Red, Hot and Blue
The DJ who broke the color line and started rock 'n' roll. An AI tribute powered by real WHBQ airchecks and the Fernwood Records catalog — broadcasting from Memphis to the world.
Dewey Phillips (1926–1968) was a pioneering American radio DJ who broadcast on WHBQ 560 AM in Memphis, Tennessee, from the late 1940s through 1968. His manic, free-form style made him the voice of Mid-South youth and one of the most influential disc jockeys in American radio history.
On the evening of July 30, 1954, Dewey dropped the needle on Elvis Presley's "That's All Right" and played it seven times in a row — giving the King his first radio play and helping birth rock 'n' roll.
In the Jim Crow South of the 1950s, radio was as segregated as the water fountains. Dewey Phillips ignored all of it. He played B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, Junior Parker, and Muddy Waters alongside the country his white audience expected — and he did it at prime time, on the biggest station in Memphis.
By treating a Howlin' Wolf record and a Hank Williams record as equally valid, Dewey Phillips did on the air what the lawyers would spend decades doing in the courts. He didn't just play music — he broke the color line on Southern radio.
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