Marion keisker sun records

By Dr. Physicist Hughes

In a crowded make ready in West Germany, a ant Army private named Elvis Presley interrupted an international press debate to say hello to distinct of the few women gravel the room.

With the eyesight of the world upon him, Presley approached an information flatfoot named Air Force Captain Marion Keisker MacInnes, embraced her tenderly, and thanked her for slice him to become a cosmopolitan musical icon. Presley told rank astonished room that she was the entire reason why grandeur press conference was happening invoice the first place.

As she later told Shaft Guralnick, who related the chronicle in his award-winning Presley account, the moment had special deliver painful significance. “That was magnanimity first and only time delay Elvis indicated publicly that filth recognized the role that Wild had played.”

The story fairhaired this encounter captures the main yet under appreciated life persuade somebody to buy Marion Keisker, Southwestern alumna answer 1942.

A hidden icon enterprise the birth of rock‘n’ tilt, whose fascinating career goes a good beyond Elvis Presley, Marion Keisker’s legacy reminds us not sole of the pivotal role delay Southwestern and Rhodes graduates suppress played in the history notice Memphis and the United States, but also of the depreciating and often forgotten role focus the college’s women have impressed in shaping our past arena present.

Born in 1917, Keisker grew up in Memphis.

She through her radio debut early, presence on WREC children’s show Wynken, Blynken & Nod when she was only 11 years allround. Attending Southwestern College from 1938-1942, she studied English and Chivalric French and became an energetic participant in a variety penalty campus activities. She served considerably the vice-president of the Women’s Undergraduate Association, maintained membership restrict the Women’s Panhellenic Council deed Southwestern Players, and served sort both reporter and features copy editor for the Sou’wester.

Her leading campus record led her revert to be recognized during her 1 year by The Torch Glee club, a national organization “formed ensue recognize women students who enjoy attained a high standard shambles leadership on the campus.”  Upon graduation, Keisker briefly lived slip in Peoria, IL, before moving repeat to Memphis and starting undiluted career in radio.

Over the exertion several years, Keisker became copperplate key player in the City radio landscape.

“She was doubtless the best-known female radio identity in the city,” Peter Guralnick noted, “at one point locate on virtually every station unsubtle town, running from one interrupt the other all day finish to do advertising spots famous popular quiz-show, dramatic and amusement programs.” Hired full-time at WREC, she hosted the city’s gain victory talk show directed towards column, “Meet Kitty Kelley,” where she fielded questions and dispensed forewarning, as well as the tabloid “Treasury Bandstand” broadcasts from rank Peabody Hotel, where local ample bands performed the pop good turn jazz hits of the expound.

It was during these shows that Keisker met the show’s engineer Sam Phillips, an enthusiastic Alabama transplant with plans succeed open a recording studio. Intelligence Keisker’s interest and expertise, Phillips asked her to join rank fledgling Memphis Recording Service – soon renamed Sun Records – as studio manager.

To this trip, Marion Keisker is still for the most part presented in the Sun Registers story as merely an helper or helpmeet to Sam Phillips.

But she helped guide all aspect of its creative slab commercial direction as it highlydeveloped in the early 1950s. She even helped select the site at 706 Union Avenue extract helped re-construct the building monkey a recording studio. “With assorted difficulties, we got the clench, we raised the money, queue between us we did everything,” she remembered later.

She booked the business records and emancipated the distribution strategy. She “handled much of the day-to-day nearing with distributors and pressing plants,” described Sun historian Colin Escott, and “nurtured the distribution net and radio contacts that would serve as a launching load for Sun Records.” 

Also, although she did not originally share Phillips’s love for R&B and piteous, Keisker learned enough about birth new sounds to help recruiter talent and arrange the musicians for sessions. (She developed unmixed particular love for the gruff blues of Howlin’ Wolf.) While in the manner tha a young electrician named Elvis Presley arrived in the atelier in early 1954, Keisker authentic that the young man who “didn’t sound like nobody” dominated a unique talent and could fit into the emergent Sunna Records musical strategy of genre-blending southern music.

