Ursini and Alain Silver. The commentary sounds more like a conversation between two knowledgeable experts rather than a straight commentary, and this casual approach works very well. Their comments are insightful if not exactly spirited...
Summary : A terrific film noir, one of the best. Off beat in the sense that it foregoes crimes and violence, which is at the center of most noir films. The characters are full of life and always interesting. Only the part of Molly rings a bit false, especially considering the ill-advised end, which does little to affect the gritty and honest movie. Time has vindicated Tyrone Power's faith in this material.
Grade: A-
www.booksintofilms.straitjacketsmagazine.com/support-file...
*********************************************************************
Nightmare Alley: Faustian Carnival Noir: The rise and fall: From Divinity to Geek
REVIEW By monstergirl @ The Last Drive In
MANY Dozens of Screencaps
monstergirl.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/nightmare-alleyfaust...
*****************
Nightmare Alley (film and stage musical)
Understanding Screenwriting #46
BY TOM STEMPEL @ slantmagazine.com
The best article on Nightmare Alley is by Clive T. Miller and appears in the 1975 book
"Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood System"...
www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/05/understanding-screenw...
************************************************************
Mister, I was made for it
A region 2 DVD review of NIGHTMARE ALLEY by Slarek
www.dvdoutsider.co.uk/dvd/reviews/n/nightmare_alley.html
SUMMARY
Let's not sod about, Nightmare Alley is a terrific film noir, a joyously dark story of a destructive and ultimately self-destructive ambition in which just about everyone is attempting to manipulate others for their own ends. It's cult status was built in part on its long term unavailability, but can now continue on the back of the film's cinematic strengths, which are considerable.
Eureka's Masters of Cinema label does the film proud, with a superb transfer and some very worthwhile extras. Noir fans should run to get their hands on it. "
www.dvdoutsider.co.uk/dvd/reviews/n/nightmare_alley.html
******************************************************
William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley Tarot: Carnival Trumps
Tarot Hermeneutics: Exploring How We Create Meaning with Tarot
William Lindsay Gresham, Joy Davidman Gresham (poetry pseudonym: "Joy Brown"), and C.S. Lewis
***UNUSUAL***, Detailed, Worthwhile
tarothermeneutics.com/tarotliterature/nightmarealley.html
*****************************************************
LISTEN >>
Naxos Audiobooks "Nightmare Alley"
Read by : Adam Sims
ISBN: 1843794829
ISBN-13: 9781843794820
Format: CD - Search for other formats
www.audiobooksdirect.com.au/William-Lindsay-Gresham/Night...
***********************************************
GRAPHIC NOVEL [= Comic Books for Literary types]
Nightmare Alley: Spain Hernandez’s graphic adaptation of the William Lindsay Gresham novel
*Links* to Buy >>
www.indiebound.org/book/9781560975113?aff=sfnybal
"...Spain Hernandez’s graphic adaptation of Nightmare Alley is at least as successful as its predecessor versions. The artwork is black and white; sometimes cartoony, sometimes realistic. Close-up character studies alternate with splash pages and occasional landscape shots so well done that they resemble woodcuts. Hernandez’s story-line follows Gresham’s novel closely; I don’t recall any major scenes or sequences being left out. He does not stint on quoting Gresham’s dialogue; his word balloons are as packed as any I have ever seen. The story of Stan Carlyle’s rise and fall is as compelling in graphic novel form as it was in earlier versions.
Nightmare Alley is an important work of American crime fiction; it is perhaps unique in that memorable versions of the story are now available in three different media."
www.crimeculture.com/21stC/fried.html
**************************************
Gresham, William Lindsay (1909-1962) | Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections
archon.wheaton.edu/index.php?p=creators/creator&id=77
Location: Archon
Send Email | Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections
archon.wheaton.edu/index.php?p=core/contact&f=email&a...
****************************************************
"All women are bitches," I said. She smiled at me. Her eyes were deep and black. "All women are cheats and liars and bitches," I told her.
"I'm not," she said. "I'm a whore."
"You're different," I said. "I mean real women."
" CRISS-CROSS " By DON TRACY
N.Y.: Vanguard Press, 1934
London: Constable, 1935
N.Y.: Triangle Books 1948
Toronto: Harlequin Books #67, August 1950
N.Y.: Lion Books, 1951 & 1956 as "The Cheat'
" He'd been smarter than me.
All along I'd thought he was dumb and that I was giving him the big cross and now I was finding out that he knew all along and was just waiting to throw it into me.
I was the dumb one.
And I was paying for being dumb. "
****************************
" CRISS-CROSS " By DON TRACY
*ALL* Editions
www.abebooks.co.uk/search/sortby/3/an/Don+Tracy+/tn/+Cris...
AND
www.biblio.com/books/95613936.html
FIRST EDITION (1934)
www.saratogabooks.com/shop/saratoga/014832.html
www.goodreads.com/book/show/6192947-criss-cross
******************
Don Tracy (20 August 1905 - 1976) @ openlibrary.org
>>ALL Book titles *Hyperlinked*
"...Don Tracy, was born in New Britain, Connecticut. He worked as a reporter for local newspapers in New Brittain from 1926-1928, then as editor of Radio News in New York from 1928-1934. In 1934, his first novel, All Sold!, and his second novel, Flash, were published. After World War II, he also taught summer courses at Syracuse University from 1955-1960, and become fairly well known for his historical novels, without abandoning the crime novel. Toward the end of his life, he met the president of the New Life Foundation, an anti-alcohol league. Under the pseudonym "Roger Fuller", he wrote novelizations of the films The Sign Of The Pagan (1954) and the television series The Defenders (1964, 1965), The Fugitive and Peyton Place. He died in Florida after a battle with cancer in 1976..."
