Tag: Jerry Phillips

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Music Music Blog

Jerry Phillips Remembers J.M. Van Eaton

J.M. Van Eaton receives a Founder of the Sound Award from Jerry Phillips in 2020 (Photo courtesy Ameripolitan.org)

Last Friday, on February 9th, drummer James Mack Van Eaton, aka “J.M.” or “Jimmy,” passed away at the age of 86, and with him were lost some of the last first-hand memories of Sun Records’ early days. Any fan of Jerry Lee Lewis knows Van Eaton’s work, for on the day that Lewis showed up at Sun with his cousin, J.W. Brown, ready for his first proper recording session, producer Jack Clement called up Van Eaton and guitarist Roland Janes to fill out the band, and the rest is history.

As described in Peter Guralnick’s Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll, the ad hoc quartet cut over two dozen tracks that day. After they’d played themselves out, Janes took a bathroom break, then emerged only to hear Van Eaton and Lewis playing on as a duo, indefatigable. As it turned out, that stripped down drums-and-piano version of “Crazy Arms” was Lewis’ first hit for the Memphis label. And that was just the beginning, with Janes and Van Eaton going to to accompany Lewis on many of his hits. Ultimately, Van Eaton would record with several other Sun artists, including Billy Lee Riley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Charlie Rich.

To reflect on the passing of one of Sun Records’ giants, I called on Sam Phillips’ son, Jerry Phillips, to share his memories of the man and his music.

Memphis Flyer: Did you know J.M. back in the day, when he was most active at Sun Records?

Jerry Phillips: I’ve known J.M. pretty much all my life. He started young at Sun and was I was young too, and over the years I’ve played with him and he’s played with me. You know, I was in Spain a couple of years ago at the Rockin’ Race Jamboree, a rockabilly festival. I started listening to the drummers, and you know, every one of those drummers was either trying to play like J.M. Van Eaton or they were playing J.M. Van Eaton licks. It wasn’t J.M. Van Eaton, but man, they were trying hard to be him.

He had quite a distinctive approach, didn’t he?

At the 2020 Ameripolitan Awards, J.M. got the Founder of the Sound Award, and they asked me to present it to him. In my speech I said, ‘I don’t know that Sun Records would have been the Sun Records it became without J.M.’s drumming.’ There was a definite sound that he had, and that’s what gave Sun a lot of its personality. I just don’t think we would have had the same sound or the same legacy had J.M. Van Eaton not been playing drums.

Just as my dad would say, ‘If you’re not doing anything different, you’re not doing anything at all.’ And J.M.’s drumming was completely different from anybody else’s that I’ve heard — except for the guys that are trying to imitate him. You never knew if he was going to do a roll, or what he was going to do. And he had that shuffle beat.

J.M. left full-time music behind for many years before coming back to the stage. Did he still have it when he got back in the game?

Oh, he definitely did. Probably 20 years ago, he brought a gospel group into the studio. And he played sessions with different people, just from kind of hanging around at Phillips Recording. Those guys that came out of Sun liked to just hang around. That’s what they did at Sun, they hung around.

Of course, you can’t leave Roland Janes out of the equation, either. Because J.M. and Roland were like a team. When Roland passed, they did a tribute to him at the Shell, and me and J.M. and Travis Wammack all got together and played.

J.M. eventually moved to the Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals area and bought a house, and he always played quite a bit over there with different people. He played with Travis Wammack a lot. And I saw him and played with him more often there, since I was in the Shoals quite a bit because of our radio stations. We were better friends as adults, you know what I mean? And he just loved the Shoals area, and everybody there loved him.

He was just an extremely likable guy, wasn’t he?

I just can’t say enough about J.M.’s drumming, but also what a great person he was. I mean, I think he knew he was a great drummer, but maybe he didn’t. He never was one to say, ‘Hey, I’m a great drummer.’ But he just was. If you had J.M. on your session, you knew who was playing drums just by listening to him. And that was a signature Sam Phillips/Sun trademark, was that everybody over there sounded like themselves — and different. Tell me one drummer that J.M. sounded like!

