SAM PHILLIPS The Man who Invented Rock & Roll (PART 1)

all right 16 goes along all right 16 closes low well a long black train here my train train come on sam phillips was born in 1923 in a small agricultural community in the Muscle Shoals area of the Tennessee River my dad his first job all to the farm was flagging he wanted to be a part of nature and the only consolation that he felt about being down here was this Tennessee River Sam was particularly close to his deaf-mute Aunt Emma to communicate with her he learned how to sign but the cruelty of her exclusion from the world of sound was never lost on him I was in love with Sam and in love with Radio WSM in Nashville hitting our country music from the Grand Ole Opry and America's greatest spoken at same time neighbors listen for this song radio took me away it took my mind and it traveled another source of inspiration came from Silas pain a black sharecropper who lived with the Phillips family after he had lost his sight he didn't try to teach me Sunday school he just taught me how to build and how to be happy and no matter what came along even when you're feeling bad you're feeling you that church has been there longer than I'm old to hear the sounds that came out that little church so small so I stayed on that corner many many Sunday's listening to what was I couldn't pass it by that inspired me so that is nothing that moves solely like music Sam was on his way to a religious revival in Dallas with some high school friends when he first saw Beale Street in Memphis home of the blues well I heard about Beale Street on going down Beale Street at five o'clock in the morning Broadway never never looked that busy we had somebody on practically every corner strumming to get tall are playing a large can with a broomstick in the strings I had the perception of kind of like being in a religious meeting that you really are big in what that preacher is laying down you know I had that feeling when I was on Beale Street this sounds like to me that this is something that the nation in the world possibly should hear yes the band is not by the mid-1940s Philips had a family and a radio career when an offer came for a job in the city he'd always dreamt about Memphis it is situated on a bluff that is never flooded and it's early growth was due largely to its being a river port for shipping cotton Memphis represented something wonderful Memphis was the world doing Sam got the kind of radio job he had always hoped for at Station wrec housed in the city's most luxurious hotel his tasks included announcing engineering and supervising the nightly big-band broadcast from the rooftop ballroom hello everybody from the famous driveway overlooking Old Man River Hyatt our four healthy body in downtown Memphis Tennessee and do the facilities the W are busy Columbia I was fascinated by doing what I was doing with big bands but I had heard the innate rhythms of Beale Street I mean two blues the blues the blues the blues and sometimes the blues is so good it's hard to pick out what you like my best of the same song I just kept open me a little studio I know I can build it with my own damn hands I don't have any money but I can bill them on hands and I can get by on less than anybody with my equipment cuz I can make it do more I've gotta have it Phillips found an empty storefront in a jumble of auto shops it was located at 706 Union Avenue in January of 1950 the Memphis recording service opened for business and when the neon lights went on and the doors were opened it was just such a special place for the next year and a half Sam split 20-hour days between the radio station and his new studio his calling card read we record anything anywhere anytime Riley King was a singing disc jockey on Memphis WDIA the first all-black radio station in the country Sam recorded him under his radio name BB King and licensed the tracks to the West Coast rpm label but that was really something to see this guy was pitchy with the name BB King's staple on telegram posters and things all over this episode he said well man his guy in Memphis has a studio where I record and showing up me and Monday's Sam Phillips called he wonder how soon could we come up I told him anytime right now Ike and his band got their idea for a song from a game they played on their drive up from Mississippi we would bet on which car we see the most you know like maybe you pick forward either somebody the car say hey well I will bet what we will see the list of how much that automobile Wow is that the rocket 88 right again mr. moon or the going straight in please of mine clean a long time I said we got a tune called rocket 88 anything with rocket in it mean it such that's automatically moving you ever divert him to laughing you heard the noise they make but let me riddle Zeus my new rocket 88 yes it's great just one way everybody likes my rocket a little ride in style Oh they told me about having problems coming up from Clarksdale we sit the amplifier the amplifier fell out of out of the truck that's what musta to been there Sam seized on the distorted tone of the broken amplifier the kind of inspired accident that he valued both in music and in life listen to the fun that's in that thing I mean is everything going for that record that would appeal to younger people and boy was that what I was looking for with its unique combination of sound feel and subject matter rocket 88 is widely regarded as the first rock and roll record many more hits were to follow but not before Sam Phillips would be forced by business pressures to do something he had sworn he would never do start his own record label welcome to the audition capital of the world before and it's open 