Samuel Cornelius Phillips was an American record producer.
29 Facts About Sam Phillips
2.
Sam Phillips was the founder of Sun Records and Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, where he produced recordings by Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Howlin' Wolf.
3.
Sam Phillips was the owner and operator of radio stations in Memphis; Florence, Alabama; and Lake Worth Beach, Florida.
4.
Sam Phillips was an early investor in the Holiday Inn chain of hotels and an advocate for racial equality, helping to break down racial barriers in the music industry.
5.
Sam Phillips was the youngest of eight children, born on a 200-acre farm near Florence, Alabama to Madge Ella and Charles Tucker Sam Phillips.
6.
Sam Phillips attended the now defunct Coffee High School in Florence.
7.
Sam Phillips conducted the school band and had ambitions to be a criminal defense attorney.
8.
However, his father was bankrupt by the Great Depression and died in 1941, forcing Sam Phillips to leave high school to look after his mother and aunt.
9.
In 1942, Sam Phillips, 19, met Rebecca "Becky" Burns, 17, his future wife, while they were both working at WLAY radio station in Sheffield, Alabama.
10.
Sam Phillips was an announcer and she was still in high school and had a radio segment with her sister as 'The Kitchen Sisters' where they played music and sang.
11.
Sam Phillips wore sandals and a smile unlike any I had ever seen.
12.
Sam Phillips sat down on the piano bench and began to talk to me.
13.
On January 3,1950, Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service, at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis.
14.
Sam Phillips recorded what the music historian Peter Guralnick considered the first rock and roll record: "Rocket 88", by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, a band led by the 19-year-old Ike Turner, who wrote the song.
15.
From 1950 to 1954 Sam Phillips recorded music by James Cotton, Rufus Thomas, Rosco Gordon, Little Milton, Bobby Blue Bland, the Prisonaires and others.
16.
Sam 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.
17.
Presley, who recorded his version of Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's All Right" at Sam Phillips's studio, became highly successful, first in Memphis, then throughout the southern United States.
18.
Sam Phillips auditioned for Phillips in 1954, but it was not until he sang "That's All Right " that Phillips was impressed.
19.
When Elvis Presley walked in unexpectedly, Johnny Cash was called into the studio by Sam Phillips, leading to an impromptu session featuring the four musicians.
20.
Sam Phillips challenged the four to achieve gold record sales, offering a free Cadillac to the first, which Carl Perkins won.
21.
Sam Phillips built a satellite studio and opened radio stations, but the studio declined, and he sold Sun Records to Shelby Singleton in 1969.
22.
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.
23.
Sam Phillips was one of the first investors in Holiday Inn, a motel chain that was about to expand to a nationwide franchise; he became involved with the chain shortly after selling Elvis Presley's contract to RCA, for $35,000, which he multiplied many times over the years with Holiday Inn.
24.
Sam Phillips created two subsidiary recording labels, Phillips International Records and Holiday Inn Records.
25.
Sam Phillips established radio station WLIZ in Lake Worth, Florida in 1959.
26.
In 1986, Sam Phillips was part of the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and his pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
27.
Sam Phillips received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in 1991.
28.
Sam Phillips died of respiratory failure, aged 80, at St Francis Hospital in Memphis, on July 30,2003, only one day before the original Sun Studio was designated a National Historic Landmark, and just over a month before the death of former Sun Records recording star Johnny Cash, on September 12,2003.
29.
Sam Phillips is interred in the Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis.