Can’t seem to find a link to it, but I just saw it on my local news. Sam Phillips, the father of rock and roll, founder of legendary Sun Records, inductee into both the Rock and Roll and Country Halls of Fame, and discoverer of artists like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash, died in a hospital in Memphis tonight. He was 80.
Goodbye, Sam. You were a real nutjob, but the world will be feeling your influence for decades and decades to come.
That was one mighty beard, too.
Yeah. Anybody get the feeling that Rick Rubin has pictures of Sam Phillips, Alan Moore, and Rasputin up in his house as cosmetic inspiration?
Oh NO! No No No… the lights really have gone out in Memphis…(I just now heard about the storm via the SD). I don’t know what to say. I’ve met Sam several times in my previous life in the blues world, and loved his vibrant red-headed self to pieces. Am trying to compose myself…
It’s an odd occurence that a largely ignored, powerful storm would be the preface to Sam Phillip’s spin off the mortal coil, but rather appropriate. 'Cause Sam saw the great power of Black blues music , recorded it at Sun records in the early 50’s, then rockabilly: Elvis, Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash—the fusion of hillbilly and rhythm and blues that became Rock-and- Roll; the hip shake that changed the world. Sam Phillips engineered the sound of rockabilly. Sun was the Holy Grail of recording studios to every innovative Southern musician at the time.
Sam was born in Florence, Alabama, 1923 (The same area as WC Handy, Father of the Blues, and, much later, the Muscle Shoals sound of many 70’s Southern Rock artists—what the hell is in That water?) He absorbed the sounds of Black gospel and blues, and became a DJ for local radio stations. He learned radio engineering, and started the memphis Recording Service in order to record the black southern blues he loved. He was the first to record BB King and Howling Wolf, among many other blues artists. He also recorded “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston, which is (arguably) the first Rock&Roll hit.
In 1952, MRS became the Sun Record Company, still primarily recording mostly black artists. Phillips began to seek out white musicians who could get with the best groove going, with an astute eye to a wider audience.He hit gold with Elvis Presley, first, well, best, recorded in 1954, with “That’s All Right Mama”/"Blue Moon of Kentucky’. The rest is history. Presley recorded several more songs for Sun, and then headed up to the Big Time labels. Phillips was no fool, though-he’d seen plenty of artists head to greener pastures after his initial recordings. Elvis’ contract was sold at an unprecedented sum, and that enabled Phillips to continue to record the voices we now revere; Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich etc.
Personally, I knew Sam Phillips as a boyish, enthusiastic gentleman in his 70’s, who still loved the hell out of music that moved ya. I’ve fished out the photo taken 6 years ago, with me awestruck, and he smiling, big Memphis sunglasses, arm in arm. Treasuring that!
Sam was a great force of nature, who absolutely loved what he heard as beautiful, gave it a chance, and truly did make the world a better place for it.
Memphis lost a lot of great old trees in the storm last week; Sam Phillips quite among them.
What a wonderful summation elelle, thank you! Sam Phillips truly was a pioneer. That said, if I may nitpick I am loathe to class Elvis as simply a white artist playing black music. He was a unique talent who, arguably (and with Sam’s help) created an entirely new genre of music. A mix of blues, rockabilly (a very white form of music) and pentacostilist aggravation that we now know as rock & roll. If you listen to Presley’s early Sun recording sessions (perhaps the purest rock ever recorded) you can see that there simply wasn’t anything comparable, black or white, at the time. Sam harnessed a unique talent at the right time, a talent that wasn’t black or white but that simply was.
Sam Phillips, what a bloody loss 
The geography of Sam Phillips and the Memphis/Muscle Shoals recording centers has always interested me. Everyone always harps on Elvis’s and Carl Perkins’s black music influences, and they’re certinly important, but just as important was the white hillbilly music that comprised the other half of it.
What better place to capture the black music than Memphis, a couple hours north of the traditional “delta” of the Mississippi/Yazoo valleys? It was always a place where black workers would go to blow off some steam, and the music followed them there.
What better place, also, to capture white hillbilly sounds than Muscle Shoals, a couple hours from Sand Mountain in Alabama, Nashville, and the Tennessee hill country that spawned the likes of Roy Acuff and the Carter Family?
What better region for those traditions to meet and mix and form into something new and powerful than the region where Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee all meet?
Course, I can’t prove the geographical causation, but it’s a feeling.
And elelle, I simply must meet you some time. I want to pick your brain about all this Southern music I love.
A fitting eulogy for Sam. Thanks.
I’m at work right now, about 100 yards from Sun Studio. I’m heading out for the night, but I’ll have to swing by there and see what they’re doing. And then I’ll go drink a toast to Sam and play Elvis on the jukebox.
God, what a week in Memphis.
Almost two hours later, and I’m home.
Sun Studio was shut down for the night and I saw nothing unusual there. I’m sure that tomorrow they’ll have a wreath or some other tribute on display.
I did go into one of my favorite late-night hangouts, a fairly shady bar that’s been there since 1943. When I entered, Jerry Lee’s version of “Folsom Prison Blues” was playing on the jukebox. I sat at the bar and talked to an old-timer (in his mid-60s at least) who told me a bunch of Elvis stories, half of which are probably untrue and the rest wildly exaggerated. But that’s OK; we talked about Sam, and about rock and roll in general, and on the jukebox it was all Sun, all the time. A good night to remember the wild man at Sun Records (originally the Memphis Recording Service–you can get shirts with that logo, which I find far cooler than the Sun shirts).
