Sam Phillips

Sun Records proprietor who discovered Elvis Presley
   By Spencer Leigh, The Independent (UK) - August 01, 2003

Samuel Cornelius Phillips, record-company executive: born Florence, Alabama 5 January 1923; married 1942 Rebecca
Burns (two sons); died Memphis, Tennessee 30 July 2003.                                                                                       


The proprietor of Sun Records in Memphis, Sam Phillips discovered Elvis Presley and a host of other musical legends. He produced the records on which Presley defined his trademark sound, but, in 1955, sold Presley's contract to RCA for $35,000. He later commented, "I knew Elvis was going to be big, but I never knew he'd be that big."

Sam Phillips was born in Florence, Alabama, in 1923 and his brother, Jud, was to work with him at Sun Records. He had hopes of being a criminal lawyer, but in 1942, he married and became a disc- jockey at station WLAY in Muscle Shoals and then moved in 1946 to WREC in Memphis.

In 1950 he converted an old showroom into the Memphis Recording Studio at 706 Union Avenue. There were few domestic tape recorders then and he would record weddings and speech days and anything else which came along. He told Trevor Cajiao, editor of the magazine Now Dig This, in 1990: 

I did not go into that studio thinking I was going to make hit records and be rich. I knew I had to keep the doors open because I had two small children.

The record labels Chess, Duke and RPM asked Phillips to make records for them, which would save the Memphis-based blues musicians from travelling to their own studios. Phillips made records with Howlin' Wolf, Roscoe Gordon and B.B. King. In 1951 he recorded "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm Band, which Phillips later described as "the first rock'n'roll record". The broken valve on an amplifier made the guitar sound distinctive. "I always liked that record and I used the riff in my act," says Little Richard today, "You can hear it in 'Good Golly Miss Molly'."

Phillips described his production technique to Paul Jones on BBC Radio 2 in 1988: 

I wanted to capture that person as nearly as possible in their habitat, it was kept very simple, honest and straightforward. The elements of keeping it native was the primary thing I had to do. That, if anything, is what made me. I didn't want to mess with the good earth.

He elaborated on this in his film biography Sam Phillips: the man who invented rock & roll (2000): "I can get by on less equipment than anybody else because I can make it do more" - adding quite seriously, "I love perfect imperfection."

The success of these recordings prompted him to establish his own label, Sun Records, in 1952. He took Big "Mama" Thornton's "Hound Dog" (later a hit for Presley) and reworked it as a novelty, "Bear Cat", for the Memphis disc jockey Rufus Thomas, which led to a lawsuit for plagiarism that he lost. The record sold well and he had further success with Little Junior Parker and Billy "The Kid" Emerson. In 1953 he recorded "Just Walkin' in the Rain" with the Prisonaires, but, as all the groups were incarcerated in the Tennessee State Penitentiary, promotional tours were out of the question, and Johnnie Ray with his cover version had the field to himself.

At the same time, Phillips allowed anyone to make a two-sided acetate for $4, the sort of record that might have been made in a fairgound booth in the UK. It interrupted his daily work but Phillips knew that the local talent would want to hear themselves and he was effectively getting them to pay for their own auditions. Phillips, who had been recording black artists, told his secretary, Marion Keisker, "If I could find a white man who had the black sound and the black feel, I could make a million dollars."

In 1953 an 18-year-old truckdriver, Elvis Presley, made a record - "My Happiness" - in his lunch hour for his mother, and Phillips's secretary kept a note of his name and told Phillips that he was worth a second look. Scotty Moore played guitar for one of Phillips's groups, Doug Poindexter and his Starlite Wranglers. He recalls, 

I would meet Sam Phillips every day. We would have coffee and discuss the business overall. His secretary said, "What about the boy who came in and did the acetate for his mother?" Sam told me to ask him over to my house to see what I thought before we took him into the studio. Bill Black, who lived down the street from me, came over and we told Sam that he had a nice voice and could sing anything. 

Sam set up the recording sessions at night because Bill and I had day jobs. The first time was an audition and that's why the whole band didn't go in - it was just the three of us. We tried anything anybody could think of and, after a couple of days, we came up with "That's All Right (Mama)", by chance, if you will. It's refreshing to hear it now. There's no production to speak of and it's just three guys doing the best they could.

