Sam Phillips

Sam Phillips
Background information
Birth name Samuel Cornelius Phillips
Born (1923-01-05)January 5, 1923
Florence, Alabama, U.S.
Died July 30, 2003(2003-07-30) (aged 80)
Memphis, Tennessee
Genres Rock and roll, rockabilly, country, blues
Occupation(s) Record producer
Years active 1945–2003
Labels Sun
Associated acts Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis

Samuel Cornelius Phillips (January 5, 1923 – July 30, 2003) was an American record producer who played an important role in the development of rock and roll during the 1950s. He was the founder of Sun Records and Sun Studios, where he produced music by Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Howlin' Wolf. His success culminated in his launching of Elvis Presley's career in 1954.

Phillips sold Sun in 1969 to Shelby Singleton. He was an early investor in the Holiday Inn chain of hotels. He advocated racial equality and helped break down racial barriers in the music industry.

Early life

Phillips was the youngest of eight children, born on a farm near Florence, Alabama, to poor tenant farmers, Madge Ella (Lovelace) and Charles Tucker Phillips.[1] As a child, he picked cotton in the fields with his parents alongside black laborers. The experience of hearing workers singing in the fields left a big impression on the young Phillips.[2] Traveling through Memphis with his family in 1939 on the way to see a preacher in Dallas, he slipped off to look at Beale Street, at the time the heart of the city's music scene. "I just fell totally in love," he later recalled.[3]

Phillips attended the former Coffee High School in Florence. He conducted the school band and had ambitions to be a criminal defense attorney. However, his father was bankrupted by the Great Depression and died in 1941, forcing Phillips to leave high school to look after his mother and aunt.[3][4] To support the family Phillips worked in a grocery store and then a funeral parlor.[5]

The Memphis Recording Service and Sun Records

Sun Studio, at junction of Sam Phillips Avenue, Memphis

In the 1940s, Phillips worked as a DJ and radio engineer for station WLAY (AM), in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. According to Phillips, the station's "open format" (of broadcasting music by white and black musicians alike) would later inspire his work in Memphis. Beginning in 1945, he worked for four years as an announcer and sound engineer for radio station WREC, in Memphis.

On January 3, 1950, Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service, at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis. He let amateurs record, which drew performers such as B.B. King, Junior Parker, and Howlin' Wolf, who made their first recordings there. Phillips then sold the recordings to larger labels. In addition to musical performances, Phillips recorded events such as weddings and funerals, selling the recordings. The Memphis Recording Service also served as the studio for Phillips's own label, which he launched in 1952.

Phillips recorded different styles of music. He was interested in the blues and said, "The blues, it got people—black and white—to think about life, how difficult, yet also how good it can be. They would sing about it; they would pray about it; they would preach about it. This is how they relieved the burden of what existed day in and day out."[6]

Phillips recorded what the music historian Peter Guralnick considered the first rock and roll record: "Rocket 88", by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, a band led by the 19-year-old Ike Turner, who also wrote the song. [7] The recording was released in 1951 by Chess Recordsm in Chicago. From 1950 to 1954 Phillips recorded music by James Cotton, Rufus Thomas, Rosco Gordon, Little Milton, Bobby Blue Bland, the Prisonaires and others.

Sun Records produced more rock-and-oll records than any other record label of its time during its 16-year run, producing 226 singles.[8]

Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison

Phillips and Elvis Presley opened a new form of music. Phillips said of Presley: "Elvis cut a ballad, which was just excellent. I could tell you, both Elvis and Roy Orbison could tear a ballad to pieces. But I said to myself, 'You can't do that, Sam.' If I had released a ballad I don't think you would have heard of Elvis Presley."[9]

Much has been written about Phillips's goals, but he stated that "everyone knew that I was just a struggling cat down here trying to develop new and different artists, and get some freedom in music, and tap some resources and people that weren't being tapped."[10] He didn't care about mistakes, he cared about the feel.[11]

Phillips met Presley through the mediation of his long-time collaborator at the Memphis Recording Service, Marion Keisker, who was already a well-known Memphis radio personality. On 18 July 1953, the eighteen-year old Presley dropped into the studio to record an acetate for his mother's birthday; Keisker thought she heard some talent in the young truck driver's voice, and so she turned on the tape recorder. Later, she played it for Phillips, who gradually, with Keisker's encouragement, warmed to the idea of recording Elvis.[12]

Presley, who recorded his version of Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's All Right" at Phillips's studio, became highly successful, first in Memphis, then throughout the southern United States. He auditioned for Phillips in 1954, but it was not until he sang "That's Alright (Mama)" that Phillips was impressed. For the first six months, the flip side, "Blue Moon of Kentucky", his upbeat version of a Bill Monroe bluegrass song, was slightly more popular than "That's All Right (Mama)." While still not known outside the South, Presley's singles and regional success became a drawing card for Sun Records, as singing hopefuls soon arrived from all over the region. Singers such as Sonny Burgess ("My Bucket's Got a Hole in It"), Charlie Rich, Junior Parker, and Billy Lee Riley recorded for Sun with some success, and others, such as Jerry Lee Lewis, BB King, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Carl Perkins, became stars.[13]

Phillips's pivotal role in the early days of rock and roll was exemplified by a celebrated jam session on December 4, 1956, with what became known as the Million Dollar Quartet. Jerry Lee Lewis was playing piano for a Carl Perkins recording session at Phillips's studio. When Elvis Presley walked in unexpectedly, Johnny Cash was called into the studio by Phillips, leading to an impromptu session featuring the four musicians. Phillips challenged the four to achieve gold record sales, offering a free Cadillac to the first, which Carl Perkins won. The contest is commemorated in a song by the Drive-by Truckers.