Did you see or speak to J.M. soon before he passed away?

I did talk to J.M. the other day, I think it was a day before he passed away. We just had a little brief conversation. I told him how much I loved him and how important he was to everything. But he was pretty weak. He wasn’t really in the greatest shape, you know? Once his kidneys failed, he went downhill fairly quick. But up until that point, he was in pretty good health.

I’m gonna miss J.M. I really am. And I think J.M. was one of the most important people in the history of rock and roll music. I really do.

A celebration of life for J.M. Van Eaton will be held on Friday, February 23rd, at First Assembly Memphis, 8650 Walnut Grove Road, Cordova, from 6 to 8 p.m. A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 2nd, at Cypress Moon Studios, 1000 Alabama Ave., Sheffield, Alabama. Call (256)381-5745 for details.

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Music Music Features

Jerry Phillips On the Unhinged Genius of Jerry Lee Lewis

Jerry Lee Lewis and Knox Phillips in the 1970s (Photo: Courtesy Jerry Phillips)

The passing of the great Jerry Lee Lewis last Friday, at the age of 87, has brought floods of memories rushing back for those who knew him. As drummer J.M. Van Eaton posted on social media, “He was the greatest entertainer of them all. A musician’s musician. So lucky to have played on his early Sun recordings.”

That quote alone pinpoints what made Lewis stand out among the other stars of Sun Records: his virtuosity. True, The Prisonaires, Elvis Presley, and Roy Orbison had golden voices, and Carl Perkins was no slouch on the electric guitar, but both “Jerry Lee Lewis And His Pumping Piano,” as he was billed on his early Sun singles, were equally dazzling.

“He could play anything with ease,” recalls Jerry Phillips, son of Sun Records founder Sam Phillips. “He could sing any song, ‘Over the Rainbow’ or ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm,’ it didn’t matter.” Nothing expresses that better than the album Jerry Phillips recommends to anyone hankering for some prime Jerry Lee: The Knox Phillips Sessions, a little-noticed recording date from the ’70s that was not released until 2014.

Phillips’ words took me back to my first encounter with the Killer in the late ’80s, sitting cross-legged on the dance floor of Hernando’s Hide-A-Way, at the foot of the piano. Hearing Lewis sing, “Somewhere over the rainbow …” then ad-lib, “there’s a place Jimmy Swaggart only dreams of” as a dig at his more pious cousin, will be forever burned into my cerebrum. And that’s precisely the irreverent energy present on The Knox Phillips Sessions. Lewis’ irrepressible talent and ferocity are on display there, thanks to the hands-off production of Jerry’s late brother Knox.

“It was a time when Jerry Lee was out of his contract with anybody,” recalls Phillips. “He came to the studio and Knox was engineering, and we just started the tape machine and let him go. It was a very interesting trip. And it’s all on tape: He takes to the piano and goes, brrrring! Then he says, ‘The pills just hit!’ and takes off playing ‘Meat Man.’ He’d want to go to the strip club about midnight, so we’d all jump in his Rolls-Royce and go there, and then come back and do some more recording. Of course he wasn’t sleepy, you know what I’m talking about?”

Like his father before him, Jerry Phillips tells it like it is, and so does this album. Phillips notes: “I told Knox, ‘Sam cut the first great recording of Jerry Lee, and you cut the last one to really capture the man.’” Hearing the album today, it’s striking that such an unhinged moment was recorded as it was, without filters or editing. For it perfectly captures Lewis the artist-as-provocateur and all the multitudes he contained, from the sanctity of “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior” to the much lewder sentiments of “Lovin’ Cajun Style” to those electrifying moments where he indulges in an eerie falsetto.

At that point in his life, Lewis was feeling reflective, even as he reveled in the wild hedonism of Memphis in the ’70s. He turns “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” into a tribute to himself: “My name’s Jerry Lee Lewis, piano playing motherhumper, country and western motherhumper, just a plain motherhumper when I take a notion. … I seen a cat down at Fridays. Picked a little fight with him. He broke my nose, I had a hold, and I whooped the shit right out of him. They call me bad, bad, bad, the Killer! Meanest man in Memphis, Tennessee!”

