Rhodes Professor Michael Nelson recently published an article about music producer and businessman Sam Phillips on the Claremont Review of Books website.
Nelson writes, “Phillips worked his way from Alabama to Memphis through a series of jobs at small radio stations, but his real ambition was to open a recording studio where he could capture the music of ‘all these people of little education and even less social standing, who had so much to say but were prohibited from saying it.’ In 1949, he found a $75 per month, hole-in-the-wall storefront at 706 Union Avenue with room for an 18 by 30 foot studio, and began putting out records on the new Sun label.” Read more.