Sam Phillips

Sun Records proprietor who discovered Elvis Presley

Samuel Cornelius Phillips, record-company executive: born Florence, Alabama 5 January 1923; married 1942 Rebecca Burns (two sons); died Memphis, Tennessee 30 July 2003.

The proprietor of Sun Records in Memphis, Sam Phillips discovered Elvis Presley and a host of other musical legends. He produced the records on which Presley defined his trademark sound, but, in 1955, sold Presley's contract to RCA for $35,000. He later commented, "I knew Elvis was going to be big, but I never knew he'd be that big."

Sam Phillips was born in Florence, Alabama, in 1923 and his brother, Jud, was to work with him at Sun Records. He had hopes of being a criminal lawyer, but in 1942, he married and became a disc- jockey at station WLAY in Muscle Shoals and then moved in 1946 to WREC in Memphis.

In 1950 he converted an old showroom into the Memphis Recording Studio at 706 Union Avenue. There were few domestic tape recorders then and he would record weddings and speech days and anything else which came along. He told Trevor Cajiao, editor of the magazine Now Dig This, in 1990:

I did not go into that studio thinking I was going to make hit records and be rich. I knew I had to keep the doors open because I had two small children.

The record labels Chess, Duke and RPM asked Phillips to make records for them, which would save the Memphis-based blues musicians from travelling to their own studios. Phillips made records with Howlin' Wolf, Roscoe Gordon and B.B. King. In 1951 he recorded "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm Band, which Phillips later described as "the first rock'n'roll record". The broken valve on an amplifier made the guitar sound distinctive. "I always liked that record and I used the riff in my act," says Little Richard today, "You can hear it in 'Good Golly Miss Molly'."

Phillips described his production technique to Paul Jones on BBC Radio 2 in 1988:

I wanted to capture that person as nearly as possible in their habitat, it was kept very simple, honest and straightforward. The elements of keeping it native was the primary thing I had to do. That, if anything, is what made me. I didn't want to mess with the good earth.

He elaborated on this in his film biography Sam Phillips: the man who invented rock & roll (2000): "I can get by on less equipment than anybody else because I can make it do more" - adding quite seriously, "I love perfect imperfection."

The success of these recordings prompted him to establish his own label, Sun Records, in 1952. He took Big "Mama" Thornton's "Hound Dog" (later a hit for Presley) and reworked it as a novelty, "Bear Cat", for the Memphis disc jockey Rufus Thomas, which led to a lawsuit for plagiarism that he lost. The record sold well and he had further success with Little Junior Parker and Billy "The Kid" Emerson. In 1953 he recorded "Just Walkin' in the Rain" with the Prisonaires, but, as all the groups were incarcerated in the Tennessee State Penitentiary, promotional tours were out of the question, and Johnnie Ray with his cover version had the field to himself.

At the same time, Phillips allowed anyone to make a two-sided acetate for $4, the sort of record that might have been made in a fairgound booth in the UK. It interrupted his daily work but Phillips knew that the local talent would want to hear themselves and he was effectively getting them to pay for their own auditions. Phillips, who had been recording black artists, told his secretary, Marion Keisker, "If I could find a white man who had the black sound and the black feel, I could make a million dollars."

In 1953 an 18-year-old truckdriver, Elvis Presley, made a record - "My Happiness" - in his lunch hour for his mother, and Phillips's secretary kept a note of his name and told Phillips that he was worth a second look. Scotty Moore played guitar for one of Phillips's groups, Doug Poindexter and his Starlite Wranglers. He recalls,

I would meet Sam Phillips every day. We would have coffee and discuss the business overall. His secretary said, "What about the boy who came in and did the acetate for his mother?" Sam told me to ask him over to my house to see what I thought before we took him into the studio. Bill Black, who lived down the street from me, came over and we told Sam that he had a nice voice and could sing anything.

Sam set up the recording sessions at night because Bill and I had day jobs. The first time was an audition and that's why the whole band didn't go in - it was just the three of us. We tried anything anybody could think of and, after a couple of days, we came up with "That's All Right (Mama)", by chance, if you will. It's refreshing to hear it now. There's no production to speak of and it's just three guys doing the best they could.

It was on 5 July 1954 that Presley exploded with "That's All Right (Mama)", only backed by Moore's guitar and Black's double-bass. It was a blues song, first recorded by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup in 1946, but Presley added vitality and sexuality to it. He sounded so confident, so assured and so unmistakably Elvis. The tracks were simply recorded, but Phillips's slapback echo, which was based on a tape delay, was an important feature, and echo would play its part in rock music for evermore. Another Sun performer, Charlie Feathers, commented,

Knowing how to use and record that slapback is an important part of it. You had dead mikes when Bing Crosby used to sing and everything was smooth and level. You had much more of an edge with a slapback.

(Presley himself was so embarrassed that, hearing that the record was about to be played on local radio, he hid in a cinema.)

Albert Goldman, who dismisses nearly everybody's reputation in his notorious biography of Elvis Presley, Elvis (1981), writes very favourably of Phillips:

Sam Phillips enhanced [Presley's] high ecstatic voice with a subtle aura of quavering echo. It was a stroke of genius - perhaps the most brilliant inspiration of this famous producer's career. Indeed, when you weigh the forces that contributed to Elvis Presley's breakthrough, Phillips' claim to importance appears completely justified. Not only did he give Elvis the right steer in directing him away from lugubrious ballads to the currently fashionable R&B material, but he attached to his new star's raw and untrained voice, the electronic prosthesis that masked his vocal faults while it transformed - or should we say transfigured? - his vocal quality into the now legendary Presley sound.

