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46 Ħ 4 Ħ THE SUN RISES ON THE BLUE MOON BOYS If you have ever been in Memphis in July, you know that the heat is unbearable . On most days the temperature hits one hundred degrees. Drive ten miles in any direction, out into the rich farmland of north Mississippi, east Arkansas or west Tennessee, and the temperature drops noticeably. Whether Memphis is a thermal hot spot because of the tons of concrete that surround it or because rising moisture from the Mississippi River envelopes the city in a suffocating cover of humidity—or simply because the gods bear a grudge for some unpardonable sin anchored in the city’s past—is really beside the point: July is the month Memphians dread the most, a make-or-break month in which temperatures and passions run the highest. For most of the previous century, Memphis was known as the “murder capital of America.” In mid-2012, the FBI designated it as the “most dangerous ” city in the country. What would you expect in a sun-baked city in which blistering heat is the norm? Some folks considered killing someone to be a way of cooling off. On the afternoon of July 3, 1954, I stopped by Memphis Recording Service to chat with Sam Phillips. It was hot as all get out. My clothes stuck to the seat covers in the car. It had been two months since the release of “My Kind of Carrying On.” I wasn’t wedded to the music of the Starlite Wranglers, though the country band was my own creation. It bore Poindexter’s name only because of my desire to stay in the background. I liked to be in control of my surroundings, but I didn’t like the spotlight. If the term, “front man,” had not been in existence at that time, I might have invented it. I was happiest when I had an alter ego, someone to take the credit for my actions. It is a characteristic that has stayed with me all my life. I wasn’t sure my future was in country music. I also liked to play blues and jazz. I made it clear to Sam that I was open to new musical styles. 47 Ħ THE SUN RISES ON THE BLUE MOON BOYS Ħ I am a detail man. Give me a problem and I will solve it. Sam was also a detail man, although he approached problem solving from a different angle. He didn’t always know what was wrong with a song. He didn’t possess the musical expertise for that. But he usually knew when something was right. Sam had opened his recording studio in 1950, five years after moving to Memphis from Alabama to work at WREC, an AM radio station at 600 on the dial. Sam kept his job at the radio station while he worked to get his recording studio off the ground. Most of his business was vanity related—weddings, funerals, ordinary people who wanted to find out how they sounded singing their favorite songs—but he had some success with African American entertainers, whose recordings he was able to sell to record labels in Chicago and Los Angeles. In 1951 Ike Turner recorded a song in Sam’s studio that went to No. 1 on the national R&B charts. The song, “Rocket 88,” featured Jackie Brenston, Turner’s saxophonist, as the vocalist. Because it gave Chicagobased Chess Records its first No. 1 hit, it resulted in stiff competition for black talent in the Memphis area. In the early fifties, Sam discovered a number of major black artists, such as Chester Burnett, better known as Howlin’ Wolf, but he couldn’t hold on to them. After brief stints with Sam, they usually left for greener pastures up north. Race relations were not good in Memphis in 1954. All the public facilities were segregated. There were signs everywhere that read “whites” and “colored.” It was illegal for blacks to go into the public library, unless they had been invited there to do janitorial or repair work. That July, race relations worsened when five black students sought enrollment at Memphis State College, the largest state-supported institution of higher learning in West Tennessee. The state board of education in Nashville rejected their applications, but in the eyes of many whites the city of Memphis compensated for that by erecting a 30-foot memorial to Tom Lee, a black man who had saved the lives of 32 whites...

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