Hearing Elvis Presley's Memphis
Junior Parker, Arthur Crudup, Big Mama Thornton, and Others Get Some Love
Historian Preston Lauterbach works the backstreets of rock’s story, the many accidental and circuitous paths the music takes before congealing into a popular style. With Before Elvis, he lands a major statement about how Presley immersed himself in the Memphis of 1948-1945, what he heard on the radio, in churches, and in clubs. We started by talking about one of Presley’s key mentors, the Reverend Herbert Brewster, the preacher who’s style and songwriting shaped the young Elvis…
Preston Lauterbach: So the Reverend William Herbert Brewster was a minister, African American minister who came to Memphis from rural West Tennessee. He was born in the latter part of the 19th century and was raised by, you know, highly spiritual parents and grandparents, in fact. So he had all these great memories of his elders singing spirituals around him. And that’s really what brought him up. But he also was determined to become a learned man.
And so he went off college, went to school in Memphis, the big city. And became involved with the civil rights activities that were already taking place in the city in the 19 teens with regard to mass registration of African American voters. So, the type of activity that we tend to associate with the modern civil rights movement that started, what, over 40 years after this time I’m talking about was, was, really happening on a broad scale in Memphis already.
And so that’s really where Herbert Brewster began to develop this social consciousness. For people who saw the Elvis movie, you know, when Elvis is contemplating what he’s going to perform on his comeback special, and whether or not it’s time for him to make a social statement. The comment that he makes to kind of fire himself up to go out there and do it is. Something along the lines of you know an old reverend told me that sometimes there are things that are too dangerous to say and you have to sing them.
Well, that’s a an adaptation of a quote from reverend Brewster himself, and so even though the Presley character in the movie doesn’t identify who he’s thinking of in this moment, that’s something that Reverend Brewster told an interviewer. Said that, we realized in segregated Memphis, there were things that needed to be said.
And sometimes it was too dangerous to say them, and so you had to sing them. Well, this was Brewster’s motivation for writing a song that became the first million- selling gospel recording called “I Will Move On Up A Little Higher.” And so the context for that song is that the white political boss of Memphis, Mr. E. H. Crump had banished the Black political leadership of the city around 1940. And so this became a, a low moment for people like Brewster, who’d been politically active socially active for such a long period of time. And so from what he felt were the depths of despair, he wrote this beautiful song.
And so I think that’s some of what influenced Elvis, not just, you know, the, the lyrics, “that’s all right, mama,” but the feeling, the way that Crudup conveyed feeling that really moved Elvis…
I mean, I hope that people will go and listen to Mahalia Jackson singing “I Will Move On Up A Little Higher,” and so that’s part of the social context of Reverend Brewster. The musical context, which I kind of mentioned there, is he’s, in addition to being a voting rights activist, he’s a song composer. And he’s really the hub of the African American gospel scene in Memphis. So he’s a promoter. So he’ll put on big shows down at the auditorium featuring a bunch of different quartets. He was known to give you know, several young artists a start by, you know, putting them out on stage and showcasing them for the crowd. After that, he became probably the first African American radio broadcaster in Memphis.
He was certainly like the first really successful Black radio broadcaster. So some people might know that African American formatted radio had its first full time station in Memphis WDIA as of 1949. Well, Brewster was broadcasting locally in like 1938 and onward. So he was broadcasting sermons.
He was broadcasting music. So he was on the airwaves and familiar to people. Fast forward to 1953, Memphis is still under the rule of the same segregationist leader, Boss Crump, who Brewster had been fighting against for his entire, you know, adult life at this point. And segregation was the the, the legal way of life in Memphis.
more
Tim Riley reviews Before Elvis in the Los Angeles Review of Books
Pee Wee Crayton’s “Do Unto Others,” the guitar ignition (and lyrical thrust) John Lennon cribbed for “Revolution”
Peter Guralnick’s two-volume Presley biographies: Last Train to Memphis (1995) and Careless Love (2000)
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (2022)
Clambake (1967), with Bill Bixby, more fun than John Wesley Harding
The Searcher (2018), Reinventing Elvis: the 1968 Comeback (2023), both worthwhile
playlist of the month
Before Elvis playlist: from Little Esther Phillips to Calvin Newborn, these influences feel both immediate and timeless (25 tracks)
software update
RightMenu Master, convert, sort, copy to, sync, backup, set wallpaper
Alfred 5 (reasonable $): happy customer, mostly for custom search URLS with keyboard shortcuts and boundless clipboard
LeaderKey: elegant keyboard launch, customizable, Alfie’s best friend
reddit.com/r/macapps, geeks minus additude
noises off
Last year stomped: roundup of year-end lists Part I and Part II (with the years best marital dialogue, “…Only you could ruin a perfectly good wordless roll in the ashes of a dead union…”; Eric Wolfson on concept albums; and that new Zep doc getting lots of nods, we’re getting right on that
In the pipeline: Sly Stone, The Pixies, the Simpsons, and Cher’s memoir as read by AI voice as this persona, reader’s choice:
“Pigs at the pastry trough,” John Updike on critics : the riley rock index: obits, bylines, youtube finds, reference sites, pinterest, beacons.ai, random deep link
Hey Tim? Did you ever check out those Elvis stories I sent you? I thought they were pretty good. You???