Dewey Phillips Red Hot & Blue CD

Although Alan Freed is more famous, Dewey Phillips arguably did more to invent the prototype of the rock & roll DJ. His Memphis show, Red Hot and Blue, possibly the first major radio show by a white disc jockey to play R&B, integrated the airwaves in 1952. And if that's not enough, he deserves legendary status for being the very first disc jockey to ever play an Elvis Presley record. Of course, that epochal moment isn't here on this hourlong collection of airchecks from 1952 to 1964, but this disc does do an excellent job of presenting Phillips' singular style. Phillips liked to gab, and throughout this disc he often riffs over the records as they play, his quirky non sequiturs sounding like he's overindulged on the fine products of his primary sponsor, Champagne Velvet beer. At least, that's how he sounds at the beginning. By the end, Phillips sounds tired and disenchanted with the music he's playing -- it's not an accident that these tapes end with the year the British Invasion came calling on these shores. With pure R&B in decline and his hipster broadcasting style out of favor, Phillips is a man out of time by the end of this disc. Annoyingly, this collection of tape fragments is programmed as one hourlong cut, which makes it difficult to examine how completely Phillips' style had changed over the years. ~ Stewart Mason

In the pantheon of great, original rock & roll disc jockeys -- men who put their careers on the line to play the real thing -- two names always immediately come to mind: Alan Freed and Dewey Phillips. The King of Memphis radio, with his Red, Hot & Blue broadcast on WHBQ the number one show with a biracial teen audience, Phillips created the now-stereotypical character of the hyperactive, fast-talking, demented disc jockey, but with three important differences: #1) He was the first to play all styles of music -- black and white, blues, hillbilly, pop, and jazz -- and appeal to all races. And he was doing it in the South in 1948. #2) It was no act. Dewey really was nuts. #3) He was the first to play Elvis Presley. (And, as the cover to this amazing collection of radio airchecks also points out, the first to introduce him to drugs.) He ruled the Memphis airwaves for ten years until the rise of Top 40 and changing tastes banished him from the marketplace, flaming out early at 42 in 1968. This collection kicks off with a compilation of three early WHBQ broadcasts, complete with crackpot asides, speedfreak delivery, and impeccable musical taste. The other side is Dewey at the end, broadcasting over some little station, still crazy, but now dangerously so. The drugs are clearly doing all the work, his speed-rapping style almost incomprehensible; he overloads the board, twisting the wrong dials, playing the wrong side of a record, etc. It closes with an amazing on-air admission that the record he just played is "another one of them payola records." As an artifact of American radio long since gone, this album would be a worthy addition to anyone's collection. As a piece of American rock & roll history, file it under indispensable. ~ Cub Koda

Dewey Phillips brought black rhythm and blues music to white teenagers in Memphis two years before Freed started doing the same in Cleveland. He brought rock'n'roll to television a year before Dick Clark's American Bandstand. And while segregation was imposed on virtually every aspect of life in the streets, "Daddy-O" Dewey gleefully integrated the airwaves of the South. These selections offer a glimpse into this unique performer during his rise, at his peak, and in the decline of his career. It is a voice that has not been heard before and will not likely be heard again - a voice which changed the social landscape of Memphis and the musical landscape of the world. One Hour of live broadcasts from 1952-1964.