Pink Cadillac

• Publisher:   Coral Press
• Number Of Pages:   392
• Publication Date:   2001-07
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0970829302
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780970829306

What if there were a white woman at the time of Elvis’s breakthrough with a black voice and style, a Janis Joplin 10 years earlier, in the racially divided South? What if she hooked up with an old black bluesman and a rich, young white sax player to record an incendiary 45 record that, though many remember hearing, no one seems to have ever owned? What if murder, duplicity, love, and redemption follow the trail of the lost 45?

Pink Cadillac takes place at a magical roadhouse outside of Memphis, presided over by Bearcat Jackson, a former blues impresario, and his common-law wife, Sonesta Clarke, a blues singer who has turned to religion. Also at the roadhouse is Dell Dellaplane, the jazzed-up saxophone player—and the son of a rich real estate man—who’s dying to learn the true secrets of the blues. Delivered into this world is Daisy Holiday, a young white singer with a huge, stunning voice and a perilous ambition. On her way to Memphis, Daisy befriends Elvis Presley, who with characteristic generosity gives her one of his pink Cadillacs.

The roadhouse is in trouble, and to help save it, Dell writes, Bearcat produces, and Daisy sings a hot record based on Elvis’s kiss of kismet, appropriately titled “Pink Cadillac.” With great hopes they send their only copy to a record producer friend of Dell’s, Cuth Starks, who falls for Daisy’s picture and develops his agenda for her.

All hell breaks loose. Threats descend from the powerful white Memphis establishment; betrayals loom from outside the roadhouse, and in; even though the song looks to be a great hit, Daisy and her band fall apart, then the disc is lost; and in a final tragic scene, Bearcat Jackson is tragically shot dead.

The question of who killed the Bearcat—and what happened to the lost 45—drives the novel’s story.

Pink Cadillac is a compelling read, at its heart a mystery, but more than that an evocation of the timeless mysteries of great music.

I read about 30 books a year and consider "Pink Cadillac" one of the two or three best novels (of any genre) that I've read in the last half-decade.

Author Dunn cuts through the sickeningly-sweet nostalgia to which rock's first decade has been reduced, and paints a warts-and-all portrait of Eisenhower-era Memphis: the racism and segregation, the subjugation of women, the predatory practices of the music business, the even more predatory practices of the ruling class, and--on the positive side--the energy and exuberance that made early rock 'n' roll and those who created it something truly special.

Dunn also does an excellent job of capturing the music historian's obsessive/compulsive thinking and behavior--a frame of mind that has motivated people such as I to spend our lives researching and writing scholarly treatises on what the people who created the music often disdainfully refer to as "those old things."

"Pink Cadillac" grabbed me from its opening paragraph and still hasn't let me go, some 24 hours after I finished it. Even if you don't like '50s rock 'n' roll, it won't keep you from enjoying this book. And for we who love the music of that period, Dunn's novel serves both as a triumph and as a sad reminder that good novels about rock 'n' roll have been few and far between.

Robert Dunn has given us a bittersweet story that perfectly captures a time when rhythm and blues was giving birth to rock and roll. A modern day record collector/entrepreneur, grief-sticken by his wife's sudden death, is on a healing quest to find a legendary single. He is convinced that "Pink Cadillac" is the greatest song never heard, a disc that may or may not have been recorded by a rag tag group of musical pioneers in the mid-fifties. Through flashback, the reader discovers the secret of the song, and why its origins have been kept hidden nearly half a century. The colorful characters that populate the story are in and of themselves worth the ride. Thomas "Bearcat" Jackson is a particularly vital and heartbreaking character as penned by Dunn. Bearcat is a brilliant self-taught bluesman and record man, imprisoned and haunted by the Jim Crow era into which he was born. Much to the dismay of his long time musical partners, Bearcat hooks up with two young white kids, creating a new sort of sound with their "Pink Cadillac." But was this magical tune ever actually put to wax? And what dreadful price did Bearcat and his friends pay for daring to make such music together? With "guest stars" such as Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips and Elvis himself (who provided the Cadillac the song is named for), this is a rollicking ride that will be a great read for novices and diehard music fans alike.

Pink Cadillac's author, Robert Dunn, knows the stuff of Memphis '55/56 -- the days of blues descending and rock rising, the roadhouses, radio stations, deejays, unscrupulous record label owners and the power of the mojo. He's taken that knowledge and transformed it into a riveting novel. I found myself reading late into the night, needing to know how Thomas 'Bearcat' Jackson's record producing career had been destroyed -- why blues singer Sonesta Clarke loved, but couldn't live with Bearcat -- if Dell Dellaplane's powerful father would smash his son's dreams by bringing down Bearcat's roadhouse -- if Daisy Holliday would ever come to her senses, forsake lounge singing in Buffalo, NY and return to Memphis. Most of all, I couldn't put the book down until the truth of the record -- Pink Cadillac -- was revealed. Had it actually ever been recorded? If so, why did it live in legend alone? Did it hold the answer to a mystery that might've been best left unsolved? Buy this book. Once you begin reading, you won't want to put it down.

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