By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 11)
For a deep dive into vintage rock ‘n’ roll and blues legends of the Memphis scene, music journalist Robert Gordon offers a mother lode of insights and information in his latest book.
Titled Memphis Rent Party: The Blues, Rock & Soul in Music’s Hometown, Gordon’s book offers a collection of essays, interviews, liner notes and observations covering nearly four decades of his work.
In addition to depicting the work of singers, producers, blues and rock stars that made the Memphis music scene distinct from its rival Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, and Motown music hubs, Gordon delves into the thoughts and motivations of its native artists, as well as local characters.
The result is an eclectic foray into matters large and small, including the wisdom of Elvis, the real life of Robert Johnson, and the philosophy behind making the music happen from the artists themselves.
For example, Gordon reports legendary music producer and Sun Records owner Sam Phillips helped Elvis differentiate from the pack in his early career. Elvis was trying to be a “lame-ass Perry Como imitator he thought he was” at the studio and did some impromptu riffs “to reinvigorate his sidemen when his recording session was flagging.”
Phillips overheard the off-the-cuff music and convinced Elvis to “try to find a place to start and try it again”—this time, with the tape going.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Some of the observations are profound, such as musician and record producer Jim Dickinson explaining his motivation to record music.
“It is literally the fear of extinction; it’s the wish to record the unretainable nature of the moment,” he said. “Time is going away from us and the art wish is that desire to retain the moment. By recording and playing back, you have made time into space; you have captured the moment…. The event has a soul: It is the essence of the event that you record, and the whole idea of immortality is right there.”
Gordon’s personal history is intriguing in itself. He came to write about the blues in the 1980s. He was a 14-year-old middle-class kid from Memphis who found epiphany at hearing bluesman Furry Lewis at a Rolling Stones concert.
“Furry’s playing was unlike anything I could have anticipated. His rhythms were slow, his songs full of space, his notes floated in the air. His music invited us listeners instead of dazzling us with its size and force … (it) let me feel the wrinkles on the hands wrapped around the guitar neck, the texture of the strings; he let me hear the human being.”
In other words, he was hooked.
Gordon cut his teeth on the old print media, such as Music and Sound Output, Request, Pulse, Option, Creem, Spin, Details—magazines and fanzines that no longer exist, he notes, “whose remnants are dusty, crumbling pages in landfills hither and yon.”
Now the magazines are gone “and so are most of these artists, but the art continues to thrive.”
Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.
Robert Gordon will be at Lemuria on Monday, March 26, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Memphis Rent Party.
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