Dewey Phillips

Broadcasting on WHBQ in Memphis six nights a week from 9:00 pm until midnight, Dewey Phillips was tremendously popular with both black and white listeners in the 1950s. An excitable, flamboyant good old boy who seemed to have stepped from the pages of Al Capp’s “Li’l Abner” comic strips but who played cutting-edge rhythm and blues, Phillips had an uncanny ability to pick hits and hit makers, including Jerry Lee Lewis and Memphis’s own Elvis...