Indeed, at times it seems Lewis is writing his own elegy, as when he mulls over the death of songwriter Stephen Foster in “Beautiful Dreamer,” introduced on the album by an unidentified narrator. “Thanks, Stephen, Al, Hank, Jimmie, and Jerry Lee,” intones the voice, invoking Lewis’ late heroes, Stephen Foster, Al Jolson, Hank Williams, and Jimmie Rodgers, as if Lewis had already ascended to heaven. Then the Killer chimes in again: “Lost in the arms of life’s raging sea, neighbors … you’d better think about it. God bless you.”

A service for Jerry Lee Lewis will be held on Saturday, November 5th, at Young’s Funeral Home in Lewis’ hometown, Ferriday, Louisiana, with the visitation at 10 a.m., the funeral at 11 a.m., followed by a public celebration of his life at the Arcade Theater.

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Film Features Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: “What’s Louder Than Love?” by Mark Edgar Stuart

Memphis folk-rock stalwart and MVM frequent flyer Mark Edgar Stuart‘s got a new album coming out called Until We Meet Again. “It’s a quasi-concept album about life, love, and afterlife,” he says.

The lead single, “What’s Louder Than Love?” exemplifies the mood of the record, which Stuart calls “Nothing too heavy, and nothing too personal … My past videos have been melancholy, so this time I wanted to come out swinging with something upbeat and light-hearted. I figured after the past two years we’ve had, who wants to hear more sad shit?”

Bassist Landon Moore directed the video. “It was 100 percent his vision,” says Stuart. “All I did was just walk around Midtown and hang out with some of my favorite Memphis people — mostly those who worked on the record like my two producers Reba Russell and Dawn Hopkins, plus musician pals Will Sexton and Shawn Zorn. There’s tons of great cameos too including Keith Sykes, Jerry Phillips, and Matt Ross-Spang … Making this video was an absolute hoot. My favorite scene is Steve Selvidge and Rod Norwood airing out their Facebook rivalry on camera.”

If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Cover Feature News

Sound Traditions: Matt Ross-Spang Builds a Studio in Crosstown Concourse

Photo: Jamie Harmon

Memphis is rightly known as a city of musicians’ musicians. Whether they stay planted here, like MonoNeon, or move to the coasts where the music industry and its stars are based, they bring a feel and a groove that few others can match. But the city also attracts brilliant players from elsewhere, in search of that Memphis sound. More than any formula or ingredient, like our much-touted horn players, there’s an elusive ambience, a holistic character, that emerges when one works in this city. And one element of that is simple: It’s in the rooms.

That doesn’t mean our well-appointed lodgings, but rather the classic studios that have dotted the city for over half a century. But it wasn’t always thus. At the dawn of the 2000s, digital technology led many to retreat into the safety and economy of home studios, to such an extent that many studio owners wondered if they’d go the way of the dinosaurs. Was there any money in the studio business?

In recent years, that question is being answered with a definite maybe. The pendulum has swung back to the advantages that only dedicated studios can offer, especially larger rooms, classic gear, and efficient engineering. As Boo Mitchell, co-owner of Royal Studios, one of the oldest continuously operated spaces of its kind in the world, recently noted, “It’s shifting back to the way it used to be, when we were a recording destination.”

All such history is new again, as many artists and producers clamor for a sound that some call retro and others call classic. One indication came in 2019, when what was once unthinkable came to be: A new studio opened in town. And the classic sound was crucial to it. As Memphis Magnetic Recording Co. co-owner Bob Suffolk reflected, “Our studio is brand-spanking new, although it’s done in what I call a purpose-built vintage style.”