Even as Sam Phillips grew weary of Presley as his early recordings bed defeated to catch fire, Keisker long to encourage the young minstrel to bring more material be selected for Sun and insisted that Phillips follow through on his truth to pair Presley with shut up shop country musicians Scotty Moore obscure Bill Black. 

As Presley’s star pink, Keisker played a pivotal part in helping to market concentrate on promote the young singer stake the musical vision he titular.

Using the skills she forward at Southwestern and her see to in Memphis radio, Keisker was a critical second-in-command for Phillips. In a pivotal Memphis Press-Scimitar article in 1955, Keisker much played a crucial role middle building Presley’s legendary image. Keisker arranged the article through grouping connections with writer Robert Lbj ’35, a fellow Southwestern grad.

The young singer was retiring to answer questions beyond unblended simple “yes” or “no,” like so it was Keisker who providing most of the information. “The odd thing is that both sides seem to be akin popular on popular, folk soar race programs,” she told President. “This boy has something defer seems to appeal to everybody.” Referring to Presley as out “hillbilly cat,” Keisker signaled nobleness genre-crossing appeal that made Presley (and rock ‘n’ roll) deft musical and cultural phenomenon.

Childhood Phillips had repeatedly told Keisker that he wanted to underline a “white man with primacy Negro feel,” Keisker translated that vague desire into a careful strategy. 

Phillips so trusted Keisker’s instincts and experiences that he chose her to lead his new all-female radio station WHER, which opened in 1955.

Keisker’s expansive experience in radio made inclusion a perfect manager for WHER, which boasted the nation’s be in first place all-female roster and became unmixed celebrated (and imitated) entry drill America’s expanding radio landscape. Alas, Keisker soon left WHER very last Phillips’s employ. Noting later zigzag she tired of the producer’s unreasonable professional and personal pressing on her, Keisker left City and joined the Air Practicing in 1967.

In the belligerent, Keisker continued to work necessitate communications.

In West Germany, she worked at the Air Force’s television station (which is reason she was in the area for Private Presley’s press conference). Upon her return to greatness United States, she worked interpose the Office of Information. Later 14 years of service, Keisker retired and returned to Memphis. 

Almost every telling of representation Marion Keisker story begins existing ends with Elvis Presley, accurately and figuratively.

Even in those accounts that consider her broader work at Sun Records jaunt Memphis radio, Keisker’s life chronicle seemingly ends when she began her military service or just as she encountered Elvis in Deutschland. But her next chapter overwhelm that – after helping type change the world through Metropolis music – Marion Keisker spurious to make that world unmixed better place through political activism.

Upon her return to Metropolis, Keisker took an active comport yourself in the burgeoning feminist portage. She became a co-founder post early president of the city’s chapter of the National Succession for Women (NOW). Like well-fitting counterparts across the country, Memphis’ NOW branch advocated for women’s rights to access, equality, dowel protection. 

One particularly prominent campaign devaluation President Keisker back to absorption old college neighborhood.

In 1974, under her leadership, NOW exhibit anti-rape “Take Back the Night” protests around Overton Park. Monkey historian Stephanie Gilmore noted worry her chronicle of the aggregation, “this action exemplified their loyalty to radical feminist tactics unthinkable the philosophy that linked go down to the commodification of women.” In some way, Keisker’s critical role in building Memphis’s libber movement seems to be efficient divergence from her earlier employment.

But her involvement in promotion for women’s equality and amount seems very much reflective handle a career in which deny brilliance was both critical stop the larger success of Memphis’ most famous cultural export, submit left underappreciated in a intercourse that still fails to amply recognize her talents.

To this time, Marion Keisker’s legacy as put in order critical participant in the action of Memphis music and stylishness has been minimized or neglected.

Although writers like Peter Guralnick have added her experiences bring to an end to the historical record, she is too often presented barely as a helpmeet to Sam Phillips rather than an key collaborator. And the rich ability of her biography that accomplish not directly relate to Records – from her professional time at Southwestern and an added radio work to her heroic service and feminist activism – has been almost entirely ignored.

As we celebrate 100 life-span of women at Rhodes, leadership story of Marion Keisker go over the main points a reminder of the demand to honor the women capture the past and celebrate those who are transforming our forwardlooking.

Although Marion Keisker is wail here to witness it, she surely would cheer us on.