It was on 5 July 1954 that Presley exploded with "That's All Right (Mama)", only backed by Moore's guitar and Black's double-bass. It was a blues song, first recorded by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup in 1946, but Presley added vitality and sexuality to it. He sounded so confident, so assured and so unmistakably Elvis. The tracks were simply recorded, but Phillips's slapback echo, which was based on a tape delay, was an important feature, and echo would play its part in rock music for evermore. Another Sun performer, Charlie Feathers, commented, 

Knowing how to use and record that slapback is an important part of it. You had dead mikes when Bing Crosby used to sing and everything was smooth and level. You had much more of an edge with a slapback.

(Presley himself was so embarrassed that, hearing that the record was about to be played on local radio, he hid in a cinema.)

Albert Goldman, who dismisses nearly everybody's reputation in his notorious biography of Elvis Presley, Elvis (1981), writes very favourably of Phillips: 

Sam Phillips enhanced [Presley's] high ecstatic voice with a subtle aura of quavering echo. It was a stroke of genius - perhaps the most brilliant inspiration of this famous producer's career. Indeed, when you weigh the forces that contributed to Elvis Presley's breakthrough, Phillips' claim to importance appears completely justified. Not only did he give Elvis the right steer in directing him away from lugubrious ballads to the currently fashionable R&B material, but he attached to his new star's raw and untrained voice, the electronic prosthesis that masked his vocal faults while it transformed - or should we say transfigured? - his vocal quality into the now legendary Presley sound.

Phillips now had a white boy who could sing black, but B.B. King was not convinced: 

I saw Elvis at Sam Phillips' studio and he sounded very country to me. He didn't sound black to me at all.

Rufus Thomas, with a little exaggeration, told me: 

I couldn't see Elvis's potential at first - he was a white boy trying to sing black and it didn't reach me at all, but, after he got himself together, I was the only black disc-jockey in Memphis who was playing his records. Once Sam had Elvis, Carl and Jerry Lee, he didn't want us any more. He never recorded a black performer again.

Presley's five Sun singles - "That's All Right (Mama)", "Good Rockin' Tonight", "Milkcow Blues Boogie", "Baby Let's Play House" and "Mystery Train" - are amongst the greatest achievements in popular music. (The numbers of the records - Sun 209, 210, 215, 217, 223 - make Thomas's point that Phillips had given up on his existing performers.) The UK blues musician Brendan Croker says, 

Who in England would have said, "Baby, Let's Play House"? It's American language at its best and a beautiful description of a future sexual relationship.

Mort Shuman was then the songwriting apprentice to the New Yorker Doc Pomus: 

I was in a bar with Doc Pomus and he asked me to put "Mystery Train" by Elvis Presley on the jukebox. It was the first time I had heard him and I was very interested because it was something new, something different, and the beat was really driving, really great. Doc was flipping out. He thought Elvis was the greatest.

Presley's singles, although somewhat outlandish, appeared on the US country charts, but Phillips had difficulty in collecting the receipts for the records he had sold. He found two more white performers, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, and, browbeaten by Presley's manager Colonel Parker, he realised that his best move would be to auction Presley's contract and back catalogue to a major label. Decca offered $5,000, Dot $7,500 and Atlantic $25,000, but RCA were the easy winners with $35,000 for Phillips and $5,000 for Presley. Phillips accepted the deal and set about building a second studio for Sun. Within a few months, Presley, with a much fuller sound including a drummer, had recorded "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Hound Dog" for RCA and the rest is hysteria.

Phillips expected Carl Perkins's "Blue Suede Shoes" to be a national hit in 1956, but Perkins, who was travelling long distances, was badly injured in a car crash when the driver fell asleep at the wheel. A television booking on The Perry Como Show had to be cancelled and, as it happened, Presley covered the song for RCA. Phillips had better luck with Johnny Cash, who redefined country music with "Folsom Prison Blues", "I Walk the Line" and "Big River" before signing with US Columbia in 1958. The first Sun album, which is highly prized today, is Johnny Cash with his Hot and Blue Guitar (1956).

