The sound helped Phillips in 1951 produce “Rocket 88,” considered the first rock ‘n’ roll single, which hit number 1 on Billboard’s rhythm and blues chart and stayed there for weeks. At the studio, Phillips put wadded paper in the speaker, creating a distorted sound he found appealing. As the group made its way to Memphis, someone dropped the guitar amplifier cracking the speaker cone. King urged him to call nineteen-year-old Ike Turner, a bandleader in nearby Clarksdale, Mississippi. I said, ‘I’ve just got to open me a little recording studio, where I can at least experiment with this overlooked humanity.’”Īfter Phillips’s first few unsuccessful attempts to get black music heard by the world, B. Phillips said, “My conviction was that the world was missing out on not having heard what I had heard as a child. After marrying radio personality Becky Burns, the couple moved a few times until Phillips could no longer resist the pull of Memphis. Photo by Delevante Creative, courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and MuseumĪ couple years later, Phillips began his radio career spinning gospel records. Guralnick writes, “For a boy who had never even been as far as Birmingham, Beale Street and the Mississippi River were nothing less than the spelling-out of his dreams and his destiny.” Visiting Memphis had a profound effect on Phillips. He was immediately enamored by Beale Street, home to an energetic and diverse music scene where yet-to-be blues and jazz legends like Louis Armstrong and B. In 1939, when Phillips was sixteen, he stopped in Memphis on a road trip with his brother. Soulful gospel music reverberated from the local black church. White and black sharecroppers sang a cappella alongside him. He listened to radio broadcasts from the Grand Ole Opry. Phillips grew up near the Muscle Shoals region of north Alabama, where, as a small child, he farmed fields with his family. And especially, at that time, the black man’s spirit and his soul.” “I was looking for a higher ground, for what I knew existed in the soul of mankind. “I didn’t open the studio to record funerals and weddings and school day revues,” said Phillips. To make ends meet, Phillips used portable equipment to record whatever a paying customer wanted as a keepsake. With no record company, no deals lined up, and no outlets once records were made, it was slow going. Phillips opened his Memphis Recording Studio in 1950 with the goal of recording blues music made by black artists. He just hoped he would still be in business when that day finally arrived.” Guralnick is the author of Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll and cocurator of “Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll: The Cosmic Genius of Sam Phillips” on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. “ didn’t believe in luck necessarily, but the moon had to be in the right place, the wind had to be blowing in the right direction. Before Presley’s arrival, according to Peter Guralnick, the musical stage was set for something big to happen.
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