19:51 Memphis's new recording studio it's only studio was one of the few places in the south dedicated to the recording of Negro talent I never had out dish working walking trying to control gold hook you're on the phone which visitors just chalk is whatever necessary well I wanted to get as much of an intimate sound as I could get as much of a raw sound as I could get I always felt like I had to leave enough liveness in a studio to where it sounded real re-al once his own record had hit Ike Turner became Philips unofficial talent scout scouring the Mississippi Delta for acts and I would go to the pool hall and edge Tim was there and his Sanger's around and they would tell me who they knew and then I would go to the church Ike Turner helped lead Sam to a blues singer with an inscrutable manner and a ferocious Talent the 41 year old had never been recorded before born Chester Arthur Burnett from his youth he had gone by the name of Howlin wolf and you see me running biryani hell I won't even let anybody but Ellen wolf that time maybe have a half a pint of wine and that was about it I knew if I didn't let him have it's gonna have it anyway I had fine a wine with the wolf as big as he was I didn't really think that was much more than giving a baby a half a teaspoon of castor you now saw him sit down in that chair and then that look came over his face Mike I'm getting ready and I said to myself lordy I was in France by the world's most distinctive focus almost every minute Sam wasn't at his radio job he spent in the studio the procession of talent included one-man band Joe Hill Lewis harmonica virtuoso Walter Horton and a 17 year old amateur contest winner named Roscoe Gordon said you know he calling the phrases nobody won't play you say and I don't know what it is is not the bridge it's not pop it's not rock so we're gonna call it rock playing rhythm that's what he called it right people he own his job you know he was recording and you know black people and they do get a recording studio and they would say well Sam you smell located nice I guess you hadn't been you know recording any of those and that was like real scary to me that kind of blatant racism and the pressure of holding down two jobs took its toll you know he just kept his mind full all the time and it was hard for him to sleep he said he couldn't turn his mind off at night and when he got so much that I couldn't handle at all and I did have really a nervous breakdown I'm just what it was in middle 51 it was a second sheer exhaustion Phillips was hospitalized for several weeks receiving eight electroshock treatments but when it came that I had to give up that job that worked all alive to get or closed down the move huh Memphis recording service I had to make a choice the choice was clear Sam threw himself into his work at the Memphis recording service his only helper was fellow wrec announcer marion keisker in those days the Memphis recording service was open to the public for anyone to come in and make a record of any kind at $3 one side four dollars two sides she sound like an old maid schoolteacher very firm and very very businesslike yes she was madly in love with him for years independent record labels had stolen each other's acts and it was not unheard of for an artist to record the same song for two different companies as a studio owner without his own label Phillips sold most of his recordings to rpm records but in 1951 he switched allegiance to the chest label but I tell you why I record for two different labels I didn't know any better the only thing I know what they pay me to do it so it that's all the money I received already I'm only going to get the front money so anyway sir so I record and praying about it didn't make no difference and as soon as we would cut its own four little chests as soon as he leave we would be her brother would come in and we would give him another $25 we cut the same song and put out you know we did care to think about contracts in those days when Rosco Gordon's booted became a hit for both labels a lawsuit ensued in the aftermath of the dispute Helen Wolfe moved to Chicago and Chess Records Roscoe Gordon went to rpm and Sam Phillips started his own label I think he was looking for the person that nobody heard looking with the person that nobody could hear looking for the for the poor people who didn't have an opportunity to be heard I mean he was looking for those kind of people and I think he really thought in his vision that they could make a difference he never recorded for son anyone who had ever recorded on any other label and the secret of it was to get the people so relaxed and so spontaneous that they would do what they really felt we'd get in there maybe 10 11 o'clock during the day sometimes we stay in there basically all night for five o'clock anymore he coin a phrase do not try to make a hit record so you cannot make a hit record but you can make a good record he gets things out of you that you don't know you've got that's the real deal the thing that they would sing on the front porch of their of their house was captured on Sun and that's the producers job is to get that out of them and Sam is great at for all of Sam's confidence Sun Records had a rocky start for a year and a half he struggled without a hit on his own label then he found just what he was looking for it was all a blackstable and I I found out about it and I went but he hadn't had a big record until I did back headman oh you did not develop it Sam conceived a song as the male answer to Big Mama Thornton's current hit hound dog and that started the ball the road sound teller the Sun reached number three on the rhythm and blues charts and led to a lawsuit