For over one hundred years, Memphis, Tennessee, has been the center of musical innovation for American popular music. From W. C. Handy to Alberta Hunter and Lil Hardin Armstrong, in the early years, to B. B. King in the late 1940s, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis in the 1950s, to Otis Redding, Booker T. and the MGs, and Al Green in the 1960s and early 1970s, Memphis music sizzled with a level of creativity unrivaled in the history of American music.

For five decades of the city’s marvelous music history, author James L. Dickerson was at ground zero, first as a high school rock musician and then as a student rhythm and blues musician at the University of Mississippi, where his band made history by becoming the first all-white musical group to perform at a black Memphis nightclub, and finally as a Memphis journalist, magazine publisher, and radio syndication owner, who had unparalleled access to many of the music greats of the latter half of the century.

Memphis Going Down is told in the words of the record producers, performers, and songwriters themselves as they reflect on their lives and music and its impact on popular culture. You’ll hear legendary record producers such as Chips Moman, Willie Mitchell, Sam Phillips, and Jim Stewart talk about the ups and downs of the industry. And you’ll hear the artists themselves: Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Al Green, Bobby Womack, B. B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Rufus Thomas, members of the Box Tops, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds go one-on-one with the author in an effort to understand the mysteries of Memphis music.