July 31, 2003
Sam Phillips, 80, Producer Who Discovered Elvis Presley, Dies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEMPHIS, July 30: Sam Phillips, who discovered Elvis Presley and helped usher in the rock ‘n’ roll revolution, died today in Memphis. He was 80.
No details were immediately available about the cause of death.
Mr. Phillips founded Sun Records in Memphis in 1952 and helped Mr. Presley, then a young singer who had moved from Tupelo, Miss., start his career.
Mr. Phillips produced Mr. Presley’s first record in 1954, featuring “That’s All Right, Mama” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
“God only knows that we didn’t know it would have the response that it would have,” Mr. Phillips said in an interview in 1997.
“When I first heard Elvis, the essence of what I heard in his voice was such that I knew there might be a number of areas that we could go into,” he said. Mr. Presley was good with ballads, Mr. Phillips said, but there was no need to challenge established balladeers like Perry Como, Frankie Laine and Bing Crosby.
“What there was a need for,” Mr. Phillips said, “was a rhythm that had a very pronounced beat, a joyous sound and a quality that young people in particular could identify with.”
By 1956, when Mr. Phillips sold Mr. Presley’s contract to RCA for $35,000, the rock ‘n’ roll craze had become a cultural phenomenon and a multimillion-dollar industry.
“It all came out of that infectious beat and those young people wanting to feel good by listening to some records,” Mr. Phillips said.
Born Samuel Cornelius Phillips in Florence, Ala., Mr. Phillips was an announcer at radio stations in Muscle Shoals, Ala., Decatur, Ala., and Nashville before settling in Memphis in 1945. He was a talent scout who recommended artists and recordings to other record labels before founding Sun Records.
Mr. Phillips started Sun Records so he could record both rhythm and blues singers and country performers, then called country and western or hillbilly singers.
His plan was to let artists who had no formal training play music as they felt it, raw and full of life. The Sun motto was “We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.”
In the early days, before Mr. Presley, Mr. Phillips worked mostly with black musicians, including B.B. King and Rufus Thomas.
After Mr. Presley’s success on the Sun label, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Conway Twitty and Charlie Rich recorded for Sun.
Mr. Phillips sold Sun Records in 1969 to Shelby Singleton, a Nashville producer. The Sun studio on Union Avenue in Memphis is still a tourist attraction.
In his later years, Mr. Phillips spent much of his time overseeing radio station WLVS in Memphis and others in Alabama. He stayed out of the limelight except for some appearances at Presley-related events after Mr. Presley’s death in 1977.
Mr. Phillips was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
