Sam Phillips

The music came out of a cotton field. Phillips was the youngest of eight children on a mortgaged farm outside Florence, Alabama, and he worked the rows alongside Black laborers whose singing he named, for the rest of his life, as the source of everything he later did. A blind Black man the family called Uncle Silas Payne told him stories. His father died in 1941 and he left high school to support his mother and an aunt, clerking in a grocery and then a funeral parlor. Radio took him next, announcing and engineering at WLAY in Alabama and then WREC in Memphis. On January 3, 1950, he opened the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue to record the singers no label in the South would touch.

The first records were Black records, and that was the point. Howlin' Wolf cut for him in 1951, and Phillips called Wolf his greatest discovery and losing him to Chess the loss he never got over. B. B. King recorded there. In March 1951 came Rocket 88, sung by Jackie Brenston over Ike Turner's band, its guitar buzzing through a speaker wrecked on the road and patched with newspaper. Many writers call it the first rock and roll record. Sun Records followed in 1952. Presley arrived in 1954, then Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis.

On November 21, 1955, he sold Presley's contract to RCA for 35,000 dollars, with another 5,000 dollars paid to Presley for back royalties Sun owed him. It has been mocked ever since as the worst deal in the history of the record business. Phillips's account never changed: Sun could not press, ship and promote records nationally, and the money bought him everyone who came after. The other thing quoted against him is a sentence, that if he could find a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel he could make a billion dollars. It reaches us through Marion Keisker, who worked beside him. His biographer Peter Guralnick reports Phillips saying it to her often, the two of them laughing when he did.

The fortune did not come from records. Not long after the RCA sale he put money into a young Memphis motel company called Holiday Inn, among its first investors, and that stake earned him more than Sun ever did. He sold the label to Shelby Singleton in 1969 and kept his radio stations, among them WHER, on the air in Memphis from 1955 with an all-woman staff. In 1986 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted its first class and took him in with it, the first non-performer chosen. He died of respiratory failure in Memphis on July 30, 2003, at 80. One day later the studio at 706 Union Avenue was named a National Historic Landmark.

Sam Phillips's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Memphis Recording Service company
  Opened January 3 at 706 Union Avenue, later known as Sun Studio 1950
• Rocket 88 song
  Jackie Brenston with Ike Turner's band — widely argued to be the first rock and roll record 1951
• Sun Record Company company
  Built so his artists no longer had to be licensed away to Chess and Modern 1952
• That's All Right song
  Cut with Elvis Presley on July 5 and on Memphis radio within days 1954
• WHER company
  The first all-female radio station in the United States 1955
• Phillips International Records company
  The subsidiary label that carried Charlie Rich and Bill Justis 1957

• January 5, 1923 aged 0 Born the youngest of eight on a mortgaged farm near Florence, Alabama
• 1941 aged ~18 His father dies and he leaves high school to support the family He worked in a grocery store and then a funeral parlor.
• 1945 aged ~22 Joins WREC in Memphis as announcer and sound engineer He had already worked at WLAY in Alabama, whose open format mixed white and Black artists.
• January 3, 1950 aged 26 Opens the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue
• March 1951 aged 28 Records Rocket 88 with Ike Turner's band and licenses it to Chess The guitar amplifier had been damaged in transit and was packed with newspaper. Phillips kept the sound.
• February 1952 aged 29 Founds Sun Records Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, Rufus Thomas and Junior Parker had already recorded in the room.
• July 5, 1954 aged 31 Records That's All Right with a 19-year-old Elvis Presley
• November 21, 1955 aged 32 Sells Presley's contract to RCA for 35,000 dollars A further 5,000 dollars went to Presley for royalties Sun owed him.
• July 30, 2003 aged 80 Dies of respiratory failure in Memphis at 80 One day later the Sun studio was designated a National Historic Landmark.

• Elvis Presley 1935–1977
  The King of Rock and Roll whose music and style revolutionized American popular culture. recorded first
• Johnny Cash 1932–2003
  Singer-songwriter whose work connected country, gospel, folk, prison reform, and American myth. recorded first
• B.B. King 1925–2015
  Singer and guitarist whose expressive style brought electric blues to a worldwide audience and influenced generations of musicians. recorded
• Ahmet Ertegun 1923–2006
  Co-founder of Atlantic Records rival label founder
• Berry Gordy b. 1929
  Founder of Motown, who turned an 800-dollar family loan into the Sound of Young America successor movement