Sam Phillips, the Sun king
The first man to record Elvis talks about rock, racism and all-girl radio.
By Alex Halberstadt
Oct. 29, 2001 | Hiding from the heat at an East Memphis bar, I mention to a friend that I've come to town to interview Sam Phillips. A bearded middle-aged white man at the adjacent stool turns towards us slowly, and in a sarcastic voice says: "How original."
It seems as though everyone in Memphis knows the story of Phillips, which, like the man himself, has become a classic of 20th century American pop culture. In 1954, in a one-room storefront studio called the Memphis Recording Service, home of a fledgling label called Sun, Phillips recorded a teenaged truck driver named Elvis Presley performing an old Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup song, "That's Alright Mama." The record had a feel somewhere between rhythm and country, recognizable as neither black nor white. Several days later, when deejay Dewey Phillips (no relation) played a test pressing of it on his popular "Red Hot and Blue" broadcast on station WHBQ from the Hotel Chisca, the response was instantaneous. He played the record 7 times or 12 times or 4 times in a row, depending on who's telling the story. It didn't matter -- in two years Presley would became the best-known singer in the world. In the half-decade that followed, Phillips launched the careers of some of the greatest performers of American music: Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Charlie Rich and numerous others, cementing his reputation as the finest record man of his time.
But Phillips' contribution is far broader than the legend suggests. Had he never recorded a white man, Phillips would be remembered today as one of the great pioneering producers for his work with black artists such as Howling Wolf, Bobby "Blue" Bland, B.B. King, and Rufus Thomas. And his unorthodox vision of American society didn't stop with race -- in 1955 he founded WHER, an "all girl" radio station ("One thousand beautiful watts!") that almost single-handedly opened the field of radio to women.
Today, Phillips lives on a nondescript residential street, and the fleet of Cadillacs and Lincolns in front of his house provides the only clue to the identity of the resident. I'm shown inside by Sally Wilbourn, who has been with Phillips since she began working as a receptionist at Sun almost 50 years ago. The man who descends a spiral staircase to greet me looks to be about 55 (he's 78), with reddish hair and beard, dressed in a white T-shirt, tight jeans and a broad black belt studded with chrome rivets. He takes off a heavy pair of purple and gold aviators -- "these are my Elvis glasses" -- and fixes me with the intense pale blue eyes that Sun Records alumnus Jim Dickinson once described as "swirling pools of madness." As we talk, Phillips speaks slowly and at length, with an evangelical flair that friends attribute to an early job at a funeral home.
Afterwards, I ask him to sign an Elvis postcard. He obliges, and also presents me with an issue of Life magazine titled "The 100 Most Important Events & People of the Past 1,000 Years." Inside, at No. 99, sandwiched between the invention of the calendar and the Rosetta Stone, is the discovery of Elvis. Phillips smiles with a mix of irony and genuine pride. "We made it, " he says.
Have you always wanted to be involved in music?
When I was growing up, I wanted to be a criminal defense lawyer, because I saw so many people, especially black people, railroaded. When I was a child I'd go down to the courthouse in Florence, Ala.; they'd have spring and fall Circuit Court. I'd sit on those benches because I'd love to hear the attorneys. To me, they were kind of evangelical in their approach. A lot of times it didn't matter what the facts were -- all you had to do was sway the jury. There was a lawyer in the white cases, if the [defendants] had any property or any cattle or chickens or pigs. The blacks were usually not represented by anyone. I saw both blacks and whites get sentences because they didn't have the money to be represented like they were supposed to. I saw so many people mortgage the homes that they had farmed for generations because their child or a member of the family had gotten in trouble, and they couldn't afford a lawyer.
But I knew I couldn't go to college and become a lawyer -- my brother Judd and I were the only support my mother had after Daddy died, and Judd had joined the Marine Corp. My mother knew I wanted to be a criminal defense lawyer, so I told her a lie: "No, I lost interest, I like radio." My mama died thinking that was what I wanted to do. The only way to get a job back then -- the war had just started -- was to get a third-class radio-telephone operator's permit from the FCC. Well, the closest place I could get that was Atlanta, and I didn't have the bus fare to get to Atlanta. So I got on the radio by accident, because I organized a little 20-piece band for an American Legion gig. Mr. Connely, a manager of a little 250-watt station, asked me if I would announce. I got my first job on "Hymn Time," a 30-minute gospel program.