Roderick A. Guevara

Contents: How "Legs" Larry Smith joined the Bonzo Dog Band. The requirements for joining the band had far more to do with attitude than musical proficiency. Neil Innes joins the band very early on as a keyboardist and then later switches to guitar. A succession of unnamed transient tuba players come and go. The introduction of Rodney Slater and Roger Ruskin Spear to the band.

In September 1941, Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history - almost three years of bombardment and starvation that culminated in the harsh winter of 1943 - 1944. Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who would write a symphony that roused, rallied, eulogized, and commemorated his fellow citizens - the Leningrad Symphony.

The music that Phillips shaped in his tiny Memphis studio, with artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Ike Turner, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, introduced a sound that had never been heard before. He brought forth a singular mix of black and white voices passionately proclaiming the vitality of the American vernacular tradition while at the same time declaring, once and for all, a new, integrated musical day.