for borrowing too heavily from its source but it marked a beginning for son and for Thomas a personality on WDIA known as the mother station of the Negroes in an era of such strict social division that even the airwaves were segregated WDIA was the voice of the black community during the daylight hours but when it's signed off the Year at night a different voice took over oh yes look at Peter so full of such bringing the hottest cotton-picking painted cuts a red hot glue coming through whbq and hotel Jessica onna magazine for active rock then oh yes sir good people how to sign the gonna fill ups nightly radio show unified Memphis black and white in a way that no formal institution could although unrelated to Sam Phillips Dewey was a kindred soul he and our brothers in the same belief of what music to do with four and two people that Telep felt sent you down at from real hot blue baby I'm flat food with you have no board talking around Roscoe garden WD I signed off it's sundown so there did the blacks go to listen to their music but they were playing black music for black people and the white radio stations were playing white music for white people and do he called his audience good people he would say all good people he was playing good music for good people and it got across he was not a trained radio announcer couldn't read a commercial he had ad-lib all of his spots he was really rough on the control boards they gave him his own control room because he would destroy control with his side of six months so they'd have to rebuild it well when the trisko hotel right here in this hotel music ah picker I just was doing super funny cheers buddy calls him calls have amenities wasn't that long it's not this one a where the hell is it naughty Lord I'll tear right now friends I'm as nervous as a kata can frog on a freeway with his hopper busted I'm in bad shape I mean we way uptown is about as far as you can get I mean at a flat these were good studios really good this is where do we work they said not too bad oh yeah by him here it is right here he would sit right here I had a console table here the sure was a good program should have seen it's Friday night tomorrow Katie and Beth day that's a good CEO sous-chef set apart when he got off the air there was something about GUI they kind of left in a little bit because of the actual feeling of the spirituality that he put into his poker Dewey's overwhelming success across all barriers of race and class signaled to Sam Phillips that the vision he had nurtured from childhood was at last within reach no less that's it yeah that's it Elvis at telephone $50 from real hot in 1953 the Supreme Court decision declaring school segregation illegal was still a year away and Memphis was almost two decades away from anything approaching integration but Sun Records made its own political statement by crossing not only racial lines but social barriers as well there is Jill Johnny Bragg was serving a 99-year sentence on six counts of rape he had been convicted 10 years earlier at the age of 17 and had a quote they called the prison house we was number one while we were here I think it's me this one after box on top all may be fighting alone you know they'll no doubt look below young boy hand cream looking at the rain and I started to say if somebody said who the hell that's a good song that's a good song and it's really like a like that you know and okay and so that's how walking in rain was born just walking in the rain getting soaking wet torturing my heart by trying to forget I called myself saying I'm not gonna say I was saying I tried to say but he about tomahawks sweet more gloss was something like that because you got to vote you can sang your way out here and yeah I know he's in a anyway saying we out here and they always Phillips persuaded Tennessee Governor Frank Clement and warden James Edwards to allow five long-term prisoners to record with him the idea of doing this tied in so intellectually with four I was trying to do and for something like this to come along can you imagine how I must have thought I was dreaming the initial recording session was set for June 1st 1953 at Sam's expense the group was driven under armed guard to the Sun studio in Memphis as soon as I heard them saying then the devastation came to me Wow I can't miss getting something extraordinary here sound filled with a fine man he wanted everything to be perfect and with you nothing wrong with that his erect and his determination to let people know that there's always hope oh he had hope always had hope to you now you know why I've never know when things have change somehow Oh Oh and even I used to say you know being in Syria people be hardly clapping here and somebody that will forget so much in 1967 Johnny Bragg was the last of the prisoners to get out for good his brief moment in the spotlight was enough to ensure him a modest career people with on our side God we don't like that and the people do I love perfect imperfection and I really do and that's not just some cute saying that's a fast I had a phone ring right in the middle of the best cut about jr. fossil record guess what it's on the market you think I was gonna throw that cutaway for them good ones it didn't have a telephone ringing in the middle of it no business never got so good that Sam could give up his custom recording service where people paid to hear the sound of their own voice one such individual was a recent high school graduate who's I had most likely been caught by a newspaper article about the prison Ayers he showed up in the summer of 1953 claiming he wanted to make a record for his mother's birthday you I know sweetheart basically our beautiful