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6. Racial Cross-Pollination: Black and White Together
- University of Illinois Press
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6 Racial Cross-Pollination: Black and White Together Getting Elvis and other white listeners to Herbert Brewster’s church wasn’t the only way Dewey Phillips brought the races closer together. Equally important was strengthening his bonds with the black community by continuing to maintain a strong physical presence in it. Whether appearing at a black baseball league game or attending a musical show on Beale Street (he even liked to leap onstage occasionally at the Hippodrome to introduce an act), Memphis’s most popular deejay continued to firm up his following among African Americans by demonstrating that he enjoyed nothing more than being seen on Beale.1 “Dewey would walk down Beale Street and you would think that the President of the UnitedStateswascoming,”DotPhillipsrecalls.Asiftoconfirmhisstrong following in the black community, she points out that after his first automobile accident, “There were as many blacks as whites who came to see Dewey in the hospital.” So many people of both races sent flowers that Baptist Hospital had to call the station and ask fans to stop because there was no more space for the bouquets in Dewey’s hospital room.2 Max and Betty Carruthers, Dewey’s old friends from Adamsville, also remember that black people flocked around him each time he appeared in public. All of this is significant because before his television program, which came later in his career, Dewey acquired recognition strictly from his radio show and frequent appearances at predominantly black functions . “Whenever we’d go out with him to the clubs and restaurants,” Betty Carruthers says, “why the black people would always come up to him—they all knew him—and it wouldn’t be anytime they’d be swarmingallaroundhim .”MaxCarruthersremembersdrivingdownBealewith Dewey in a convertible, its top down. “Everybody would be hollerin’ at 06.87-95_Cant.indd87 2/8/051:53:40PM DEWEYANDELVIS 88 him, and he’d be hollerin’ at them. Seemed like every black person on Beale Street knew him.”3 By the early 1950s Dewey’s renown on the famous street had achieved near-mythic proportions. Admirers he picked up in Grant’s, at Henry’s Record Shop, or at Culpepper’s made him a familiar figure along the avenue. Once he became a regular on the air—heard as well as seen—he achieved the status of a Beale Street icon, a standing in the black community usually reserved for musical or stage stars. That Red, Hot and Blue had been a mainstay among Memphis blacks since its inception in 1949 is as uncontestable as it is understandable. That it continued to increase in popularity among African Americans even after 1954, however, is astonishing and a dramatic testament to Dewey’s staying popularity in the black community. It was in 1954 that WDIA boosted its signal from 250 to fifty thousand watts and extended its day of all-black broadcasting into the evening hours, making the station Dewey’s number-one late-night competitor. WDIA’s production manager Don Kern, whose job it was to keep a close watch on ratings, likes to brag that after the switch many loyal fans would usually stay with WDIA into the evening hours. Nonetheless, even Kern recognizes that Red, Hot and Blue almost always came out on top, a feat even more remarkable considering that Kern put his hottest deejays, Rufus Thomas and Martha Jean “the Queen” Steinberg, on the air opposite Dewey. “He had a tremendous black following. As strong as our station ever got,” Kern readily admits, throwing up his arms as if in capitulation. “Dewey Phillips and WHBQ outrated everything that WDIA ever had on at night.”4 Dewey’s continued following on the radio and presence in the black community were symbiotically reinforced each time he made a personal appearance at one of the big musical revues that came to town. After first plugging the revue on his show, he would often check out the last part of its late show personally by heading straight down to Beale Street as soon as he got off the air at midnight, often accompanied by his constant sidekick George Klein. G.K. remembers going many times to black package shows at the Hippodrome (later, the Club Ebony) on Beale Street, where he and Dewey would always be slipped in through the back door. All-black package musical revues were brought to town by various promoters, whether Robert Henry, one of the record companies, or local theaters...