What a loss - and I know he was honored over the years, but why wasn’t Sam Phillips regarded as a national treasure? This guy did more for American Music than anybody in the 20th century besides, oh, maybe Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, George Gerschwin, John Hammond and a handful of others, yet he doesn’t seem to be generally recognized as on the same level. Perhaps because he didn’t write the music - but he made the music possible, and that has to count for something.
Great summary, elelle - I will raise my glass high for Sam the Man tonight. Bless him.
Well, I’d argue that second to Sam Phillips (maybe even ahead of him) in terms of influence on American music were John and Ruby and Alan Lomax.
Alan died just last year, by the way, with barely a peep from the media.
The most fitting tribute to Mr. Phillips would be to get Sun Records going again as something other than a tourist attraction–make it a real label again and adhere to his old credo of “recording anything, any time, any where.” There is still a Sam Phillips recording studio on the same block as the old Sun buliding, and there is still lots and lots of great music going unrecorded both here and in the rest of the world. Wouldn’t it be great if some visionary with captial took up the cause?
Sheffield, Alabama (across the river from Florence) resident chiming in. Phillips has a mixed reputation around here. For every person that worships him for his contributions to American music, there is someone he has rubbed the wrong way as well. He was known for foul-mouthed drunken ramblings during appearances at public events like the Alabama Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony and when invited to speak at local concerts and forums. Some viewed it as him being the “character” he was, but others viewed it as obnoxious behavior.
But he was still a musical legend, a hell of a clever businessman and still owned five radio stations, three of them locally that are very popular.
BTW, off topic but it was mentioned by elelle. The Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, which is about a two minute drive from where I live, is up for sale by the current owners Maalaco Records, a Misssissippi-based blues record label. They already have a home studio in MS, and are seeking to cut overhead because of the current state of the record business. This is not the more famous original studio at 3614 Jackson Highway (which has been undergoing restoration after years of neglect and being used for other things like a second hand washing machine sales and repair business), but the larger studio the MS Sound gang moved into in 1978. But artists like Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, Etta James, Steve Winwood, and Chris Whitley have recorded there as well.
As to what’s in the water here. I don’t know, but considering the kind of music coming out of here now, I wish they’d put it back in.
I, too, am sorry to hear about Sam’s passing.
As far as Elvis being a white man who sounded black…
…that’s really not very fair to Elvis. Elvis wasn’t just singing r&b, he created a brand new sound entirely.
Listen to Mama Thornton’s version of “Hound Dog” and Elvis’s version back-to-back. It’s the same song, but completely different music.
Same thing with Arthur Crudup’s version of “That’s All Right, Mama” and Elvis’s version: same song, vastly different music.
Nobody can honestly label Elvis’s versions of “Money Honey,” “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “Mean Woman Blues,” etc. as rhythm and blues any more than they can honestly label Elvis’s version of “Blue Moon of Kentucky” as bluegrass or Elvis’s versions of “Trying to Get to You” or “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You” as country music.
Elvis’s sound was brand new. Black influenced? Absolutely. Black music? Absolutely not.
Yaaaarrggghhh, so here’s Sam’s NY Times obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/obituaries/31PHIL.html. What a disappointing piece of shit! I assumed Jon Pareles would do it; he must be on vacation. Sam really deserved more.
And, widdershins;
" He was known for foul-mouthed drunken ramblings during appearances at public events like the Alabama Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony and when invited to speak at local concerts and forums. Some viewed it as him being the “character” he was, but others viewed it as obnoxious behavior."
Well, I’m gonna judge him as I met him, and I got along fine; his character was muy delightful to my mind. He was always kind to me. Perhaps a life spent in the music biz has broadened my parameters of glee and acceptance.
Anyhoo, still miffed about the shoddy obit.:mad:
On preview, I can’t make the link work. I C/P’ed it from an e’mail a Memphis friend sent, but now went to NYtimes.com and tried pasting it from there, still no go. Hope y’all can get to it, to see how damn shoddy it is. This must be Fuck Memphis Week.
Since I saw the 6 O’clock news, I’ve been going through boxes of 45 RPM records. I’ve got them stored pretty much in order of my record buying life. The box containing the oldest records, the very first ones I bought, is something to see. Fully 30% of all the records in that box have the yellow SUN label on them.
I had thought to write some sort of historical eulogy, but those posting before me have covered the subject very well.
“You wiggle and you shake
Like a big rattlesnake
You do the ooby-dooby
'Till you think your heart will break…”
Rock on, Sam Phillips, and thanks for being there.
The NY Times seem to have realized how lame their original obit was and ran a longer one today. It’s understandable, really, that the first story was pretty slim; word came out on the wire that he’d died at about 9:30 p.m., as I recall, which didn’t leave much time to get a story into final edition.
Sam Phillips, Who Discovered Elvis Presley, Dies at 80
They also seem to have gotten a reporter here, or maybe picked up a stringer, and got a location piece up as well:
Memphis Shaken as Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart Is Stilled
Or you could go to the source and check the piece in the Memphis paper (full disclosure: that’s my employer), which has a good, rounded package including a pretty cool slideshow:
Phillips praised from all corners for music vision
I drove by Sun after work again tonight; there’s a small wreath on the door but that’s the only memorial I could see.
If I weren’t trying to save battery power on my laptop (being still in the dark due to the storm), I’d be cranking up Elvis’s Sun recording of “Blue Moon” and wailing.