Another of Phillips's discoveries was Jerry Lee Lewis, who recorded his seminal tracks "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire" whilst at Sun. He was uncomfortable about singing rock'n'roll, wondering if it was the music of the Devil, and the recording engineer, Jack Clement, did record an extraordinary conversation with Lewis on this very subject: Phillips tells him he can save souls and Lewis responds, "How can I save souls when I have the Devil in me?"

The concept of turning tape recorders on unbeknown was a feature of Sun. When Elvis Presley paid a visit to Sun on 4 December 1956, he interrupted a Carl Perkins session and the results of the spontaneous jam which features Presley, Lewis, Perkins and Cash is known as The Million Dollar Quartet. Cash insists he is on those tapes, but it is hard to hear him.

Sam Phillips, working with Jack Clement, recorded numerous country and rockabilly artists for Sun Records. Their records are often collected on compilation albums today and the quality is so high that it is impossible to make a bad compilation. The artists include Carl Mann (who reworked Nat "King" Cole's "Mona Lisa"), Bill Justis (with his rock'n'roll instrumental "Raunchy"), Charlie Rich (who had his first US hit with "Lonely Weekends"), Billy Lee Riley, Warren Storm and Sonny Burgess. Although less successful, both Roy Orbison and Conway Twitty made some of their first recordings for Sun.

In the mid-1960s, Phillips's supremacy in Memphis was challenged by the soul labels Stax and Hi. This did not worry Phillips unduly, as he became a multi-millionaire through a judicious investment in the Holiday Inn hotel chain. He sold his entire Sun catalogue to the entrepreneur Shelby Singleton for $1m in 1969.

Phillips had owned several radio stations including the first with an all-female staff and he named a station in Memphis, WLVS, in honour of Elvis. Phillips's sons, Knox and Jerry, became producers in their own right and Sam Phillips joined them for John Prine's 1979 album Pink Cadillac.

The Sun Studios are now a tourist attraction, although recordings are still made there such as Billy Swan's Bop to Be (1995) and Like Elvis Used to Do (1999). The first time that Phillips left North America was to be the special, and rather loquacious, guest at a showing of The Man Who Invented Rock & Roll, at the National Film Theatre in 2000. Summing up his career, Phillips said, 

I think rock'n'roll has had a very favourable impact on the understanding between races. The young are not as prejudiced as the old, and, if I've done something to stop the prejudice, then I think I've done something with my life.

Rock 'n' Roll Studio Designated as National Historic Landmark
   Yahoo Daily News - July 31, 2003

WASHINGTON, July 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton announced today that Sun Records, Memphis Recording Service located in Memphis, Tenn., has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. The small brick building on 706 Union Ave. was founded by Sam Phillips and is known as the birthplace of the first great rock-and-roll record label.

Secretary Norton dedicated today's announcement to the memory of Phillips. The legendary producer passed away Wednesday in Memphis. "National historic landmarks are our country's most important places that illustrate our American story," Norton said. "It would be impossible for us to tell the story of rock and roll in America without Sam Phillips and Sun Records."

Norton was joined at a Capitol Hill signing ceremony by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (TN) and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (TN).

The National Historic Landmarks designation is the highest such recognition accorded by our nation to historic properties. They are places where significant historical events occurred, or where prominent Americans worked or lived, that represent those ideas that shaped the nation and that provide important information about our past.

The Sun Records Studio, considered by many as the home of the blues and the birthplace of rock and roll, provided some of the South's greatest contributions to American music. Since the late 1950s, the small Memphis recording studio produced recordings for musical giants, such as Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Howlin Wolf, Ike Turner, Rufus Thomas, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, and many other notable singers, musicians and groups.

"The history and culture of this little studio often reflected the mood of America through music," Norton said. "It was a popular hub for the recording of diverse musical styles and traditions that transcended several decades. It now shares a new recognition as a National Historic Landmark to preserve its amazing musical heritage that has touched the hearts and spirits of so many Americans. "

Norton noted that the state of Tennessee is well known for its roots in all types of music from rock and roll and blues to country western. "We look forward to working together to preserve this rich history and musical heritage for future generations to learn from and enjoy," she said.

Rock and roll was Sam Phillips's life
   The Commercial Appeal - August 1, 2003

SAM PHILLIPS, who died in Memphis this week at the age of 80, invented rock and roll. No arguments allowed. 

