 Click here for song clips! |
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January 5, 1923 — July 30, 2003
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| These photos capture moments in the birth of Rock & Roll. LEFT: Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley pose in the tiny studio of Sam's Memphis Recording Service. CENTER: Sam proudly sits before his tape console and cutting lathe. RIGHT: The label that started it all! | ||
Sam Phillips is the single, most important record producer in the story of Rock & Roll. He repackaged Country and Blues and sold the hybrid sound as Rock & Roll.
His achievement was no accident, for Phillips had a sense of time and place. During the late 1940s he was a radio announcer at WREC in Memphis, where he became increasingly bored with the Big Band and Country music he was programming.
Sam loved the vitality of Blues, and in 1950 opened his own recording studio, Memphis Recording Service, where he loved to record the itinerant Blues musicians up from the Mississippi delta.
In 1953 Sam established Sun Records, essentially a Blues label recording such black artists as James Cotton, Little Milton, Rufus Thomas, Little Junior Parker, and many others.
Inspired by their music Sam often said, "If I could find a white man who had the Negro Sound, and the Negro feel, I could make a million dollars."
When 18-year-old Elvis Presley walked through the door in the summer of '53, Sam had found his white man.
Phillips' roster of talent became increasingly white, and soon included Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, Roy Orbison, Bill Justis, Ace Cannon, Charlie Rich, and many other Rockabilly pioneers.
Sun Records produced its biggest hits between 1954 and 1959, after which time Phillips had lost his brightest stars.
The music, too, had changed. As the major labels climbed aboard the Rock & Roll bandwagon, the pioneering Rockabilly rebels were succumbing to manufactured, but marketable, teen idols singing love and novelty songs to an adolescent market.
Sam Phillips was a visionary who found his time and place. He democratized popular music in America by fusing white roots music with black roots music to create a universal folk music — Rock & Roll.
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"If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound,
and the Negro feel, I could make a million dollars" |
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SAM PHILLIPS
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.Featured Sites .
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Other Recommended Sites
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Rock + Roll Hall of Fame Tribute Page
bio / timeline |
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The Sun Records Label Story
by David Edwards and Mike Callahan |
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Founding Father
bio with pics by Eric P. Olsen |
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Sam Phillips' Sun Records
detailed bio with pics |
Click on any link below for more information, or to order online
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Good Rockin'
Tonight |
Sun Records
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Sun Records
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Catalyst
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Click on any link below for more information, or to order online
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Sun Records:
50th Anniversary Box |
The Best of
Sun Records: 50th Anniversary Edition |
Good Rockin' Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records
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Collection
25 All-Time Greatest Hits
Sun Records
| Other Sun Recordings Available Online |
| The Legendary Story of Sun Records (Metro / 2 CDs / 60 tracks) ) |
| Very Best of Sun Rockabilly (Charly / 1 CD ) |
| Carl Perkins: Original Sun Greatest Hits (Wea/Atlantic/Rhino / 1 CD / 16 tracks) |
| Sun Records Harmonica Classics (Rounder Special Series / 1 CD / 14 tracks) |
Click on any link below for more information, or to order online
The Online Roots of Rock ™