Matt Ross-Spang (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Memphis Sounds, Southern Grooves

Now, a new “purpose-built vintage” recording space is opening with an even more local provenance. Matt Ross-Spang, who distinguished himself first at Sun Studio and then as a Grammy-winning engineer and producer based at the renowned Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio and elsewhere, is custom-designing a new room, to be called Southern Grooves, in what was once the Sears cafeteria on the second floor of Crosstown Concourse. As he puts on the finishing touches, it’s clear that this one project embodies all Ross-Spang has learned from multiple studios around Memphis for over a decade, a distillation of the city’s legendary history of recorded music.

“On these walls, we used a polyurethane paint. And that doubled the length of the room,” Ross-Spang says. When you get a tour of a studio, you hear such absurdities regularly. Wait a minute, I think, the paint alone can double the length of the room? That’s when I realize he’s talking about the length of the room’s echo. In a studio, what matters is how your ears measure a room, not your eyes or your yardstick.

In this instance, the room is basically a closet, but it’s a closet designed to always remain empty: another absurdity. “This is what I’m most proud of, our echo chamber. Steve [Durr] designed it. Here’s what it sounds like,” says Ross-Spang as he claps a single time. “It’s about four seconds. Of course, our bodies are soaking up some of the sound.” When in use, the room will have only speakers, playing audio from the control room, and microphones to record how those sounds bounce off the walls. To build such a room, Ross-Spang and Durr studied Phillips Recording intensely. “Phillips has three chambers. The one behind the pink door at the end of the hall there is the greatest echo chamber I’ve ever heard. It’s about six seconds. I didn’t have that much space, but we had height.”

Ross-Spang is one of the few to have seen the Phillips chambers in detail. As Jerry Phillips, son of the late Sam Phillips, says, “We’ve got some of the greatest echo chambers in the world in that building. And we keep them kind of a secret. We don’t let anybody take pictures in there. It’s proprietary. We have three different sizes. And the combination can really give you a great sound. You cannot duplicate it in any kind of digital process.”

That’s true of all such physical spaces, be they echo chambers or the large rooms in which bands record. Stepping into the tracking room at Southern Grooves is like stepping back in time, both sonically and visually. Wood panels alternate with orange fabric on the walls; a wooden chair rail runs along the room’s perimeter; linoleum floor tiles sport geometric patterns here and there; perforated light fixtures, reminiscent of the Summer Drive-In, hang from a ceiling with similarly perforated panels, arranged in an uneven sawtooth pattern. All of it seems to invite a band to set up and record in the old-school way, all together, playing live in the room that time forgot.

A session at Phillips Recording, with (l-r) Rev. Charles Hodges, Matt Ross-Spang,
William Bell (behind piano), Leroy Hodges, Ken Coomer, and David Cousar (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
Southern Grooves, the new recording studio in Crosstown Concourse (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Memphis Soul Stew, or Ingredients of a Sound Studio

“I kinda stole from all my Memphis heroes. At Sun, the V-shapes on the ceiling went long ways, and at Phillips they go like this. And then Chips Moman’s thing was latticework,” Ross-Spang explains, referring to the producer/engineer who helped found both Stax and American Sound Studio. “So the ceilings here are about 15 feet high; the panels drop down and are angled, but the sound goes through the perforated metal, and then there’s insulation so it stops before it comes back down. So you still get the big room, but you don’t have the parallel surfaces. You never want parallel surfaces.” Such surfaces cause sounds to bounce around too much. “That was another big Sam [Phillips] thing. The angles throw off the flatness of the floor.”

And yet some bounce is desirable. Take the linoleum floor, also a design element from Sun (actually known as the Memphis Recording Service in its heyday). Those floors have often been celebrated as being critical to the roomy sound of early Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis recordings. As musician Mark Edgar Stuart notes, one story among his fellow tour guides at Sun Studio is that once Bob Dylan himself walked in on a tour, looked at the floor, said, “Ahh, tile,” then walked back out.

As Jerry Phillips says of his father, “Memphis Recording Service was his baby, of course. And Marion Keisker helped him a lot. They laid the floor tiles. He would clap his hands and hear how the echo sounded in the room. How alive or dead it was. He wanted a combination of live sound and controllable sound. And he just built the acoustics in that studio by experimenting.”