Phillips now had a white boy who could sing black, but B.B. King was not convinced:

I saw Elvis at Sam Phillips' studio and he sounded very country to me. He didn't sound black to me at all.

Rufus Thomas, with a little exaggeration, told me:

I couldn't see Elvis's potential at first - he was a white boy trying to sing black and it didn't reach me at all, but, after he got himself together, I was the only black disc-jockey in Memphis who was playing his records. Once Sam had Elvis, Carl and Jerry Lee, he didn't want us any more. He never recorded a black performer again.

Presley's five Sun singles - "That's All Right (Mama)", "Good Rockin' Tonight", "Milkcow Blues Boogie", "Baby Let's Play House" and "Mystery Train" - are amongst the greatest achievements in popular music. (The numbers of the records - Sun 209, 210, 215, 217, 223 - make Thomas's point that Phillips had given up on his existing performers.) The UK blues musician Brendan Croker says,

Who in England would have said, "Baby, Let's Play House"? It's American language at its best and a beautiful description of a future sexual relationship.

Mort Shuman was then the songwriting apprentice to the New Yorker Doc Pomus:

I was in a bar with Doc Pomus and he asked me to put "Mystery Train" by Elvis Presley on the jukebox. It was the first time I had heard him and I was very interested because it was something new, something different, and the beat was really driving, really great. Doc was flipping out. He thought Elvis was the greatest.

Presley's singles, although somewhat outlandish, appeared on the US country charts, but Phillips had difficulty in collecting the receipts for the records he had sold. He found two more white performers, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, and, browbeaten by Presley's manager Colonel Parker, he realised that his best move would be to auction Presley's contract and back catalogue to a major label. Decca offered $5,000, Dot $7,500 and Atlantic $25,000, but RCA were the easy winners with $35,000 for Phillips and $5,000 for Presley. Phillips accepted the deal and set about building a second studio for Sun. Within a few months, Presley, with a much fuller sound including a drummer, had recorded "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Hound Dog" for RCA and the rest is hysteria.

Phillips expected Carl Perkins's "Blue Suede Shoes" to be a national hit in 1956, but Perkins, who was travelling long distances, was badly injured in a car crash when the driver fell asleep at the wheel. A television booking on The Perry Como Show had to be cancelled and, as it happened, Presley covered the song for RCA. Phillips had better luck with Johnny Cash, who redefined country music with "Folsom Prison Blues", "I Walk the Line" and "Big River" before signing with US Columbia in 1958. The first Sun album, which is highly prized today, is Johnny Cash with his Hot and Blue Guitar (1956).

Another of Phillips's discoveries was Jerry Lee Lewis, who recorded his seminal tracks "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire" whilst at Sun. He was uncomfortable about singing rock'n'roll, wondering if it was the music of the Devil, and the recording engineer, Jack Clement, did record an extraordinary conversation with Lewis on this very subject: Phillips tells him he can save souls and Lewis responds, "How can I save souls when I have the Devil in me?"

The concept of turning tape recorders on unbeknown was a feature of Sun. When Elvis Presley paid a visit to Sun on 4 December 1956, he interrupted a Carl Perkins session and the results of the spontaneous jam which features Presley, Lewis, Perkins and Cash is known as The Million Dollar Quartet. Cash insists he is on those tapes, but it is hard to hear him.

Sam Phillips, working with Jack Clement, recorded numerous country and rockabilly artists for Sun Records. Their records are often collected on compilation albums today and the quality is so high that it is impossible to make a bad compilation. The artists include Carl Mann (who reworked Nat "King" Cole's "Mona Lisa"), Bill Justis (with his rock'n'roll instrumental "Raunchy"), Charlie Rich (who had his first US hit with "Lonely Weekends"), Billy Lee Riley, Warren Storm and Sonny Burgess. Although less successful, both Roy Orbison and Conway Twitty made some of their first recordings for Sun.

In the mid-1960s, Phillips's supremacy in Memphis was challenged by the soul labels Stax and Hi. This did not worry Phillips unduly, as he became a multi-millionaire through a judicious investment in the Holiday Inn hotel chain. He sold his entire Sun catalogue to the entrepreneur Shelby Singleton for $1m in 1969.

Phillips had owned several radio stations including the first with an all-female staff and he named a station in Memphis, WLVS, in honour of Elvis. Phillips's sons, Knox and Jerry, became producers in their own right and Sam Phillips joined them for John Prine's 1979 album Pink Cadillac.

The Sun Studios are now a tourist attraction, although recordings are still made there such as Billy Swan's Bop to Be (1995) and Like Elvis Used to Do (1999). The first time that Phillips left North America was to be the special, and rather loquacious, guest at a showing of The Man Who Invented Rock & Roll, at the National Film Theatre in 2000. Summing up his career, Phillips said,

I think rock'n'roll has had a very favourable impact on the understanding between races. The young are not as prejudiced as the old, and, if I've done something to stop the prejudice, then I think I've done something with my life.

Spencer Leigh