System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Sam Phillips, Record Producer
January 05, 1923 - July 30, 2003
Producer and record company owner, Sam Phillips, the man who discovered Elvis Presley, died Wednesday, July 30, 2003. Phillips died at St. Francis Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee. He was 80.
Born January 5, 1923, in Florence, Alabama, Phillips became fascinated by the newly emerging medium of radio, and by 1945 he was working as a disc jockey for Memphis station WREC. Five years later he opened his Memphis Recording Service studio at 706 Union Avenue, at first recording weddings and bar mitzvahs to cover his monthly rent.
For Phillips, the thriving Memphis blues scene was irresistible, and he soon began recording local blues artists. His Phillips label, begun in 1950, proved short-lived, but he honed his skills as talent scout and producer by recording blues performers and selling the masters to leading independent labels such as Chess, Duke, and RPM. Prominent among these acts were B. B. King and Howlin' Wolf, both of whom went on to national fame. In 1952, Phillips organized Sun Records and notched rhythm & blues hits with stars like Rufus Thomas and Little Junior Parker's Blue Flames.
Phillips's musical sensibilities worked with raw-edged bluesmen, and he convinced young country singers that his approach would work for them, too. His interest in mixing country with rhythm & blues first struck pay dirt with nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley, who burst upon the American musical landscape in the summer of 1954 with his electrifying, upbeat versions of "That's All Right"-earlier recorded by r&b singer Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup-and "Blue Moon of Kentucky"-a 1946 hit for Grand Ole Opry star Bill Monroe, one of Presley's idols. Although Phillips continued to make some blues records after Elvis had changed the course of popular music in 1954 and 1955, he mostly recorded country and rockabilly artists. Sun scored with records by Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison in the mid- and late 1950s.
Having amassed a fortune as an investor in the Holiday Inn hotel chain, Phillips essentially decided to retire, and in 1969 he sold Sun and its catalogue to Nashville-based entrepreneur Shelby Singleton. Since then Phillips has made only the occasional public appearance and taken on few production assignments (one being the 1979 John Prine album Pink Cadillac, which he co-produced with his sons Knox and Jerry). He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
