Before Elvis, Preston Lauterbach
Before Elvis, Preston Lauterbach
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Before Elvis
The African American Musicians Who Made the King

Author: Preston Lauterbach

Narrator: Jaime Lincoln Smith

Unabridged: 7 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 01/07/2025


Synopsis

In this thought-provoking book, the Black musicians who influenced Elvis Presley's music finally receive recognition and praise.

After Baz Luhrmann’s movie, Elvis, hit theaters, audiences and critics alike couldn't help but question the Black origins of Elvis Presley’s music and style, reigniting a debate that has been circling for decades. In Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King​, author Preston Lauterbach answers these questions definitively, based on new research and extensive, previously unpublished interviews with the artists who blazed the way and the people who knew them.   

Within these pages, Lauterbach examines the lives, music, legacies, and interactions with Elvis Presley of the four innovative Black artists who created a style that would come to be known as Rock ’n’ Roll: Little Junior Parker, Big Mama Thornton, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, and mostly-unknown eccentric Beale Street guitarist Calvin Newborn. Along the way, he delves into the injustices of copyright theft and media segregation that resulted in Black artists living in poverty as white performers, managers, and producers reaped the lucrative rewards.   

In the wake of continuing conversations about American music and appropriation, Before Elvis is indispensable.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Frank on March 14, 2025

Such an important book. African Americans have profoundly influenced what we've come to call pop culture, and it didn't start with Chuck Berry and Aretha Franklin. Lauterbach provides a concise but thorough history of the Black artists who fueled the meteoric launch of Elvis Presley. Arthur Crudup.......more

Goodreads review by Steph on April 24, 2025

This had some great information about many of the Black artists whose music inspired the style and career of Elvis. I loved that some of the singers were lessor known, but also that even the more well known ones had a lot of new to me information. That being said, at times it went a bit too dry and......more

Goodreads review by Brian on July 29, 2024

Preston Lauterbach’s new book, “Before Elvis: The African Musicians Who Made the King” is an important, welcomed, and needed book. There have been a few books that have explored these topics, and even some of these artists but it is nice to put the focus on some of the artists that inspired Elvis an......more

Goodreads review by Bookreporter.com on April 27, 2025

The author of six previous books centered on early Blues music and/or the music scene in Memphis, Preston Lauterbach seems uniquely qualified to take on the important subject of crediting the many musical influences that shaped the world into which Elvis Presley strode in the 1950s. Lauterbach focuse......more

Goodreads review by Dan on November 29, 2024

My thanks to NetGally and Hachette Books for an advance copy of this book that looks at the history of those musicians that had an influence on a young Elvis Presley, the African American pioneers who sang, wrote, produced and performed so that rock n' roll could be born. In comic books there are tw......more