
Before Elvis
The African American Musicians Who Made the King
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Narrated by:
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Jaime Lincoln Smith
About this listen
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King, author Preston Lauterbach answers these questions definitively, based on new research and extensive, previously unpublished interviews with the artists who blazed the way and the people who knew them.
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.
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Of all the literary forms, the novel is arguably the most discussed . . . and fretted over. From Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote to the works of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and today’s masters, the novel has grown with and adapted to changing societies and technologies, mixing tradition and innovation in every age throughout history. Thomas C. Foster—the sage and scholar who ingeniously led readers through the fascinating symbolic codes of great literature in his first book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor—now examines the grammar of the popular novel.
By: Thomas C. Foster
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The Scapegoat
- The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
- By: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
- Narrated by: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
- Length: 25 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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As King James I’s favorite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, advisor and lover. When Charles I succeeded his father, he was similarly enthralled and made Buckingham his best friend and mentor. A dazzling figure on horseback and a skilful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. He became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life.
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Perfect
- By Greg Murphy on 03-13-25
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Where Madness Lies
- The Double Life of Vivien Leigh
- By: Lyndsy Spence
- Narrated by: Sarah Welborn
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Vivien Leigh was one of the greatest film and theatrical stars of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Her Oscar-winning performances in Gone With the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire have cemented her status as an icon of Hollywood. Behind the scenes, however, Leigh's personal life was marred by manic depression. Largely misunderstood and subjected to barbaric mistreatment at the hands of her doctors, she would also suffer the heartbreak of Olivier's infidelity. Unlike previous biographies, Where Madness Lies begins in 1953 when Leigh suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized.
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Interesting but hollow.
- By J. D. Beck on 01-18-25
By: Lyndsy Spence
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The Life of Herod the Great
- By: Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah G. Plant - editor
- Narrated by: Blair Underwood, Robin Miles
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1950s, as a continuation of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the “slaughter of the innocents,” but a forerunner of Christ—a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea.
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like the lion needs no weapon but himself
- By william t. on 03-25-25
By: Zora Neale Hurston, and others
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The Woman Who Knew Everyone
- The Power of Perle Mesta, Washington's Most Famous Hostess
- By: Meryl Gordon
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Perle Mesta was a force to be reckoned with. In her heyday, this wealthy globe-trotting Washington widow was one of the most famous women in America, garnering as much media attention as Eleanor Roosevelt. Renowned for her world-class parties featuring politicians and celebrities, she was very close to three presidents–Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. Truman named her as the first female envoy to Luxembourg, which inspired the hit musical based on Perle’s life – “Call Me Madam” – which starred Ethel Merman, ran on Broadway for two years and later became a movie.
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Behind the scenes in history
- By Moranna on 02-13-25
By: Meryl Gordon
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Purlie Victorious
- A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch
- By: Ossie Davis
- Narrated by: Leslie Odom Jr., Kara Young, Vanessa Bell Calloway, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Original Recording
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Dynamic traveling preacher Purlie Victorious Judson returns to his small Georgia town hoping to save Big Bethel, the community’s church, and emancipate the cotton pickers who work on oppressive Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee’s plantation. With the assistance of Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, in a Tony Award-winning performance by Kara Young, Purlie hopes to pry loose an inheritance due his long-lost cousin and use the money to restore his beloved church.
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A great listen!
- By Kindle Customer on 03-19-25
By: Ossie Davis
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The Real Frank Zappa Book
- By: Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso - with
- Narrated by: Ahmet Zappa
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The legendary Frank Zappa, one of the most influential, innovative and controversial musical artists for the past 20 years, takes us on a wild, funny trip through his life and times. Along the way, Zappa offers his inimitable views on many things such as art, politics, and beer.
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Some good parts, some not...
- By Ian Currie on 09-20-23
By: Frank Zappa, and others
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Wiseguys and the White House
- Gangsters, Presidents, and the Deals They Made
- By: Eric Dezenhall
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Gangsters and presidents have long captured the American imagination, but how much does the underworld actually affect presidential power? How deep are their “connections”? As Eric Dezenhall reveals in this eye-opening history, in some instances, one couldn’t have functioned without the other. From Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Richard Nixon to Joseph R. Biden, the mob has done presidential dirty work, including attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, harass America’s enemies, and put our chief executives in office.
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Bias
- By Stella Mourer on 03-12-25
By: Eric Dezenhall
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3 Shades of Blue
- Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool
- By: James Kaplan
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity. James Kaplan’s magnificent 3 Shades of Blue captures how that golden era came to be, and its pinnacle with the recording of Kind of Blue. It’s a book about music, and business, and race, and heroin, and the cities that gave jazz its home, and the Black geniuses behind its rise. It’s an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange environments where it can flourish most.
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Great deep dive into a pinnacle of jazz, marred by author bias against later jazz years
- By Michael J. Anderson on 04-08-24
By: James Kaplan
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The Heroin Diaries: 10 Year Anniversary Edition
- A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star
- By: Nikki Sixx
- Narrated by: Nikki Sixx, Sophie Kargman, Ross Marquand
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In honor of the 10-year anniversary of The Heroin Diaries, Nikki Sixx’s definitive and bestselling memoir on drug addiction is now available on audio for the first time, read by Nikki Sixx! This shocking, gripping, and at times darkly hilarious memoir explores Nikki’s yearlong war with a vicious heroin addiction. Now more than ever, with opioid addiction ravaging our country and rising by 20 percent in the past year alone, Nikki’s story is now more relevant than ever.
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Sixx Review
- By Anonymous User on 02-12-20
By: Nikki Sixx
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Mood Machine
- The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist
- By: Liz Pelly
- Narrated by: Liz Pelly
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on over a hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today’s highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed.
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Vocal fry
- By Anonymous User on 01-19-25
By: Liz Pelly
What listeners say about Before Elvis
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Dave
- 02-23-25
There *was* something before Elvis
Great premise that’s been uncovered for too long. These artists are given their due.
The only hiccup here are the number of bizarre, glaring mispronunciations of some other artists’ names. Carl Pickens? Bob Willis? Mike Stoller’s writing partner is constantly mispronounced as Jerry Lie-ber!
Surely this isn’t in Lauterbach’s text - he’s a great writer.
Otherwise Jaime Lincoln Smith is an excellent reader - so who produced this thing?
The sloppiness mars an otherwise excellent audiobook.
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