From Sun Studio at 706 Union, Phillips presided over a revolution in popular music in the 1950s, whose cultural, social and economic effects persist to this day. He transcended the South's and the nation's racial divisions of the era by tapping the spirit of youthful independence, blending distinct musical genres - blues, rhythm and blues, country and western, rockabilly (a term he detested), gospel - and creating something thrillingly new. 

"Beale Street convinced me that with the talent coming out of the Delta, especially (of black artists), I really wanted to do something with that talent because I was very close to it all of my life," he said in a National Public Radio interview in 1993. "I saw the great association between country music and black blues in the South." 

Phillips is best known for discovering Elvis Presley, a shy teenager who came to Sun Studio in 1953 to record two ballads - for his mother's birthday, according to popular legend. Phillips liked what he heard and offered Presley a recording contract. 

A year later, Phillips' production of Presley's rocking cover of the blues standard That's All Right, featuring guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, got its first airing by WHBQ disc jockey Dewey Phillips. It launched a career that would make Presley one of the world's best known entertainers, a distinction that remains 26 years after his death. 

Before and after Presley's association with Sun Records, Phillips also helped promote such music legends as B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rufus Thomas, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, Little Milton and Charlie Rich. Phillips benefited from and advanced Memphis's thriving music scene; black and white artists alike knew Phillips' door was open to them. 

Sun Studio's motto was "We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime." Phillips' genius lay in his ability to work with largely untrained musicians to help them express their unique voices. He also was an innovator in recording technology; Sun Studio's distinctive acoustics, including the placement of microphones, were a key element of the "Sun sound." 

Rocket 88, which Jackie Brenston recorded at Sun with Ike Turner's band in 1951, is widely considered the first rock and roll song. The studio also produced such classics as Bear Cat, Mystery Train, Blue Suede Shoes, Flyin' Saucer Rock 'N' Roll, Great Balls of Fire and Folsom Prison Blues. 

An Alabama native, Phillips was exposed early to the music of poor Southern blacks and whites. He came to Memphis in 1945 to work as a radio announcer and engineer at WREC He opened Memphis Recording Service - the forerunner of Sun Studio - in 1950 and founded Sun Records two years later. 

After Presley and other artists gained greater fame on larger record labels, Phillips sold the Sun catalog in 1969. Yet musicians who came to Memphis in later years routinely sought to meet him, and Sun Studio remains a prime tourist attraction for visitors from around the world. 

Phillips was among the first class of honorees of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville in 2001, and is also a member of the Blues Hall of Fame. All are appropriate tributes to his importance to the development of each strain of popular music. 

In a Capitol Hill ceremony on Thursday (the timing was accidental), the U.S. Interior Department named Sun Studio a national historic landmark - the only recording studio so recognized. For the exceptional contributions Sun has made to American history and heritage, Sam Phillips is responsible.

He, like the music, was an original 
   Sun Records founder Sam Phillips was the father of rock 'n' roll. 

   By Robert Hilburn, LATimes - August 1, 2003

Rock 'n' roll's roots are so deep and twisted that fans and critics often throw their hands up in frustration when trying to search through the various branches to explain its origins.

It's a quest that frequently ends up in debates over such minutiae as which artist first used the word "rock" in a song, or who established the guitar as a rallying point for youthful rebellion.

But the real story of the birth of rock may be as simple as a single man's dream.

Rock 'n' roll lost its father on Wednesday when Sam Phillips died at the age of 80 in a hospital in Memphis, the music-rich city where this son of an Alabama cotton farmer discovered and helped shape the talents of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison.

As a struggling recording studio owner in the '50s, Phillips certainly signed those artists with profits in mind, but this man with larger-than-life zeal was also driven by something deeper — a spirit that he saw in the music of the working-class South, black and white, that he felt could be a soulful, liberating force if somehow merged.

Phillips was a master record producer (the spare, echo-driven quality of his recordings has been as influential as Phil Spector's "wall of sound"), but he was also a visionary and an idealist. He chose the name Sun for his label because it represented the optimism of a new day.

Where most record executives in the '50s saw rock 'n' roll as simply another musical trend, Phillips saw it as a cultural revolution — one that could be used by generation after generation to express deeply felt aspirations and ideas.

