Photo by Dan Johnson via Marquette University Press
Phillip Naylor
Phillip Naylor, photographed for the release of 'Milwaukee Rock and Roll, 1950-2000: A Reflective History' (2019).
If Phillip Naylor wasn’t the first to teach rock and roll history at a college level in Milwaukee, he was among the most engaging and accessible of that cohort. Marquette University honored him with an award for teaching excellence. Phil Naylor died on July 20 after an illness. He was 77.
For Naylor, rock and roll was personal as well as academic. A Midwesterner born in Evanston, IL, he was 10 when Elvis Presley broke and 17 when The Beatles arrived in America. Naylor graduated from Marquette with Ph.D. in history in 1980 and taught for a few years at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., before returning to Marquette by decade’s end.
His scholarly work ranged widely across many centuries. He taught advanced courses in Byzantine and Near Eastern history with a particular focus on North Africa. He co-edited the Journal of North African Studies and authored several books that explored how encounters between civilizations shaped human society. Many students remember him from his lectures on Western Civilization at Marquette’s Varsity Theatre.
Naylor grew up with rock and brought his interest to the classroom, bringing guest speakers including Bruce Cole, a veteran Milwaukee drummer and the coordinator of the Marquette University Library’s local music archive, the Cuje Collection. He occasionally performed with The Western Civilizations, a band composed of Marquette colleagues. He retired earlier this decade and was named professor emeritus.
Naylor, Cole and I edited a book that will probably remain definitive, Milwaukee Rock and Roll, 1950-1999: A Reflective History, published by the Marquette University Press in 2019. Naylor and I were guests on the first episode of the Shepherd Express music podcast Sonic Rendezvous.
