Preston Lauterbach, “The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll” (W. W. Norton, 2011)

New Books in African American Studies · Jan 15, 2013 · 59m

Where does rock ‘n’ roll begin? In The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll (W. W. Norton, 2011), Preston Lauterbach makes a strong case for its beginnings in the backwoods and small-town juke joints, fed by big-city racketeering, of the black American South. It begins, possibly, on Indianapolis’s Indiana Avenue where Denver Fergusun ran numbers, paid-off cops, and operated the Sunset Terrace. It begins, maybe, in Houston where Don Robey was the proprietor of the Bronze Peacock, oversaw a network of bars and taverns throughout Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, and was a founder of the…