Sun Studio ruled. part II

Man, can you even imagine?


One of the coolest things that ever happened at Sun was an impromptu gathering of Elvis (after he was with RCA and about to take over the world), Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash & Jerry Lee Lewis in the studio. They jammed together for hours and the whole time Phillips was sitting in the booth and, unknown to the jammers, recorded the whole thing. It's 40+ songs as well as the chatting and storytelling. The disc is available for purchase, fyi. Please let me know if you have this or have heard it - I'm really interested.

That day, Phillips also called his Memphis reporter friend, who ran right over and got a great shot (dubbed the most famous rock photo ever taken) and ran it on the front page of the Memphis paper the next day. He named them the "million dollar quartet." I wonder if really he had any idea of what was to come for these guys?


This is just an X-marks-the-spot on the floor where the singers would stand, facing the upright bass players and with their backs to Phillips in the booth, so as not to get distracted. It's really hard to get your head around what really happened in that room, on that X.

The Sun story is really amazing - - and, even more shocking is that it was only in operation for 10 years. Phillips had to shut it down due to money issues and a copyright infringement lawsuit from years before. The building sat empty, aside from refrigerators housed there for a neighboring business, for years, and amazingly untouched. When interest was regained in the place many years later, they found it exactly how it was, with even some of the same instruments, mics and recording devices.

The revival of Sun was, I think, in the early 80's with the "Class of 55" collaboration, which included Cash, Orbison and others who had recorded there previously. Since then it's been nonstop with recording (U2, Beck, Emmylou Harris, George Harrison & many, many others, some very recent) as well as the tours and gift shop stuff.

Ciao, buddies.
-Nina

P.S. Thanks for bearing with me as I dork out over this place. It was a great tour and I am a bit in love with the history of Sun. I also think it can stand in as an interesting microcosm for the history and story of the Memphis music scene, Memphis in general, and maybe even the history of American music and race relations. I can talk about this for hours... let me know if you are interested and we can go out for ribs, figue it all out, and save the world.