Jerry Phillips at the bar in Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio (Photo:Jamie Harmon)

As Ross-Spang envisioned it, having such a “live” tracking room, with some echo (as opposed to a “dead,” echoless room) was critical. “In the ’60s, all the rooms were really reverberant,” he explains. “And then in the late ’60s, early ’70s, when they got 16 track machines and could put mics closer on stuff, they started to deaden stuff with burlap. And then they went so far, they would just really deaden it. So I wanted to have a ’60s room that just started putting up burlap. I always thought that was the coolest balance. ’Cause you can always deaden something more. I can always put more shag rugs down; I can put in baffles. But it’s hard to make stuff livelier. And I just love the old tile floor. Ever since Sun, I’ve always loved that sound.”

The wood and burlap on the walls, on the other hand, are inspired by the second location of Ardent Studios, built in 1972, where Big Star (and many others) made legendary albums. Once again, Ross-Spang leaned on his design collaborator for much of those details. “Steve Durr was really good friends with Welton Jetton, who built all the equipment for Stax and Ardent and helped John Fry [and Terry Manning and Rick Ireland] design the original acoustics at Ardent. So Ardent Studio A had these kinds of reflectors and absorbers. That was a Welton Jetton design. I brought that back because I always thought that was a great look, and they sound amazing.”

Yet there are some elements of Southern Groove’s acoustics that are completely unique, unrelated to the studios of yore. “You always want limitations, and I had the limitations of the columns,” Ross-Spang explains. He’s speaking of the huge concrete columns that pepper the entire Crosstown Concourse structure. There was no possibility of removing or moving them, but Ross-Spang was okay with that. “Acoustically, the columns are interesting because they’re three-foot-thick concrete, they’re smooth, and sound will bounce off that randomly every time. There’s no way to mathematically account for that, acoustically. You play guitar from here, you move and inch, and it’ll bounce differently. I think it’ll be interesting when we get mics in here because it will randomize the room a lot.”

For Ross-Spang, the randomness was a bonus. “A lot of acousticians have one design that they go for every time, but Steve [Durr]knows I wanted something weird and not necessarily correct. Because all the Memphis studios aren’t correct, but they’re cool. I didn’t want a perfect studio; I wanted a weird studio.”

As we move into the control room, where two electricians are painstakingly working, it becomes clear that weirdness is literally wired into the entire space, thanks in part to Ross-Spang’s forethought. Pointing to the electricians, he says, “They’re pulling 30,000 feet of cable, and we’ve got conduits and troughs running to all the rooms. I wanted to wire every room for sound ’cause sometimes you want something to sound perfect, and sometimes you want it to sound like it’s in a garage. The hallways and every other little room are wired. Sometimes a guitar in the main tracking room sounds too good. So you put it in the hallway and it sounds like Tom Waits, and that’s what you need, you know? I do that a lot. At both Sun and Phillips, I would use that front lobby all the time. So I wanted to keep that here. All the wiring is running through the floor in troughs, and the cables will come up into these old school ’60s one-fourth-inch patchbays.”

Ultimately, the wires will converge on a mixing board that, among all the design features, will make Ross-Spang’s commitment to classic Memphis studios more apparent than ever. “I actually have John Fry’s original board from the original Ardent on National Street, where they did the first Big Star stuff. It’s getting fixed up, and it’ll be the main board. It was built in Memphis by Welton Jetton. And I also have a later board that Welton built for Stax, when they upgraded to the bigger boards. We’re putting the Ardent console in the original Stax frame, this cool white Formica top thing.”

The influence of Jetton on the studios of Memphis is hard to overstate. As Terry Manning, the first engineer at Ardent and now a distinguished producer, says, “Welton was a genius. He was the chief engineer at Pepper [Sound] Studios, which at the time was the biggest jingle recording company in the world and had several studios that Welton had put in. Pepper was huge, and Welton was a prime part of that. And later he started his own company making consoles, which became the Spectrasonics consoles that Stax and Ardent had. Later he changed that to Auditronics, and they were used all over the world. It was all Welton and his crew — acoustic design, electronic design, building the consoles. ‘Hey, we need a direct box! What’s a direct box? I don’t know, but Welton will build it!’ It was an amazing time, where you made your own gear and recorded your way.”