voice like too beautiful when my me and my opinion as to the course that I wanted to take with any white person Sam had told Marion many times that the only way to get the music to a broader audience was to find a white boy with a Negro sound and more important Negro feel I asked him for his address and telephone number and Brackett got in touch with him and I realize it Elvis Presley good ballad singer say even Elvis stopped by the Sun studio frequently over the next six months and even recorded a second acetate in January but it would be nearly a year before Sam called him back and then not before he had met a soft-spoken guitarist named Scotty Moore we were sitting here in this restaurant drinking coffee Marion Secretary was having coffee with us one day and was to chatting around this and she asked Samson well what about the kid was any about a year ago that recorded yesterday for his mother's birthday songwriter would send in a dub and we talked about who do we have to do this and I would always say how about the boy with the sideburns oh well my actual feeling about Elvis was from the beginning that it wasn't going to be easy to do what we wanted to do and yet the all of the ingredients were there at Sam's Direction Scotty arranged an informal studio audition for the following night with his bassist Bill Black they spent much of the evening going through snatches of various songs Sam's in his - you're putting on a new tape or taking them off and take the senior something and the door was open go started and just banging on his guitar singing that's all right mama and it's just neat enough five guitar just letting off steam nervous energy that's all right mama that's all right that's all right mama all right anyway well belief in something that's somewhat out of the ordinary there is just no better place to explore than that and that's what I had right in the palm of my hand I came home and he met he announced to his family that he had just caught a hit record Julie Phillips had played it tonight before on his show and he played it several times and everybody in town was talking about it was it was just a instant smash in Memphis I said you mean Elvis's got a record out he said yeah I said Sam brought it up last night I played it seven times man he's got a smash we were after a black man who would translate to the white audience and Sam had a bigger vision he was looking for a white man and of course that's what Elvis did he made them the gift of black music that was the time and that was the place I know that Elvis could not have walked into any other recording studio in the United States and have had that experience it stands to me as absolutely the point at which our society was ready to change LF it has a pop song man to the back keep shining by Elvis Presley had a turntable hit in Memphis with that's alright mama but Sam Phillips needed a second side before he could put out an actual record Sam worked with Elvis for several nights before they came up with an unorthodox approach to a bluegrass classic the people that love Blue Moon of Kentucky by Bill Monroe they were so shocked they had to listen to see what brutality is taking place he was recording this idea which was like a country song on one side physically like the record the country song on one side a re big jump song or race music which is what it was on the other side we were a sparkling new drone that North will clean in Memphis Tennessee and will version here we're upstairs what used to be a fur department in a hat Department they took in furs and cleaned them and the hats what that was I was doing that when I came out of Navy I don't know what they did you the hat department was right over in that in that counter back to here and we rehearse right out here sin is a bill that off work the nails will come over and it would practice it was working up our big 15-minute show the trio made its official debut at Memphis Overton Park shell supporting Louisiana Hayride star Slim Whitman it had not been a month since they recorded that's alright mama and host Bill Dowd had no idea what he doing he might have fainted when went on stage first we do head to West I did the people there were there to see Slim Whitman Elvis was where I would say mortified that could be rejection he would raise up on his balls of his feet and back then he had to hit big britches legs and all the men's pants his legs would start wiggling like that leaves just actually keep in time what he was doing and that's what got the girls started hollering Lucy thought he was doing a whole bunch of stuff it's like if everybody in the audience had had a camera and taken a picture at the same time it would have been like he was posing for all of them that's how control and together and cool it was and I was out there and I was listening and all of a sudden I was conscious that I could hear somebody just really shrieking shrieking and suddenly I became conscious it was me something was going to change the culture and it was Elvis that change of color not the Beatles or anything else it was Elvis that brought this gift it forced the listener to make a choice simply to accept it or reject it if nothing else what followed that choice is freedom because of course that's what follows a choice Elvis continued to cut songs at Sun through mid 1955 and all just five singles were released in a little over a year they remain the foundation not just for Elvis Presley's reputation but for the birth of rock and roll we're right well country jokes wouldn't thought it was so was R&B stuff and then Lord beat jocks who thought it was just the opposite I was country and we've never sounded black to me though they talked about