openlibrary.org/authors/OL1768610A/Don_Tracy
**********************************************
REVIEW: Criss-Cross -- Don Tracy
By Bill Crider
billcrider.blogspot.com/2007/12/criss-cross-don-tracy.html
***************
REVIEW: Criss-Cross -- Don Tracy
BY AUGUST WEST @ Vintage Hardboiled Reads
Well written and sharp. I really enjoyed the novel and it's atmosphere of the struggling times of 1930s Baltimore. If you read it, you'll enjoy the numerous boxing references in the story-the author uses them to help define the character of Johnny Thompson. And the novel contains one of the great lines that I read recently:
A big girl in a white evening dress came out and sang "For All We Know" in a voice like a dentist's drill.
vinpulp.blogspot.com/2008/08/criss-cross-by-don-tracy.html
*******************************
Friday's Forgotten Book: Don Tracy's Criss-Cross
pulpetti.blogspot.com/2010/01/fridays-forgotten-book-don-...
*******************************
Tracy, Don (pulp fiction writer)
(1905-1976)
Also wrote as: Roger Fuller, Barnaby Ross
" A neglected figure (at least in his own country; his crime fiction has a cult following in France), Tracy was an amazingly fertile talent whose broad interests and experiences animated both hack assignments and more personal works through nearly 50 years of professional writing. Born in New Britain, Connecticut, he worked as a journalist as a young man, first at the New Britain Herald, then at the Baltimore Post in Maryland. The move south would prove significant, as much of Tracy's subsequent creative output would find inspiration in the people and places, the history, and current social mores of the South's eastern shore, from Maryland to Florida..."
www.the-crankshaft.info/2010/10/tracy-don-pulp-fiction-wr...
***********
BOOKS by DON TRACY
www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&...
**********************************
***********************************
FILM NOIR
' Criss Cross " (1949) directed by Robert Siodmak from a novel by Don Tracy.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criss_Cross_(film)
***
IMDb
www.imdb.com/title/tt0041268/combined
***
PHOTO GALLERY - Trailer;
www.ciakhollywood.com/hp/doppiogioco/
***
OVERVIEW >> Turner Classic Movies
www.tcm.com/thismonth/article.jsp?cid=24088&mainArtic...
****
DVD Review
Gary George @ Film Noir of the Week
www.noiroftheweek.com/2006/05/criss-cross-1949.html
AND
www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2010/06/criss-cross...
AND
filmjournal.net/clydefro/2007/04/17/criss-cross/
AND
filmsnoir.net/film_noir/criss-cross-1949.html
AND
*******************************
DVD Review @ dvdbeaver.com
DETAILED -- COMPREHENSIVE: ALL REGIONS & EDITIONS
www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview3/crisscross.htm
*********************************
Criss Cross (1949) - Film Locations
ROBBY CRESS@ Dear Old Hollywood
EXCELLENT Resource: Many Past/Present photos
"...There are some great Los Angeles locations used in the film.
Most notable are locations in what used to be the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles and Union Station. Here are a few of those locations:..."
dearoldhollywood.blogspot.com/2010/10/criss-cross-1949-fi...
****************************************************************
Burt Lancaster: The Brute Artisan
TRIBUTE >> GOOD ONE: Pics, clips, links
www.vintageculture.net/burt-lancaster/
**********************************
DOWNLOAD >>
"CRISS-CROSS"
www.moviedir.com/download/criss-cross-movie-11057.html
AND
www.findhotfile.com/showthread.php?1781-Criss-Cross-(1949...
AND
www.freshwap.net/forums/movies/1011621-criss-cross-1949-b...
***********************************
BUY >> " Criss Cross " DVD
www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=6739624
****************************************
What is 'Noir'?
Excerpt from the book 'Film Noir' by Alain Silver and James Ursini
How did a cycle of the American cinema become one of the most influential movements in film history? During its classic period, which lasted from 1941 to 1958, noir films were derided by critics of the time...
...The publication of several essays in English on noir, most importantly Raymond Durgnat`s ‘Paint It Black: The Family Tree of Film Noir` (Cinema 6/7, August 1970) and Paul Schrader`s ‘Notes on Film Noir` (Film Comment 8, Spring 1972), followed in the early 1970s. Still, when the first comprehensive survey of film noir in English, Film Noir, An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, first appeared in 1979, the term ‘film noir` was still mostly unknown outside of film school circles. Finally, with the added impact of a burgeoning neo-noir movement in the 1980s, the mainstream press took up the term. By the time the Terminator blasted through a nightclub called Tech Noir in 1984, the debate over what constitutes film noir was in full swing.
Cont...On Film Noir...Page Three
The Film Noir Directory...
www.lefilmsdarkdelivresetdemusique.net/apps/blog/show/178...
************************
" CRISS-CROSS " (1948) on FACEBOOK
“42% of women voted for [the ugly apricot]. I just can’t comprehend the 42% of women thing. I still can’t really comprehend any of it. This is going to be one of those things I just have to be ok with not understanding.” ―Anonymous
www.goodreads.com/book/show/2418776.Look_Back_With_Love
DONALD TRUMP’S FIRING OF JAMES COMEY IS AN ATTACK ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/donald-trump-has-atta...
"But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy."
— Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
* Pentax K20D + Pentax 18-55mm Lens - Single Shot
Selected images are available high res and unframed at RedBubble