Episode 2: Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and The Big Bang of Rock and Roll
The Big Bang of rock and roll came in the form of two records cut less than 12 months apart --one by a teenaged Tennesse truckdriver, the other by a 30-year-old veteran chitlin' circuit guitar player from St. Louis. One white, one black. One would become rock's greatest idol, the other rock's greatest songwriter and guitarist.
In Episode 2 Down in the Flood explores the nature and origins of Sun 209 and Chess 1604--the records that gave birth to rock and roll.
Download and listen to Down in the Flood 2 (25:44 min., 23.5 MB)
The first two shows sound great. Nice job. Your RSS feed isn't handling the mp3 enclosures though. iPodderX isn't automatically downloading them.
Posted by: Five Hundy | June 01, 2005 at 09:13 PM
Thanks Five, yeah, I know, I have some instructions here for, hopefully, repairing the xml feed.
Posted by: chervokas | June 02, 2005 at 02:31 PM
Hey there .. I'm brand new to podcasting and listened to a lot of stuff I wasn't too wild about before finding something I AM wild about! A lot! I love your show, and will link to it from a blog I maintain about Southern old time string band music. My dog got twice-as-long a walk as usual today because I was having such a great time listening to your show. Thanks and I'll stay tuned! _Pam
Posted by: pam allan | June 18, 2005 at 07:55 PM
Catching up with these and can only echo Pam's comments. Fantastic job again Jason. Where did you get all that cool Elvis out take stuff?
Posted by: Tony Alva | June 27, 2005 at 03:30 PM
Hey, the Elvis, Carl Perkins stuff is from the famous, so-called "million dollar quartet" session. Elvis was back home in Memphis in Christmas the first year after he broke nationally and came around Sun studios for a visit and started jamming w/ Carl Perkins and his brothers plus Jerry Lee Lewis. Sam Phillips rolled tape, and later called Johnny Cash who came by for a photo op leading to the "million dollar quartet" appellation. But it's really the perkins brothers, jerry lee and elvis.
The early take of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" comes from Sunrise, the two CD collection of all the Sun material plus outtakes that RCA released a few years back.
BTW, I've created sidebar lists of books and records for each show here on the website. The lists don't contain all the material on every show--some of the stuff is out of print, or otherwise not commercially available. But it's a pretty sizable representation of my sources.
Posted by: Jason Chervokas | June 27, 2005 at 10:08 PM
I understand that a guy who was working for Phillips, namely Cowboy Jack Clement, actually did the tape rolling as such. Apparently one reason it came out so well is that the tape didn't just roll; Jack sat there and mixed it on the fly while everybody else was partying.
At least, that's what Jack says, and it makes sense; he was the recording engineer working for Phillips at the time.
In addition to his time at Sun (recording Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich and Jerry Lee Lewis), Jack has gone on to a rather varied and remarkable career in his own right, including convincing George Jones to cut "She Thinks I Still Care", producing Charlie Pride's first 13 albums for the label, prooducing Crystal Gayle, Emmylou Harris, Bobby Bare, John Prine and Kathy Mattea, being Townes Van Zandt's first publisher, and producing three tracks for U2's Rattle and Hum.
Posted by: bskeels | July 04, 2005 at 06:30 PM
Cowboy Jack also produced one of Waylon Jennings' best records, Dreaming My Dreams.
Posted by: Jason Chervokas | July 04, 2005 at 10:58 PM
"Cowboy Jack also produced one of Waylon Jennings' best records, Dreaming My Dreams."
I didn't know that, it's a really great one, you're right.
Posted by: bskeels | July 05, 2005 at 10:29 AM
Great post. I actually saw Elvis live at the Houston Live Stock Show and Rodeo when I was a kid (in the early seventies).
Mark
http://www.historyofelvis.com
Posted by: Mark | February 13, 2008 at 12:05 AM