One of our tours in Memphis was to Sun studios which was started in the 50’s by Sam Phillips. He turned out many great artists and recordings including Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison. I’ll stop there, the picture below gives a nice sampling of past and present artists that have found their way through Sun studios. They even have a drum set that was used by U2 to record a fairly recent album.

The beginning of Elvis’ career is traced back to this studio. He was in a recording session with Sam Phillips singing some slow gospel type music and Phillips hated it. He felt faster rock and roll was the future. So they were about to call it quits when Elvis broke into a fast rendition of the song “That’s all right”. Phillips immediately fell in love with that song and ran it right over to Dewey Phillips (no relation) who was a very popular dj. He played the song on the radio and it was an instant hit. That’s how Elvis got his start. Jim’s history lesson for the day.

The videos below are recordings of the first playing of Elvis on the radio and a recording of the “Million Dollar Quartet”. A recording of an impromptu jam session involving Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash made on December 4, 1956, at the Sun Records.