The Sun Sound The Sun Sound is music that's good because it possesses intangible qualities; music of feeling, emotion and passion. The Sun Sound is music that transports you to memories of happiness and friendship. Music that still touches you today. The Sun Sound began when Sam Phillips launched his record company in February of 1952. He named it Sun Records as a sign of his perpetual optimism: a new day and a new beginning. Sam rented a small space at 706 Union Avenue for his own all-purpose studio. The label was launched amid a growing number of independent labels. In a short while Sun gained the reputation throughout Memphis as a label that treated local artists with respect and honesty. Sam provided a non-critical, spontaneous environment that invited creativity and vision.As a businessman, Phillips was patient and willing to listen to almost anyone who came in off the street to record. Memphis was a happy home to a diverse musical scene: gospel, blues, hillbilly, country, boogie, and western swing. Taking advantage of this range of talent, there were no style. there were no style limitations at the label. In one form or another Sun recorded them all.   Then in 1954 Sam found Elvis Presley, an artist who could perform with the excitement, unpredictability and energy of a blues artist but could reach across regional, musical and racial barriers. Dubbed a Country charts on a national basis. He helped form the beginnings of the Sun Sound by infusing Country music with R&B. Elvis's bright star attracted even more ground-breaking talent to the Sun galaxy. Listed among his contemporaries and lab mates were Johnny Cash, the inimitable Jerry Lee Lewis, and the "Rockin' Guitar Man", Carl Perkins. These four soon became known as the Million Dollar Quartet. Right behind them came Roy Orbison, Charlie Rich, Bill Justis, Harold Jenkins (a.k. Conway Twitty) and other equally memorable musical talents. All eventually sold on Pop, R&B and Country charts and grew to international fame. Rockabilly became the major evolution in the Sun Sound. Lyrically it was bold. Musically it was sparse. But it moved. In the 1950's Country music rarely used drums that were so vital to jazz, blues, and jump bands. In fact, drums were prohibited on stage at the Grand Ole Opry. However, Rockabilly drums played an essential role in driving teens across the nation to become enamored with the Rockabilly movement and the revolutionary Sun Sound. Once again, Sun was able to break new ground recording music of unparalleled diversity in an incubator of creativity. Inherent in the music of Sun is a vibrancy that survives to this day. Sincere, passionate music. Music that has stood the test of time. It is music that has reached across race, age and gender boundaries. It reflects the diversity and vision of the talent that recorded on the Sun label. It All Started Here                "When All Hell Broke Loose" Memphis disc jockey Sam Phillips wanted his own studio, a place where Southern rhythm and blues artists could record their music, the kind, as Phillips said, "where the soul of man never dies." In 1949, Phillips bought a radiator shop at 706 Union Avenue and converted it into the place that would become rock and roll's Plymouth Rock. With the motto "We record anything--anywhere--anytime," the Memphis Recording Service and its label, Sun Records, were open for business. Elvis Presley caught his ring here. You know the story: Poor boy in tupelo, Mississippi, grows up listening to black Delta and Chicago blues-man. Moves to Memphis in 1948, graduates from Humes High. In 1953, on his day off from M. B. Parker Machinists' Shop, goes to Sun's Memphis Recording Service, Where anyone willing to spend $3.98 could get an acetate disc and record the Ink Spot's "My Happiness" as a present for his mother. Returns a few months later and records "Careless Love" and "I'll Never Stand In Your Way." Phillips hears the songs, is "underwhelmed" but asks the young singer to rehearse with a local act, the Starlite Wranglers. On July 5, 1954, with Scotty Moore playing guitar and Bill Black slapping bass, Presley records "That's All Right, (Mama)." Two days later the songs debuts on Memphis radio and Sun's rise began. Yet there was more to Sun Records than Elvis. Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, Carl Mann, Bill Justis and Jerry Lee Lewis all shared the label during the Fifties. They took rockabilly, a sound mostly confined to the barrooms of America's Southland, and set it loose. While the recording giants on both coasts were trying to keep the genie in the bottle, Sun made the country sweat. Before Presley walked through the doors, Sun was making history but not much money. Ike Turner, a deejay from Clarksville, Mississippi, arranged a session with teenaged Jackie Brenston. Their version of "Rocket 88,' recorded by Sam Phillips in 1951, is considered by many to be the first rock record. Yet Phillips knew the key to financial success was a "white man who had the negro sound and the negro feel." So when WHBQ disc jockey Dewey Phillips (no relation to Sam) spun "That's All Right" for the first time, as Sam put it, "all hell broke loose." Sam had his man. Rockabilly's momentum was propelled by Sun's subsequent discoveries of Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash. Perkins sold two million copies of "Blue Suede Shoes, " making it the first rockabilly song to reach number one on the pop, country, and rhythm and blues charts. Lewis recorded Sun's most successful hits with "Great Balls Of Fire" and  "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," while Johnny Cash became the label's most consistent act, with twenty releases on the original Sun label, selling over 10 million records. The good times didn't roll forever. A lack of capital kept Sun from reaping the financial rewards of it's success. Strapped to meet consumer demands, Phillips sold Elvis' contract to RCA in 1955. Of that infamous decision, Phillips said, "I looked at everything for how I could take a little extra money and get myself out of a real bind. I wasn't broke, but man, it was hand to mouth." For $40,000 ($5,000 of which went to Elvis) Phillips released Presley from his Sun obligations. After RCA's coup, for two years, 1956-1957, it prospered during the golden age of rockabilly, but by 1958, the pendulum was swinging the other way. Johnny Cash's skyrocketing fame pulled him to Nashville and California. Alcoholism and an automobile accident all but finished the rise of Carl Perkins. "Blue Suede Shoes" in fact, the number Perkins wrote and first made famous, was a huge hit for Elvis as well. Finally, in 1969, Phillips sold Sun to Mercury Records producer, Shelby Singleton. Within months, there were more Sun LPs on the market than Sam Phillips had ever issued. Recording just ten of Elvis' tracks, though, fixed Phillip's place in history; he was an original inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.