him troubling they treated him Turk you know but he stuck to what he felt now I know a lot of people say he stole right I don't bother and all honest I really don't buy that I think this music thing belongs to whoever feels it nobody could act like he and didn't enjoy what he was doing there were certain guardians of the culture kenta New York and groups to persuade Billboard not to put Elvis Presley's music in the charts because uh this was the kind of new music best described by a Southern expletive that we don't use some polite company even with Elvis Presley on his roster Phillips face the hard realities of running an independent record company the discrepancy between accounts payable and accounts receivable only grew Phillips made a decision for Sun Records to survive as an independent operation you would have to focus on the flood of young raw white talent that was now flocking to his door Sam discarded all the black well nobody black and I don't think the world in there was black and he just discarded all of us no more you can't blame Sam for that I mean he's a white border came along but war sounds like and and I'd like a black guy they wanted what black artists were doing they wanted to see the wigglin and the trembling and shaking and whatever but you didn't have another white eyes that had nerve enough to do that so Elvis did Sam Phillips success with Elvis served as a magnet for aspiring hillbilly singers like the black artist for them almost everyone had grown up picking cotton and attending a Pentecostal church among the first to arrive at Sons doorstep was a 22 year old one-time sharecropper from Jackson Tennessee there's a 1954 Coupe DeVille cattle a man got out dressed just like the car I thought to myself that's either that Presley boy oh that's a man and on display I said you mrs. Phillips she said yes I said my name's Carl Perkins s my brothers sitting there in the car and we come round pit bull you see that time us mister please just one so we I guess I said it just that hurt we better be good soon to follow was a 23 year old Air Force veteran who wanted to make a gospel record we'll the Bible tells us about a man who ruled Babylon and all its land around the city he built a wall and declared it baffle and would never fall and Johnny Cash I heard a type of depth in his gospel music that was differently different proach Elvis was the beacon that brought us all there but we were out there just waiting for our chance an opportunity to do it the way we felt it there was something there doing sound let us stay I said why don't you go without talent that you have and providing gospel music and see if you can't be a little bit of a center for day attitude and let's see what port was sound like in both Perkins and cash Phillips saw something they didn't see in themselves but he couldn't develop it just yet Elvis was still his number one concern and he had a new business venture this is wher radio America's first all-girl radio station Memphis Tennessee we went on the air in 1955 the nation's first all-girls station you saw about a crazy man you're looking at 100 men ffice Sam had dreams of a radio station from the very earliest time I slogan was wher 1,000 beautiful watts Sam's original idea had been to start a 24-hour all Negro station when the FCC turned down his application he came up with wher it gave women a chance to be in radio and have broadcasting careers probably women that never would have gotten started I wanted women on the air because I had heard Becky and she was so on you good I knew that other people could be equally that good given the opportunity with the complete weather forecast for Memphis on vicinity right after this by this time promoter extraordinaire Colonel Tom Parker had taken over the management of Elvis Presley he spread the rumor that Presley's son contract was for sale and even entered into negotiations without so much as a go-ahead from Sam Phillips I said Tom why are you putting out these tales well I don't know but are you interested in selling him I said enough money might be it's okay with Elvis Presley Phillips named a sum that he thought RCA would never pay $35,000 that was 10,000 more than Columbia had paid for pop star Frankie Lane just a few years before to everyone's surprise RCA agreed Elvis's last single was his pinnacle at Sun a cover of little junior Parker's Mystery Train 16 e coli's loan brain all right sixteen coaches long no black train sam phillips is not about to look back with this new capital he could build his label and a burgeoning radio empire he bought stock in holiday in an investment that would one day make him a rich man phillips could also promote the young artists on whom he'd bet his future I don't think Sam Phillips has any regrets of anything heck he could sit around and go man I sold Elvis's contract for $35 hey what was wrong with the weather was wrong with me smart too my baby I always was a star but Sam was the superstar because he discovered all in the stars and let him round by the night might be there any member the winner and the story of Sam Phillips continues tomorrow at the same time here on the Biography Channel and seeing them native doing an otter looking skill I said this alright you go right ahead I wanna bang you stomp till I roll over d50

Channel: Memphis Vic

Views: 629,347

Keywords: rocknroll, samphillips, sunrecords, sunstudio, memphisrecordingservice, memphis, tennessee, johnnycash, carlperkins, jerryleelewis, royorbison, elvispresley, a&e, biographychannel, Rock And Roll (Musical Genre), marionkeisker, georgeklein, deweyphillips

Id: tYcadYXsTyM

Length: 44min 23sec (2663 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2013