Posted on 07/30/2003 9:35:45 PM PDT by HAL9000
MEMPHIS (Reuters) - Recording industry legend Sam Phillips, the Sun Records founder who discovered Elvis Presley and also launched the careers of such stars as Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and B.B. King, has died at age 80, in Memphis.His death was confirmed on Wednesday by Rachel Zurka, spokesperson at the Memorial Park Funeral home. Zurka said that Phillips died at St. Francis Hospital in Memphis.
Widely regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th century popular music, Phillips played a major role in bringing the electric blues to a wide audience and in pioneering the development of rock 'n' roll.
With performers such as Presley and Perkins, Phillips fused the best of rhythm and blues with country and western in his Memphis, Tennessee-based studio, giving birth to a musical genre that transformed America's recording scene in the 1950s.
Rock 'N' Roll Pioneer Sam Phillips Dies
Rock 'N' Roll Producer Sam Phillips, Who Discovered Elvis and Founded Sun Records, Dies at 80
The Associated Press
MEMPHIS, Tenn. July 30 — Sam Phillips, who discovered Elvis Presley and helped usher in the rock 'n' roll revolution, died Wednesday. He was 80.
Phillips died at St. Francis Hospital, spokeswoman Gwendolyn McClain said. No details were available about the cause of death or how long he had been hospitalized.
Phillips founded Sun Records in Memphis in 1952 and helped launch the career of Presley, then a young singer who had moved from Tupelo, Miss.
He produced Presley's first record, the 1954 single that featured "That's All Right, Mama" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky."
"God only knows that we didn't know it would have the response that it would have," Phillips said in an interview in 1997.
"But I always knew that the rebellion of young people, which is as natural as breathing, would be a part of that breakthrough," he said.
In 2000, the A&E cable network ran a two-hour biography called "Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock and Roll."
Phillips was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
"When I first heard Elvis, the essence of what I heard in his voice was such that I knew there might be a number of areas that we could go into," Phillips said.
Presley was good with ballads, Phillips recalled, but there was no need to challenge established balladeers such as Perry Como, Frankie Laine and Bing Crosby.
"What there was a need for was a rhythm that had a very pronounced beat, a joyous sound and a quality that young people in particular could identify with," he said.
By 1956, when Phillips sold Presley's contract to RCA for $35,000, the rock 'n' roll craze had become a cultural phenomenon and a multimillion-dollar industry.
"It all came out of that infectious beat and those young people wanting to feel good by listening to some records," Phillips said.
Presley died in 1977 at age 42.
Phillips began in music as a radio station engineer and later as a disc jockey. He started Sun Records so he could record both rhythm & blues singers and country performers, then called country and western or hillbilly singers.
His plan was to let artists who had no formal training play their music as they felt it, raw and full of life. The Sun motto was "We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime."
In the early days, before Presley, Phillips worked mostly with black musicians, including B.B. King and Rufus Thomas.
After the success of Presley on Sun, others who recorded for the label under Phillips included Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Conway Twitty and Charlie Rich.
"We were starting from scratch together," he said in 2000.
He got out of the recording business in 1962 and sold Sun Records in 1969 to producer Shelby Singleton of Nashville. The Sun studio on Union Avenue in Memphis still exists as a tourist attraction.
In his later years, Phillips spent much of his time overseeing radio station WLVS in Memphis and others in Alabama. He stayed out of the limelight except for some appearances at Presley-related events after Presley's death.
"I'll never retire. I'm just using up somebody else's oxygen if I retire," he said in an Associated Press interview in 2000.
Born Samuel Cornelius Phillips in Florence, Ala., Phillips worked as an announcer at radio stations in Muscle Shoals, Ala., and Decatur, Ala., and Nashville, Tenn., before settling in Memphis in 1945. Before founding Sun Records, he was a talent scout who recommended artists and recordings to record labels such as Chess and Modern. He also worked as an announcer in Memphis.
His sons Knox and Jerry also were record producers.
I took the "tour" and got a great tee shirt at Sun in the summer of 1998. It is basically three rooms (receptionist/waiting room, recording studio, and engineer's room) but it was very cool.
Basically, you stop into the restaurant next door and tell the guy you want a tour. He usually waits until their are fifteen or twenty stragglers who also request the tour and then he takes you next door to Sun and gives a pretty interesting spiel. I strongly suggest to everybody that you stop in if you get near Memphis.
By the way, Sun is still a working studio, although infrequently used anymore. I believe that U2 and BB King did their "duet" recording there ("When Love Comes to Town") some years ago.
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