Guralnick draws from his deep mine of knowledge about Phillips and his world — a mine with passageways to some dark places — to produce a book so thoroughly steeped in its subject that it is almost an autobiography in the third person.
The book is a labor of love. Guralnick is an eminent authority on rock and roll and related musical styles. He is passionate about the music, but he doesn’t let his passion overinflate his prose, and he seems to know everything about everyone who was part of the Southern music world.
Mr. Guralnick, the historian, writer and fan, has captured what was different, real and raw about a great artist. His Sam Phillips comes out perfectly imperfect.
In the lovingly crafted Sam Phillips, Peter Guralnick offers an exhaustive look at this pivotal and complex figure. With crisp prose and meticulous detail, Guralnick gives Phillips the same epic treatment he previously employed in acclaimed biographies of Sam Cooke and Presley.
While no hagiography, the project was clearly a labor of love. A lot of it. The book was born out of an astonishing amount of research and interviews; at more than 750 pages, it’s hard to fathom what was left out. Guralnick paces the story slow and steady, breaking down key moments in a methodical but conversational flow.
Guralnick has injected enough helium and momentum into the material to get it airborne and moving stately forward. Guralnick obviously (mostly) admired Phillips, but the biography has the ring of truth.
...the historian produces a book that can stand with his best, and that is far more entertaining and lively than Dream Boogie, his 2005 Sam Cooke bio. [But] Guralnick can get carried away, as when he compares Phillips to Mark Twain and William Faulkner...
The author knew Phillips and worked with and interviewed him in the past. That firsthand knowledge results in a biography that — while occasionally exhausting in length — is almost always compelling and even revelatory to those who thought they knew it all.
Mr. Guralnick, who’s chronicled American roots music for decades and authored the definitive Elvis Presley biography, makes no claims of objectivity in this penetrating, exhaustive work. A longtime friend, he co-produced a 2000 Phillips documentary, and his close relationships with the family are a vital part of his narrative.
Author Peter Guralnick, who interviewed Phillips many times and knew him as well as anyone but his kin, recounts Phillips’ life in meticulous detail...
Working 'without a map or a compass,' Guralnick writes, 'with nothing more than their own belief in the innate spiritually of the music' these two unlikely characters changed the world. This biography opens up that world, and beautifully and definitively explains what the two men never could.