"Money, fame, none of this jazz gets in my way of knowing the greatest thing on this Earth is being able to feel something," Phillips said. "That's the greatest freedom in the world. That's what I wanted my records to do."

Reporting on his death Thursday morning, a CBS radio news program saluted Phillips by playing two of his recordings: Presley's "That's All Right" and Lewis' "Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On."

Like so much music that Phillips made in his storefront, single-story studio on Union Avenue, they were perfect records, filled with energy and passion. But the news report could easily have played a dozen more of the classic Sun Records, including Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes," Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" or Presley's "Baby, Let's Play House."

If the program wanted to be a little daring, it could have really intrigued listeners by playing Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" or Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" or John Lennon's "Imagine."

They are all part of the Phillips legacy.

Before Sun, Phillips opened a recording studio to capture the sounds of some of the immensely talented black artists in the Memphis area, including Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King and Ike Turner.

After some success in licensing those recordings to Los Angeles and Chicago labels, he got enough confidence to open Sun Records, where he recorded white country and black blues artists.

In those segregated times, Phillips realized it would be hard to reach a wider pop audience because mainstream radio stations resisted hard-core R&B recordings. That led to his search for a white artist who could sing effectively in a soulful blues style. He found that artist in Presley, who instinctively combined white country music and black blues. (That pragmatic move angered some of the black musicians in Memphis, who felt he had abandoned them.)

Phillips was a maverick, and he became disenchanted with the record business when it became clear in the '60s that his independent label couldn't compete unless it was aligned with a major record company.

In some ways, Phillips' impact on music was akin to the young Orson Welles' on film. But where Welles spent his life battling hostile forces in the film world, often to his humiliation, Phillips — a proud man with a fiercely independent spirit — left the record business rather than answer to executives in New York or Los Angeles. He concentrated on his various radio station properties and other investments, including the Holiday Inn chain.

For years he avoided the spotlight, rarely showing up at industry functions or doing interviews. But he kept listening to music.

While many of the musicians and executives of the '50s felt little attachment to the rock 'n' roll of the Beatles and Dylan, Phillips loved the way the music grew from teen celebration to a forum for ideas. It was in keeping with his original vision.

When I got him to sit down in 1981 for an interview, Phillips, a gregarious man whose flair for oratory would have made him a great trial lawyer or minister, said the artist he'd most like to work with at the time was Dylan.

In the interview, which began in the afternoon at Phillips' Memphis office and ended 12 hours later at his house, he demonstrated such vitality and enthusiasm that you could imagine how he enticed the best out of musicians in the studio. His goal with Presley and Lewis and the rest wasn't to make music that fit the radio formats of the day, but to reach deep inside for something original.

Presley biographer Peter Guralnick wrote about Perkins' memory of the way Phillips encouraged him to "walk out on a limb [and] try things I knew I couldn't do; and I'd get in a corner trying to do it and then have to work my way out of it."

Frustrated during a session, Perkins said, "Mr. Phillips, that's terrible," only to have Phillips snap back that the music was in fact "original....That's what Sun Records is. That's what we are."

Cash has spoken of the same intensity, saying of Phillips, "He tried to find the uniqueness in each of us."

Interestingly, rock 'n' roll also changed Phillips. In photos from the '50s, he's very conservative in dress and hairstyle, in keeping with the business climate of the time. By 1981, however, he had grown his hair long and wore a beard, looking like a rock rebel himself. He seemed like a man liberated and was filled with pride when he spoke about the legacy of Sun.

"It's really mind-boggling sometimes to think of how rock 'n' roll enabled us to bring this big world a little closer together," he said during our interview. "It ended up doing more than all the damned diplomats did in all the years we've had diplomats. It's something to realize you had a part in all that. I mean, rock 'n' roll was supposed to ruin us, remember?"

Phillips praised from all corners for music vision

Sam Phillips timeline

Jan. 5, 1923: Born Samuel Cornelius Phillips near Florence, Ala. 

1939: On his way to a religious revival in Dallas, he sees Memphis and Beale Street for the first time; it leaves a lasting impression on the teenager. 

Dec. 13, 1943: He marries Rebecca 'Becky' Burns. 

