Sam Phillips: 6 things to know about the rock pioneer on his 100th birthday

Sam Phillips would have been 100 years old on Thursday.

The rock and roll pioneer — famed as the founder of Sun Studio, an influential producer and the first to record Elvis Presley — was born on Jan. 5, 1923, in the Shoals area of Alabama. When Phillips died at age 80 — on July 30, 2003, at a hospital in Memphis — music fans around the world mourned his passing.

Phillips wasn’t a performing artist, but he made a huge impact on the entertainment world. Here’s a refresher on his life and career, as we celebrate his accomplishments and acknowledge his roots.

GROWING UP

Phillips spent his childhood on a farm near Florence, helping in the fields and listening to Black workers sing as they picked cotton. The music “awakened my spirit,” Phillips often said, and was a key influence on the choices he made as a record producer.

‘’A day didn’t go by when I didn’t hear black folks singing in the cotton fields,’’ Phillips said. ‘’Did I feel sorry for them? In a way I did. But they could do things I couldn’t do. They could outpick me. They could sing on pitch. That made a big impression on me.’’

In a 1995 interview with Howard Miller of The Huntsville Times, Phillips talked about battling childhood illness. However, he said it sparked his curiosity and powers of observation.

“I think one of the things that meant as much to me … as anything in the world, was that as a child I was very sickly and almost died twice,” Phillips said. “Back then, about all you had was an aspirin tablet when I was coming up. … I guess that me being sickly and my mother getting older, I got to noticing things, observing people and what happened. I found it to be a fascinating thing — what makes people feel, do and think the way they do. … The only way I can explain it is that there is a certain element of curiosity that I have about people. I always wanted to find out what was taking place in people’s souls and their minds.”

Phillips attended Coffee High School in Florence, where he led a marching band and played trombone, sousaphone and drums. At one point, he also took an extension course on electrical engineering at Florence State, offered by Alabama Polytechnic Institute (later known as Auburn University). In 1942, Phillips married Rebecca “Becky” Burns, an aspiring singer from the Shoals. The couple had two sons, Knox and Jerry.

RADIO DAYS

In the 1940s, Phillips worked as a radio DJ and engineer at WLAY-AM, a small station in Muscle Shoals. He moved on to stations in Decatur, Nashville and Memphis. At WREC in Memphis, Phillips was the host of ‘’Saturday Afternoon Tea Dance,’’ playing blues, pop and jazz from the Peabody Hotel. He soon became enamored of the music he heard on Beale Street, home to blues clubs that presented vibrant and compelling Black musicians.

In January 1950, Phillips opened his own recording studio at 706 Union Ave. in Memphis. At first, it was called Memphis Recording Service, then renamed Sun Records. According to The New York Times, Phillips began renting the storefront space in October 1949 for $150 per month.

“Phillips worked at the radio station all day and then went to his studio to record ‘anything, anywhere, anytime’ just to make a go of his new venture,” said Claudia Luther of the Los Angeles Times, tracing Phillips’ past in a 2003 obituary. “For a long time, that meant mostly weddings and $2-a-side personal recordings. Slowly, Phillips began recording some of the musicians he had so long wanted to popularize. The rawer the music, the better. He started getting what he wanted with local blues artists like B.B. King, who recorded some early tunes with Phillips, and Howlin’ Wolf.

“(In 1951), Phillips recorded ‘Rocket 88′ with singer Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner’s band. Many critics say Brenston’s fast, upbeat recording, which Phillips took to Chess Records for release, is really the first rock ‘n’ roll record.”

Phillips shared his thoughts on “Rocket 88″ in a 1998 interview with Sound on Sound. “I cannot truly judge what the first rock ‘n’ roll record was, because that would be unfair,” Phillips said, “but in the sense of the term rock ‘n’ roll — which to me wrapped up Black and white youth and vitality — it really was the first rock ‘n’ roll record.”

