Chapter 13: Rock and Roll Pt. 1
Sam Phillips (1923–2003) was one of the most visionary figures in American popular music. He began his career as a disc jockey in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, before relocating to Memphis, Tennessee, where he worked as an announcer and engineer at local radio stations. Motivated by a desire to document the rich musical life of the South—particularly the vibrant, often overlooked world of African American blues—Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service in 1950. His motto, “We Record Anything—Anywhere—Anytime,” reflected his democratic approach to music and his openness to a wide variety of sounds and voices.
The Memphis Recording Service quickly became one of the few studios in the segregated South that welcomed Black musicians. Artists such as B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Rosco Gordon, and Little Milton recorded there, attracted by Phillips’s willingness to treat them seriously as artists and to help bring their music to a broader audience. These early recordings were typically leased to larger, Chicago-based labels like Chess and Modern Records, who had the distribution power that Phillips lacked at the time. One of the most important of these early sessions was Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats’ “Rocket 88” (1951), a song many music historians cite as one of the first true rock and roll records.
.Recognizing the creative and commercial potential of this music, Phillips decided to stop leasing his masters and establish his own label in 1952: Sun Records At Sun Records, Phillips developed a distinctive tape-delay echo effect known as slapback, which involved feeding the recorded sound back into the mix with a slight delay—typically around 100 to 200 milliseconds—creating a quick, percussive echo. He was also deeply committed to discovering talent that could appeal across racial lines. Phillips’s long search for an artist with broad crossover potential ended in 1953, when a young truck driver named Elvis Presley paid for a few minutes of studio time to record a gift for his mother. Intrigued by Presley’s voice and style, Phillips invited him back for further sessions. In 1954, Phillips recorded Presley singing a blues tune, “That’s All Right,” paired with a country B-side, “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Backed by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black—and notably lacking a drummer—these early recordings blended rhythm and blues with country in a way that sounded entirely new. The result was what would come to be known as rockabilly, and Presley’s rise soon followed.