“Nowadays, of course, there’s a bio of Alex, books on Big Star or books about Jim - there’s a lot of attention on this very small localized Memphis thing.

“I used to go into Burke’s Books and all these bookstores and check the index in music titles looking for names of people like Jim Dickinson and Alex Chilton, and I could never find anything,” says Gordon. He wanted to know about Memphis music - not just about iconic figures like Elvis and Otis, or institutions like Sun and Stax, but a real underground history. He wanted to hear the tales of the outsized characters, of the sonic gamblers and oddball visionaries who had been forgotten or consigned to the narrow margins of the Bluff City’s artistic story. Robert Gordon finds mystery in the mundane, inspiration in the bleakness, and revels in the individualism that connects these diverse encounters.Back in late '80s and early '90s, Robert Gordon was looking for a book that hadn’t been written yet. Gordon's Memphis inspires Cat Power, attracts Townes Van Zandt, and finds James Carr always singing at the dark end of the street.Ī rent party is when friends come together to hear music, dance, and help a pal through hard times it's a celebration in the face of looming tragedy, an optimism when the wolf is at the door. He beholds the beauty of mistakes with producer Jim Dickinson (Replacements, Rolling Stones), charts the stars with Alex Chilton (Box Tops, Big Star), and mulls the tragedy of Jeff Buckley's fatal swim. Like mint seeping into bourbon, Gordon gets into the wider world.

The interconnected profiles and stories in Memphis Rent Party convey more than a region. A passionate listener, he hears modern times deep in the grooves of old records by Lead Belly and Robert Johnson. A Memphis native, he whiles away time in a crumbling duplex with blues legend Furry Lewis, stays up late with barrelhouse piano player Mose Vinson, and sips homemade whiskey at Junior Kimbrough's churning house parties. We know the greatest hits, but celebrated author Robert Gordon takes us to the people and places history has yet to record. The fabled city of Memphis has been essential to American music-home of the blues, the birthplace of rock and roll, a soul music capital. Profiles and stories of Southern music from the acclaimed author of Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion. 'Robert Gordon's book is proof that Southern heritage is American heritage, and all sorts of people-black and white, familiar and strange, dead and alive-are what it is.' -Greil Marcus

If you don't know these characters, let Robert Gordon introduce you.' -Elvis Costello 'Blues, being the wellspring of all American music for over a century, is always worth studying.

Memphis rent party by robert gordon