By the mid-1960s, Phillips rarely recorded. He built a satellite studio and opened radio stations, but the studio declined, and he sold Sun Records to Shelby Singleton in 1969.

WHER

Phillips launched radio station WHER on October 29, 1955. Each of the young women who auditioned for the station assumed there would only be one female announcer position, as was the case with other stations at that time. Only a few days before the first broadcast did they learn of the all-female format. It was the first all-female radio station in the United States, as almost every position at the station was held by a woman.[14]

Other business interests

Through shrewd investments, Phillips soon amassed a fortune. He was one of the first investors[15] in Holiday Inn, a motel chain that was about to expand to a nation-wide franchise; he became involved with the chain shortly after selling Elvis Presley's contract to RCA, for $35,000, which he multiplied many times over the years with Holiday Inn. He also created two subsidiary recording labels, Phillips International Records and Holiday Inn Records.

He owned the Sun Studio Café in Memphis. One location was in the Mall of Memphis. In 1950, he started a short-lived record label called Phillips.

Phillips and his family founded Big River Broadcasting Corporation, which owns and operates several radio stations in the Florence, Alabama, area, including WQLT-FM, WSBM, and WXFL.[16]

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

In 1986 Sam Phillips was part of the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and his pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. He was the first non-performer inducted. In 1987, he was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.[17] He received a Grammy Trustees Award[18] for lifetime achievement in 1991. In 1998, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame,[19] in October 2001 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame,[20] and in 2012 he was inducted into the inaugural class of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

Later years and death

Phillips died of respiratory failure at St. Francis Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee on July 30, 2003, only one day before the original Sun Studio was designated a National Historic Landmark, and just weeks before the death of his former colleague, Johnny Cash, on September 12, 2003. He is interred in the Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis.

Notable portrayals

References

  1. ↑ Bertrand, Michael T. (April 2014). "Phillips, Sam". American National Biography. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
  2. ↑ "Sam Phillips Obituary". The Times. 1 August 2003. Retrieved 6 October 2011.
  3. 1 2 "Sam Philips". Daily Telegraph. 1 August 2003. Archived from the original on 22 October 2016. Retrieved 6 October 2011.
  4. ↑ Laing, David (1 August 2003). "Obituary: Sam Philips". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 October 2011.
  5. ↑ De-Witt, Howard A. (1994). Elvis: The Sun Years: The Story of Elvis Presley in the Fifties (Rock & Roll Reference). USA: Popular Culture Ink. ISBN 1-56075-020-0.
  6. ↑ Olsen, Eric P. "Founding Father: Sam Philips and the Birth of Rock and Roll." The World and I. Washington, May 2001. p. 76.
  7. ↑ Guralnick, Peter (2015). Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-04274-1.
  8. ↑ "Sam Phillips: Inducted in 1986. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum". Rockhall.com. 2013-04-15. Retrieved 2015-09-08.
  9. ↑ Olsen, Eric P. (May 2001). "Founding Father: Sam Phillips and the Birth of Rock and Roll". The World and I. Washington: 76.
  10. ↑ Naylor, Jerry; Halliday, Steve. The Rockabilly Legends: They Called It Rockabilly Long Before They Called It Rock and Roll (DVD). 22:00. ISBN 978-1-4234-2042-2.
  11. ↑ "The Man and the Mistakes That 'Invented Rock 'n' Roll'". NPR. 23 November 2015. Archived from the original on 22 October 2016. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
  12. ↑ Guralnick, Peter (1994). Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Boston: Little, Brown. pp. 59–62.
  13. ↑ Guralnick, Peter (30 October 2015). "Elvis Presley: How Sun Records Boss Sam Phillips Discovered a Star in 1954". The Independent. Archived from the original on 22 October 2016. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
  14. ↑ "Lost and Found Sound: The Stories". Npr.org. Retrieved 2015-09-08.
  15. ↑ Martin, Douglas (August 1, 2003). "Sam Phillips, Who Discovered Elvis Presley, Dies at 80". New York Times. Retrieved 25 April 2017.
  16. ↑ "Ownership Report for Commercial Broadcast Stations (BOA-19991130ABY)". Federal Communications Commission. December 10, 1999.
  17. ↑ "Sam Phillips inductee page". Alabama Music Hall of Fame.
  18. ↑ "Grammy Trustees Award list page". The Recording Academy.
  19. ↑ "Inductee search page". Blues Foundation.
  20. ↑ "Sam Phillips inductee page". Country Music Hall of Fame.
  21. ↑ "The Once and Future King full cast & crew". IMDB.
  22. ↑ "Memphis Melody cast". Quantum Leap - TV.com.
  23. ↑ "Walk the Line full cast & crew". IMDB.
  24. ↑ "Elvis full cast & crew". IMDB.
  25. ↑ "Leonardo DiCaprio To Play Music Pioneer Sam Phillips; Launched Elvis, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Cash & Jerry Lee Lewis". deadline.com.
  26. ↑ "Sun Records Full Cast & Crew". IMDB.

Notes

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