Backstage Pass:

The Photography of Robert W Dye

Robert Dye received his first camera as a high school graduation present in 1939. He took it with him to Washington DC when he began to work for the FBI in 1941. After joining the Navy during WWII he was attached to the USS Decker, an escort destroyer in the Atlantic. It was there he befriended the ships photographer and assisted him in the darkroom developing film and making prints. After the War, he returned to Memphis and built a darkroom of his own. He proceeded to document through photos the world around him in the late 1940’s and 1950’s. This included wrestling at the Auditorium North Hall, motorcycle races at Nonconnah Creek, Bartlett High School, The Cotton Carnival, Mid-South Fair and live music.

Musical artists were always one of his favorite things to shoot, having received a music scholarship in high school and playing the clarinet in a western swing band during high school. His list of artists photographed included a who’s who of country music in the early 1950’s: Chet Atkins, Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, the Carter Family, Wanda Jackson, Les Paul, Hank Snow among others. Before entering the stage door at a venue he would always take his 4x5 Busch Press camera out of its case, waving it at the doorman as he walked in. In later years he would say that camera was like having a backstage pass. His most famous subject was a rising star originally from Tupelo Mississippi. Dye had seen him perform in the fall of 1954, but it was not until February 1955 that he first photographed a young Elvis Presley. A young kid in a Lansky suit with a slight snear when he smiled. Dye captured over the next 18 months, as one writer said, “the king as crown prince” . His images tell a visual story of a city and the people who changed musical history forever and others who were merely passing through.