From the Editor From the Reader - DiscoverArchive Home ...

58
By PAUL KINGSBURY, BA’80
for 40 years now, Peter Guralnick
has been turning out beautifully written,
impeccably researched magazine
profiles and books about key figures in blues,
country, and early rock ’n’ roll. His books
include a celebrated trilogy on America’s roots
music—Feel Like Goin’ Home: Portraits in Blues
and Rock ’n’ Roll (1971), Lost Highway: Journeys
and Arrivals of American Musicians (1979),
and Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm & Blues and the
Southern Dream of Freedom (1986)—and a
definitive, two-volume biography of Elvis Presley,
Last Train to Memphis (1994) and Careless
Love (1999), each volume of which won a Ralph
Gleason Music Book Award. During the spring
semester he made a temporary home at Vanderbilt
as a visiting professor of creative nonfiction
writing.
Despite the considerable acclaim his work
has received, Guralnick is an exceedingly modest
and friendly man, quick to treat any visi-
S u m m e r 2 0 0 5
A conversation
with visiting professor
Peter Guralnick
History
fromthe
DAVID GAHR
inside
tor as a potential colleague and peer. On a chilly
afternoon in March, he welcomed me into his
sparsely furnished third-floor Benson Hall
office, with a view of the Kirkland tower behind
the magnolias. Though his curly hair is gray
and thinning, with his compact frame and
youthful energy he certainly doesn’t look like
someone who has passed the 60-year mark.
Wearing jeans, white tennis shoes, and a green
V-neck sweater, he comes across as casual and
relaxed.Yet, when he speaks about writing and
American music, he reveals an intense desire
to be rigorously honest and to express himself
as clearly as he possibly can. As he does so,
out
names of monumental music personalities—
Sun Records founder and producer Sam Phillips,
bluesmen Howlin’ Wolf and Skip James, soul
singers Ray Charles and Solomon Burke, some
of whom became close friends of his—pop
up as naturally in his conversation as co-workers
and neighbors do for most of us.
In the following interview, edited for length,
Guralnick talks about how he approaches the
craft of writing biography and explains how
his twin passions for American music and for
writing came together to create a literary career
quite different from what he initially imagined
possible.