On Beale Street

By Ronald Kidd

Book Overview

ROCK AND ROLL IS ABOUT TO CHANGE JOHNNY ROSS' LIFE.Living in Memphis in 1954, Johnny's world is completely segregated -- until he starts sneaking out to Beale Street at night. Beale Street, with its music clubs, is on the wrong side of the tracks, but it's the only place Johnny can hear the blues, which is all he cares about. It's also near Sun Records, where Johnny finds himself working for Sam Phillips -- and witnessing history in the making when an up-and-coming musician named Elvis records his first song. Nobody has heard anything like it.All at once Johnny is pulled into a storm of controversy around this new kind of music, just as racial tensions are reaching a breaking point. What started out as a part-time job and a way to get behind the scenes of a record label is now spinning out of control. As songs like Elvis's start rising up the charts, Johnny sees the power music has to bring people together -- while secrets from the past threaten to tear his black-and-white life apart.In this searing, cinematic novel, acclaimed writer Ronald Kidd tells a coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of race conflict and the birth of rock and roll.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416933875
• ISBN13: 9781416933878
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.9" x 5.5"
• Age Range: 14 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 9 to 12

Customer Reviews

A thorougly enjoyable trip to the Memphis of half a century ago

Nashville-based author Ronald Kidd (Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial, 2006), has written a fascinating coming-of-age tale set in Memphis in 1954. On Beale Street tells the story of Johnny Ross, 15, a white boy who becomes friends with an up-and-coming artist named Elvis Presley and is introduced to "black music," blues and rock 'n' roll. Bristling with racial tensions, the novel takes place in the pre-Civil Rights Era, in which people are divided into a white world and a black world. The blacks are intimidated by the Ku Klux Klan and oppressed by an establishment based on white supremacy. Johnny gains an entree into Sun Records, an innovative company founded by Sam Phillips; meets various local disc jockeys; falls in love with vivacious Ruth Ann Morris; befriends Lamont Turner, a black teenager; and is threatened by Trey Chapman, an arrogant white bully. When he learns a shattering truth, Johnny must make a dangerous choice between courage and cowardice. The novel hints at the difficulties Johnny faces when making an end of lies, but, for the most part, the story breaks off and leaves Johnny, as it were, in limbo. For readers too young to remember the 1950's, On Beale Street will be an eye-opening adventure into a time when our country was divided by segregation, allegedly "separate but equal" schools, hatred, and race prejudice. On Beale Street is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Ronald Kidd's next novel, The Year of the Bomb, also set in the 1950s, tells the story of four 13-year-old boys during the time of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt for Communists. Ronald Kidd is the author of the highly acclaimed Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial (2006). His novels of adventure, comedy, and mystery have received the Children's Choice Award, an Edgar Award nomination, and honors from the American Library Association, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. A two-time O'Neill playwright, he lives in Nashville, Tennessee.