1945: After radio stints in Muscle Shoals and Decatur, Ala., and Nashville, Phillips joins Memphis's WREC-AM radio as an engineer; son Knox is born Oct. 30. 

1948: Son Jerry is born Sept. 9. 

January 1950: Phillips opens Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union; it's the future address of Sun Records, which would release seminal blues and rock music over the next decade, most produced and/or overseen by Phillips. 

1950: He starts the brief Phillips label with deejay Dewey Phillips; they release one single by one-man-band blues act Joe Hill Louis. 

1950-1952: Phillips records important records by B. B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Rosco Gordon, Bobby Bland and others, licensing the efforts to such labels as Chess and Modern/RPM. 

March 5, 1951: Phillips records what has often been hailed as the first rock and roll song, the Jackie Brenston/Ike Turner classic Rocket 88, a Chess-issued No. 1 R&B hit. 

June 1951: Phillips quits WREC to devote himself full time to his studio business. 

March 27, 1952: Sun Records is officially born with the appearance of its first issued single, Johnny London's Drivin' Slow. 

1952-1954: Phillips puts Sun's focus on blues and R&B, recording such artists as Walter Horton, James Cotton, Little Junior Parker, Doctor Ross, the Prisonaires, Little Milton and Billy 'the Kid' Emerson. 

March 8, 1953: Phillips records his first Sun hit, Rufus Thomas's Bear Cat; he then loses a lawsuit over the song's resemblance to the Big Mama Thornton hit Hound Dog. 

July 5, 1954: History is made when Phillips lets the tape roll after he hears newcomer Elvis Presley clowning around with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black. The tune? That's All Right, generally considered the Big Bang of rock and roll. 

October 1955: Sally Wilbourn begins working for Phillips; she will remain his personal and professional companion until his death. 

Oct. 29, 1955: Phillips launches WHER, the nation's first all-female radio station; announcers include wife Becky and Sun assistant/secretary Marion Keisker. 

November 1955: Phillips sells Elvis's contract to RCA for almost $40,000. 

1955-1960: Phillips oversees classic recordings by Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Warren Smith, Billy Lee Riley, Sonny Burgess, Charlie Rich and others. 
Among the time-honored material: Blue Suede Shoes by Perkins, which became Sun's first million-seller in 1956; I Walk the Line and Folsom Prison Blues by Cash, and Great Balls of Fire and Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On by Lewis. 

1960: Supplanting Sun Studio, Sam Phillips Recording Service opens at 639 Madison. 

1969: Phillips sells the Sun catalog to Mercury Records producer Shelby Singleton for $1 million. 

1979: Phillips produces tracks on John Prine's album "Pink Cadillac." 

1986: Phillips is inducted into the inaugural class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Sun artists Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. 

1987: Phillips is inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Sun re-opens as a museum/studio; U2 is one of its first clients. 

1991: Phillips receives a Trustees Award from the Grammys for significant contributions to the field of recording. Over the years more than a half dozen Sun-related tunes have been added to the Grammy Hall of Fame. 

1995: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opens in Cleveland, Ohio, with Sun recording equipment prominently on display. 

Nov. 9, 1998: Phillips is inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. 

1999: He is featured in numerous millennial wrap-ups from People magazine to National Public Radio as a 20th Century innovator. 

2000: He is inducted into the TEC (Technical Excellence and Creativity) Awards Hall of Fame for exemplifying "the spirit of technical and creative excellence in recording and sound." 

April 29, 2000: The Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum opens, also with a special exhibit featuring Sun recording equipment. 

June 9, 2000: A special screening of the A&E Biography episode, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll, takes place at the Orpheum with live music by Jerry Lee Lewis, Ike Turner, Billy Lee Riley, Johnny Bragg and Jim Dickinson. 

June 18, 2000: The Phillips biography premieres on national television. 

Oct. 4, 2001: He is inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. 

Nov. 28, 2001: Celebrating Sun's 50th anniversary, the American Masters documentary Good Rockin' Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records airs on PBS. A same-named companion CD includes performances of Sun material by Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Kid Rock and others. 

May 22, 2002: Phillips receives a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Blues Foundation. 

July 30, 2003: He dies. 

July 31, 2003: Sun Studio declared a National Historic Landmark. 

 - Bill Ellis, The Commercial Appeal