Finally, aside from the collection of other vintage gear that Ross-Spang has amassed in his current home base at Phillips, there will be vintage amps and instruments, including a Hammond A-100 organ and one thing most home studios and even many professional ones simply do not have these days: a grand piano.

For that, Ross-Spang received some sage advice from one of the pillars of Memphis’ golden era of recording. “I brought one of my heroes, Dan Penn, over here, and out of nowhere he said, ‘What kind of piano are you gonna get?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to get anything too big.’ And he said, ‘You need to get the biggest durned piano you can buy. Them little pianos, the sound don’t wanna come out of them. But them big pianos, they can’t wait to be recorded. They jump out the speakers.’ So I’m going to have a Baldwin from 1965 in here. It’s a 7-footer. It was really cool to get it from Amro Music ’cause it’s their 100th year of serving Memphis.”

James Taylor, Peter Asher, and Terry Manning at Ardent Studio in 1971, using the mixing board Matt Ross-Spang has acquired. (Photo: Courtesy Terry Manning)

I’ll Take You There, or Setting is Everything

And yet, despite all of Ross-Spang’s committment to the designs and instruments and gear of yesteryear, there’s another element that he may value over all others. As we wrap up the tour, he reflects a bit more on the simple fact of where Southern Grooves will live. The name screams out “Memphis,” of course, but there’s more to it than that. Something unique.

“Never has a studio been in such an ecosystem like Crosstown,” he says. “That was one of the biggest selling points to me. Think about with Ardent and other places with multiple rooms and who you might run into. You might be doing an overdub, but then Jack Oblivian’s in Studio A, and you’re like, ‘Hey, will you come play real quick?’ And that’s kinda gone now with home studios and one-studio facilities.

“But at Crosstown — like, we just ran into Craig Brewer! It’s kinda like having Jerry Phillips come visit Phillips Recording. Here, you can go next door to the Memphis Listening Lab and remember why we’re doing this in the first place. Crosstown is a million-and-a-half-square-foot lounge, essentially, filled with creative people. And I don’t think any other studio has had that opportunity. That’s what I feed off of: other people’s energy. If you put me in here by myself, I couldn’t create anything. But when I have the people here, I’ll go two days without sleeping because I’m so jacked, you know?”

Matt Ross-Spang plans to have Southern Grooves fully operational this August.

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Music Music Features

Rockin’ Troubador: Jerry Phillips on John Prine and the Pink Cadillac Sessions

When you’re with Memphis songwriters and John Prine comes up, you can tell he’s made an indelible mark on them. Last year I spoke with Keith Sykes, who recited Prine’s lyrics off the top of his head. “The first words out of his mouth, professionally speaking, were: ‘While digesting Reader’s Digest in the back of a dirty bookstore, a plastic flag with gum on the back fell out on the floor. I picked it up and wiped it off and slapped it on my window shield. If I could see old Betsy Ross, I’d tell her how good I feel.’ You ask what makes a good song. Well, when you hear something like that the first time, you don’t think. You just know this is good. It’s contemporary, even today. And that was on his first record, that he cut in Memphis — at Chips’ [Moman] studio, American.”

Sykes added, “He also did Common Sense here, and he did Pink Cadillac here. He’s done a bunch of stuff in Memphis, and he loves it down here.”

Diane Duncan Phillips

(above, left to right) Billy Lee Riley, Jerry Phillips, John Prine, Knox Phillips

Indeed, Prine, who passed away last week from complications related to COVID-19, redefined his career more than once in Memphis, especially in the latter example, when recording Pink Cadillac at Phillips Recording Studio. Hearing stories of its making from Jerry Phillips, who co-produced the record with brother Knox (with an assist from paterfamilias Sam), sheds some light on just how much Memphis resonated with the songwriter. The album, an eclectic mix of rock-and-roll, funk, and country styles, with only half the tracks being originals, decisively stamped Prine’s identity as something more than your typical troubadour. I spoke with Phillips recently about all the juicy details.

