SUN STUDIOS


706 Union Avenue
Memphis, Tennessee



Sam Phillips has been described as the most famous 'non performer' in music, and you can't really argue with that. Sam set up 'The Memphis Recording Studio' at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis - which then went on to become SUN STUDIOS.



It was, of course, here that Elvis walked in as a truck driver to record a song for his mother. Within a couple of years he was the most famous man on the planet.


Apart from Elvis though, this small studio also started the careers of Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, BB King, Roy Orbison and Howling Wolf amongst others


Downtown Memphis, Tennessee, July 1954. A small rectangular one-story building set back from the road at the junction of Union and Marshall Avenues, partially hidden by a car lot. Inside, three musicians, no onlookers and one engineer-accountant-record company president. They're working on a record in the white summer heat in a world concerned with Suez, Indochina and the first hydrogen bomb.


The guitarist, using a tiny 12" x 12" amplifier, has a shy gaunt face and says virtually nothing. The bassist, fatter, more ebullient, cries out, "Man we was hitting' it that time." The singer, with a nervous smile and a voice that leaps from a low register to a high whine has all the time he needs. So, they try the song another way, slow it down. He strums his acoustic guitar, a present from his parents to keep him off the streets, while his accompanists improvise a delicate melody line and find the tempo. The sound halts abruptly after one minute and the group looks toward the engineer at the console for encouragement



They're all in a studio, the rented premises of the Sun Record Company and the Memphis Recording Service-"We Record Anything-Anywhere-Anytime." The company president, engineer, accountant, salesman and shipper is Sam C. Phillips, the bassist is Bill Black, the electric guitarist is Winfield "Scotty" Moore and the singer is Elvis Presley, hungrier, more nervous and, as always, disarmingly humble. "Fine, fine, man, hell that's different. That's a pop song now little guy, that's good" says Phillips. Somebody else in the background mutters something.


Among the white kids who had no business hanging around clubs on Beale Street was Elvis Presley, just out of school, who picked a guitar some. "I knew Elvis before he was popular," said B. B. King. "He used to come around and be around us a lot. There was a place we used to go and hang out at on Beale Street. People had like pawn shops there and a lot of us used to hang around in certain places and this was where I met him." Both entertainers returned to Memphis in December 1956 for the WDIA Goodwill Review, and the Tri State Defender for December 22, 1956, carried a photograph of Elvis Presley, no longer hungry, shaking hands with B. B. King, who was trying to come to terms with the stir that Presley had created in the Rhythm & Blues market.



One night in July 1954, Dewey Phillips (no relation to Sam Phillips) played a dub of Presley's first record,


That's All Right Mama/Blue Moon of Kentucky on his Red Hot and Blue show which was broadcast from WHBQ in Memphis. The result was orders totalling 7,000 copies for a record, the product of many weeks work, which was finally released on July 19, 1954


Elvis' 1st Guitar


For the 25th Anniversary, this guitar was on public display for the 1st time...it was on loan to Sun Studios. Gladys bought this for Elvis, it was his very first guitar


Marion Keisker's Desk


Marion Keisker was the first person Elvis saw when he entered Sun Recording. She ask him, "Who do you sound like?" and he replied, "I don't sound like anybody." Sam was out that day but she was impressed with this young man and got his phone number


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THANK YOU, MIKE! :-)