Producer and record company owner Sam Phillips will always be best known for the discovery of Elvis Presley. Yet prior to Presley and the birth of rock & roll, Phillips played an important role in Memphis blues.In his Sun Studio, he recorded future blues greats B. B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Rosco Gordon, and others.As a talent scout, record producer, and record company owner, Phillips was to Memphis blues what Leonard and Phil Chess were to Chicago blues.
Phillips hoped to study law but instead settled for a career in radio broadcasting and engineering. His first disc jockey job was in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
By 1945, he was in Memphis on WREC. Five years later, Phillips opened up the Memphis Recording Service, a small recording studio on Union Avenue, and the short-lived Phillips' Records with disc jockey friend Dewey Phillips (no relation).
After one release, bluesman Joe Hill Louis's "Gotta Let You Go" backed with "Boogie in the Park," the label folded. Phillips then cultivated a relationship with the Bihari Brothers, who were about to launch RPM, a subsidiary of Modern, their Los Angeles-based label.
The Biharis hoped to build the new label's roster with down-home blues talent and forged an agreement with Phillips to record Memphis artists for RPM. One of the first blues men Phillips sent to RPM was B. B. King. Phillips also set up an agreement with Chess Records similar to the one he had with RPM.
In 1951, Phillips recorded "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and leased it to Chess. Often called the first rock & roll record, "Rocket 88" went to the top of the R & B charts and forced Chess, RPM, and other labels to take a serious interest in Memphis music.
Squabbles over talent acquisition with Chess and RPM led Phillips to rethink the idea of starting his own record company. In late 1951, he quit his disc jockey job at WREC. In 1952, he began Sun Records. Until the arrival of Elvis Presley and rock & roll two years later, Sun Records was largely a blues label.
Although Phillips continued to make some blues records after Elvis had changed the course of popular music in 1954 and 1955, he mostly recorded country and rockabilly artists. Sun scored with records by Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison in the mid- and late 1950s. Sam Phillips passed away at the age of 80, in 2001.
Sam Phillips finally decided that it was time to move to larger premises and in the summer of 1958 he brought property on 639 Madison Avenue in Memphis a few blocks from his old studio and after renovating the building to make it a recording studio, moved his business into the new location, leaving the old studio vacant, unchanged except for the removal of all the recording equipment. Except for one brief attempt at using the location for a retail surfing store (unsuccessful as surfing was not that popular in the Memphis area!!), the building sat vacant for 23 years! For some reason (I can't remember exactly) a group of local people found out that the building was sitting there almost unchanged from when Sam had moved out (except of course for the recording equipment). They had the building declared a National Historic Landmark, and worked to gather equipment and memorabilia from it's heyday. The tour was incredibly interesting (in a great part due to the enthusiasm of the young lady giving the tour). The music produced by the artists in this studio was a big part of our teenage years and it was like a trip down memory lane for C and I.
When you stand in the middle of this small studio, you are totally awed by the fact that so much music, by so many famous artists, was produced in such a tiny place! Awesome!
Clive in front of the recording studio at 706 Union Street, Memphis, Tennessee. I always used to think he looked like Elvis Presley when he was a teenager. He even used to have the curl in the middle of his forehead!!!!!
Some of the instruments typically used in a recording session. None of this was original to the studio, but were of the era (1950's). The only original piece in the studio was one of the microphones used by the singers. Elvis Presley would have used that mike to record.
Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash in an inpromptu session in the studio. Apparently Elvis had dropped by the studio to say hi (this was after he had left Sun to record under contract at RCA) and as the others were there, they started fooling around with the music. Sam Phillips secretly recorded the session, but couldn't make it public as Elvis was under contract to RCA at this point.
After the Sun Tour, we went to the Memphis Rock N' Soul Museum. After more than two hours in the museum, we still hadn't seen and heard everything. Another amazing place. To hear some of the great music perfomed by the original artists of this area, take some time to visit the official website of the Museum. They have excerpts playing from many of the different recordings!! Great music to have playing in the background while you are enjoying MY blog!!! hehehehe Be sure to click on the television set on the entry page. It takes you to a video that tells all about the museum and is really interesting.
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