Memphis Flyer: By 1979, John Prine was well established as a folk-centric songwriter. He was expected to play an acoustic guitar with a lot of finger picking. So Pink Cadillac must have thrown the industry for a loop.

Jerry Phillips: Yeah, it did. John wanted to do something different, and he picked the right people because the Phillips family has never followed the beaten path on anything. We weren’t just going to cut another folk album. Those are great, don’t get me wrong, but to cut another folksy John Prine album like all the rest of ’em would have been of no interest to any of us.

You know, I don’t think John had ever cut an album with his own band. So that’s what he wanted to do. We rented him an apartment, fully furnished, and he stayed in Memphis for three months, him and his whole band. It was crazy. We cut 30 songs on that session. We were supposed to cut 12! And we had everybody from the Everly Brothers to Billy Lee Riley dropping by the studio. There were some other things going on, too, we don’t want to talk about …

MF: I’ve read there were 500 hours of tape cut at that time.What happened with all the extra stuff that didn’t make it to the album? Has any of it come out?

JP: Well, we have it in storage. Knox kept the tape machines running, basically, the whole time the session was going on. And a lot of that stuff, he re-cut. The next album was Storm Windows, and we had already cut that song, “Storm Windows,” in our sessions. But yeah, we’ve got lots of 16 track on John Prine.

MF: The record has proven its longevity. It’s more respected now than reviews at the time would suggest.

JP: Rolling Stone panned that album bad. They said it was the worst John Prine album ever. And The New York Times review [by Robert Palmer] said it was one of his best. So that made all of us feel kinda good. We had defied the corporate mentality in making that record, and the fact that the record company basically hated it [laughs], we thought that was great.

But we weren’t trying to be insane. We were trying to cut a good record. Just one that went off in a different direction. John loved Sam. He would talk about the evangelical fervor he had in the studio. And we can’t leave out my brother Knox, who has his own wild way of producing. Sam only came in for a couple of days. Knox called Sam and said, “You’ve got to come in. This guy sings so bad, you’re gonna love him.” And he didn’t mean he sang off key, but that he sang so different. Like every one of Sam’s artists.

John Prine was no chicken shit, but on “Saigon” and that stuff, we had to really pull it out of him. Sam would say, “Put some sex into it! Slow it down and put some damn sex into it!” Because he was in a different genre than what he was used to. But he pulled it off. I don’t think there was ever a record like that before or since!

John came by the studio last year, and we sat in the mastering room with Jeff Powell while he cut John a brand-new, fresh vinyl master 45 of “Saigon” and “How Lucky,” the two songs Sam recorded on him back then. Both of us had tears in our eyes, listening to that stuff. Because it was a pivotal part of his life, and mine, too.

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Music Music Blog

Jerry Phillips Remembers Brother Knox: “He Was The Keeper Of The History”

CREDIT: Diane Duncan Phillips

Diane Duncan Phillips

Knox Phillips and John Prine, ca. 1979

Last autumn, I found myself in Jerry Phillips’ office at the headquarters for WSBM and WQLT, the family’s radio stations in Florence, Alabama. The conversation I had with Jerry and his daughter Halley that day ranged from music production techniques to professional wrestling. But one thing kept coming up again and again: Jerry’s older brother Knox, who had been in poor health for some time. “My brother is real ill,” Jerry said. “He used to go all over the country. He’s got every award you can get. And now he can’t do anything; it’s really a sad situation.”

Last night, those words took on an added poignancy when it was announced that Knox Phillips, son of celebrated producer Sam Phillips and his wife Becky, had passed away, bringing closure to a prolonged period of immobilization that had been tortuous for the entire family. “He’s been out of the picture now for about four or five years,” Jerry said, last September. “It’s been a real tough go for our family to see him not be able to even get up and walk anywhere. It’s been a real hard thing for our family, ’cause you know Knox was just as important as Sam in a way. He was the keeper of the history. He was the one that always knew everything about Sun. He was the one that always got things going.”

