Sam Phillips

==Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison==
Phillips and [[Elvis Presley]] opened a new form of music. Phillips said of Presley: "Elvis cut a ballad, which was just excellent. I could tell you, both Elvis and [[Roy Orbison]] could tear a ballad to pieces. But I said to myself, 'You can't do that, Sam.' If I had released a ballad I don't think you would have heard of Elvis Presley."<ref>{{cite journal|title=Founding Father: Sam Phillips and the Birth of Rock and Roll|last=Olsen|first=Eric P.|journal=[[The World and I]]|date=May 2001|location=Washington|page=76}}</ref>

Phillips stated of his goals, "everyone knew that I was just a struggling cat down here trying to develop new and different artists, and get some freedom in music, and tap some resources and people that weren't being tapped."<ref>{{cite book|title=The Rockabilly Legends: They Called It Rockabilly Long Before They Called It Rock and Roll|last1=Naylor|first1=Jerry|author-link=Jerry Naylor|last2=Halliday|first2=Steve|page=22:00|no-pp=yes|isbn=978-1-4234-2042-2|year=2007|publisher=Hal Leonard }}</ref> He didn't care about mistakes; he cared about the feel.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2015/11/23/457083328/the-man-and-the-mistakes-that-invented-rock|title=The Man and the Mistakes That 'Invented Rock 'n' Roll'|publisher=[[NPR]]|date=November 23, 2015|access-date=October 22, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160920005735/http://www.npr.org/2015/11/23/457083328/the-man-and-the-mistakes-that-invented-rock-n-roll|archive-date=September 20, 2016|url-status=live}}</ref>

Phillips met Presley through the mediation of his longtime collaborator at the Memphis Recording Service, [[Marion Keisker]], who was already a well-known Memphis radio personality. On July 18, 1953, the eighteen-year-old Presley dropped into the studio to record an acetate for his mother's birthday; Keisker thought she heard some talent in the young truck driver's voice, and so she turned on the tape recorder. Later, she played it for Phillips, who gradually, with Keisker's encouragement, warmed to the idea of recording Elvis.<ref>{{cite book|title=Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley|url=https://archive.org/details/lasttraintomemph00gura_0|url-access=registration|last=Guralnick|first=Peter|author-link=Peter Guralnick|publisher=[[Little, Brown]]|year=1994|location=Boston|pages=[https://archive.org/details/lasttraintomemph00gura_0/page/59 59–62]|isbn=9780316332200}}</ref>

Presley, who recorded his version of [[Arthur Crudup|Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup]]'s "[[That's All Right]]" at Phillips's studio, became highly successful, first in Memphis, then throughout the southern United States. He auditioned for Phillips in 1954, but it was not until he sang "That's All Right (Mama)" that Phillips was impressed. He brought the song to [[Dewey Phillips]], a [[disc jockey]] at [[WHBQ (AM)|WHBQ]] 560, to play on his ''Red, Hot & Blue'' program. For the first six months, the flip side, "[[Blue Moon of Kentucky]]", Presley's upbeat version of a [[Bill Monroe]] bluegrass song, was slightly more popular than "That's All Right (Mama)". While still not known outside the South, Presley's singles and regional success became a drawing card for Sun Records, as singing hopefuls soon arrived from all over the region. Singers such as [[Sonny Burgess]] ("[[My Bucket's Got a Hole in It]]"), [[Charlie Rich]], [[Junior Parker]], and [[Billy Lee Riley]] recorded for Sun with some success, and others, such as [[Jerry Lee Lewis]], [[BB King]], [[Johnny Cash]], [[Roy Orbison]], and [[Carl Perkins]], became stars.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/elvis-presley-how-sun-records-boss-sam-phillips-discovered-a-star-in-1954-a6713891.html|title=Elvis Presley: How Sun Records Boss Sam Phillips Discovered a Star in 1954|last=Guralnick|first=Peter|newspaper=[[The Independent]]|date=October 30, 2015|access-date=October 22, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161031112033/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/elvis-presley-how-sun-records-boss-sam-phillips-discovered-a-star-in-1954-a6713891.html|archive-date=October 31, 2016|url-status=live}}</ref>

Phillips's pivotal role in the early days of rock and roll was exemplified by a celebrated jam session on December 4, 1956, with what became known as the [[Million Dollar Quartet]]. Jerry Lee Lewis was playing piano for a Carl Perkins recording session at Phillips's studio. When Elvis Presley walked in unexpectedly, [[Johnny Cash]] was called into the studio by Phillips, leading to an impromptu session featuring the four musicians. Phillips challenged the four to achieve gold record sales, offering a free Cadillac to the first, which Carl Perkins won. The contest is commemorated in a song by the [[Carl Perkins' Cadillac|Drive-By Truckers]].

By the mid-1960s, Phillips rarely recorded. He built a satellite studio and opened radio stations, but the studio declined, and he sold Sun Records to [[Shelby Singleton]] in 1969. In 1977 Sam's sons, Knox and Jerry, were working with [[John Prine]] at the Phillips Recording Studio when Sam Phillips joined them to oversee recordings that were eventually included on the album ''[[Pink Cadillac (album)|Pink Cadillac]]''.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/23/archives/pink-cadillaca-rite-of-passage.html?_r=0|title='Pink Cadillac' — A Rite of Passage|first=Robert|last=Palmer|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=September 23, 1979 |access-date=October 6, 2018}}</ref>