In his small Memphis studio Sam Phillips recorded, and in most cases launched the careers of, B. B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, James Cotton, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. This, done over the course of just seven years, is a track record no one has matched. How did he do it? Part of the answer can be extracted from Colin Escott’s and Martin Hawkins’ book, Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll.
Phillips first entered the music business working for a local radio station. Before that he’d held jobs at a grocery store and a funeral parlor. He had no musical education, nor could he play an instrument; but he loved music, and “in radio I saw a medium where I could do something with the music I loved.”
After a decade in radio, where he acquired the engineering expertise needed to record music, he opened his own studio, the Memphis Recording Service, in 1950. This was a risky move:
Memphis may have been associated with the blues in much the same romantic way that New Orleans was associated with jazz, but it was tantamount to lunacy to suggest that a record label with national aspirations should base itself there.
What made Phillips think this could be a success? He had two key abilities:
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