ELVIS (AND MORE)

As a record producer, Phillips looked for originality and a distinctive sound. “He wasn’t looking for somebody who sounded like someone who was already out there,” Roland Janes, former Sun session guitarist, said in a 2003 interview with Scripps Howard News Service. “If you had a unique sound musically or vocally, that would impress him.”

With this mindset, Phillips immediately saw potential in Elvis Presley, an 18-year-old truck driver who stopped by Sun Records in 1953. Some reports say the young Presley wanted to cut a couple of tracks for his mother’s birthday; others claim he was simply ambitious and wanted a start at the label.

“Within a year, Phillips would draw out of Presley the stirring sound that would not only launch the singer’s career but also shove rock ‘n’ roll smack into the middle of American popular culture, where it has remained for more half a century,” Luther said in the Los Angeles Times. “Sun released only five Presley singles — an impressive roster of 10 songs that included ‘That’s All Right,’ ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky,’ ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight,’ ‘I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone,’ ‘Baby, Let’s Play House’ and, finally, ‘Mystery Train’ — all recorded between July 5, 1954, and July 11, 1955.”

Although Presley is credited as the lightning rod for Sun Records, Phillips also helmed early recording sessions with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich and more.

“I could take these people, totally untried and unproven — but that damn sure didn’t mean they didn’t have potential talent,” Phillips told The Huntsville Times. “I was looking for the creativity of the people that never had an opportunity. I didn’t give a damn whether they were poor, rich or whatever.”

MOVING ON

As Presley and other artists gained fame, they outgrew Sun Records and signed deals with larger labels. Phillips moved on in the 1960s, as well, pursuing business ventures such as an investment in the Holiday Inn company. He sold Sun Records in 1969, and the label continues today. The Sun Studio building also still exists, as a tourist attraction and National Historic Landmark.

Phillips kept a hand in the music world throughout his lifetime; he owned a music publishing company in Nashville and radio stations in Alabama and elsewhere. In his 1995 interview with The Huntsville Times, Phillips said he was proud of the music produced in his home state, and pointed to Muscle Shoals as a prime example.

“Man, did you see what they did?,” Phillips said. “I mean if you think they didn’t put Muscle Shoals on the map around the damn world! You can’t go anywhere in the world and speak about Muscle Shoals that they don’t know what you’re talking about — and it’s not the dam, and I’m not taking a thing away from TVA power. It’s music!”

Phillips was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1987, along with Sonny James, Jerry Wexler and W.C. Handy. Florence named a street after Phillips, as well.

NATIONAL ACCLAIM, ENDURING LEGACY

In 1986, Phillips was among the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

“One of the most important figures in the history of rock,” the Rock Hall’s website says. “Sam Phillips discovered Elvis Presley, pioneered rockabilly and founded Sun Records, where he quietly went about the business of building and recording the rock and roll canon. … The sound of Sun Records was the epit­ome of rock and roll’s origins. Owner Sam Phillips not only recorded the varied streams of ethnic music throughout the South, from blues to country, but was con­vinced he could bring them together in one irresistible pop package.”

Phillips also is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

In 2000, he was the subject of a two-hour documentary on A&E, “Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock and Roll.” That’s also the title of a 2015 biography by Peter Guralnick, who says Phillips valued “perfect imperfection” and believed every recording session was meant to be “like the making of ‘Gone With the Wind,’ with all its epic grandeur — but at the same time, every session had to be fun, too.”

Leonardo DiCaprio was set to star as Phillips in a film adaptation of Guralnick’s book, according to 2016 reports by Variety, Rolling Stone and other entertainment media. However, the movie never materialized and apparently got stalled in development. Josh McConville played Phillips in “Elvis,” the 2022 movie directed by Baz Luhrmann. Dallas Roberts portrayed Phillips in a key scene from the 2005 Johnny Cash bio-pic “Walk the Line.”

NEXT UP

The Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville has planned a birthday celebration for Phillips on Feb. 1, teaming with Sun Records. The event (postponed from its original date of Jan. 5) is set to include a Q&A with Phillips’ son, Jerry Phillips, and a tour of museum exhibits related to the Sun label.