Knox Phillips’ importance to his family’s legacy, and to the history of Memphis music, cannot be overstated. Though never content to merely live in his father’s shadow, he came to embody his same iconoclastic spirit, ushering those values, and the Phillips Recording Studio, into the 21st century. “He was a great record producer, a great mixer,” Jerry noted, and his role in the co-production of John Prine’s Pink Cadillac at Phillips Recording in 1979 is the perfect example. Recounting the making of that record, Jerry recently interjected, “We can’t leave my brother Knox out of all this, who has his own wild way of producing records, too. He was very effective in those sessions. ‘Cause you know Sam only came in for a couple of days.”
Diane Duncan Phillips

(above, left to right) Billy Lee Riley, Jerry Phillips, John Prine, Knox Phillips

But Knox Phillips’ skill-set went far beyond his recording acumen. “My brother was a political science major in college,” Jerry said. “He gave that up. I think Sam was looking for him to run for governor or something. Knox, he didn’t want to do that. But he was the consummate Memphis music politician. Also he could produce records, and he was a good guitar player, too.”

As for his command of the music scene’s street-level politics, the most obvious example would be Knox’s tireless efforts to establish a Memphis-based chapter of the Recording Academy, formally the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), in 1973. “He got the NARAS chapter here,” said Jerry. “He lobbied for it. Hard. And he paid for, like, 50 people’s dues. For years. Just so there would be members, you know?” To this day, the Memphis chapter, also representing New Orleans, Louisiana, and St. Louis, remains a forward-thinking force in the professional organization.

Beyond that, he took a uniquely personal approach to the Memphis music scene, embracing players from all levels of recognition and success. “You wouldn’t believe how deep his roots went into the love of Memphis music, and the love of people who didn’t have enough money,” Jerry said. “He paid Furry Lewis’ electric bills!”

He was indeed the keeper of the history, and played a decisive role in shaping how the family legacy would be remembered. Discussing Peter Guralnick’s masterful biography, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll, Jerry points out that “Knox was the one that got Peter Guralnick involved. When that book came out, Knox could not even go to any of the panel discussions, and he would have been all over that. He would have been up there, he’d have been setting it up, he’d have been doing things. He spent 25 years working to get that book done. Twenty-five damn years. ‘Cause Sam wouldn’t talk to Peter for the longest time. There were all these other writers that were trying to get that story. And Knox kept saying, ‘You don’t want these guys, this is the guy you want to write this book.’ So over a 20-year span, they kept getting together and getting together and getting together, and that book is almost completely Sam’s own words. There’s a lot of Peter’s words in there too, of course, but I’m just saying, it’s not just something that Peter guessed at. Sam wanted to write his own book, he thought. But he would have never done it.”

Clearly, Knox’s extended illness and passing have left a huge void in the family. “I was always the rebel of the family. I was always more interested in the performing side of it, the playing side of it, than the politics of the music'” Jerry mused. “So when Knox had to get out of the picture, I had to step up to the plate and do some of the stuff he was doing. Showing up at these functions and speaking to the press.

“We’ve got Knox to thank for a lot of stuff. We really do. I try to always share the spotlight with him, ’cause he’s really the guy that deserves it.”

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Music Music Blog

When Ameripolitan Lets Its Hair Down: Unforgettable Images From Hernando’s

CREDIT: Jamie Harmon

Jamie Harmon

James Intveld joined Dale Watson and band during the Saturday afternoon show.

The Ameripolitan Music Awards celebrated its seventh annual ceremony on Monday, capping a weekend of shows and activities that included the grand reopening of The World Famous Hernando’s Hide-A-Way, now graced with a new historical marker. None other than Tanya Tucker made a surprise appearance at Hernando’s, where she sang “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and “I’ll Fly Away,” backed by Dale Watson and His Lone Stars, with guest pianist Jason D. Williams.

At the awards ceremony, hosted by Big Sandy (of Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys), guitar pioneer Duane Eddy received the Master Award, and drummer J.M. Van Eaton (who played on Sun Records tracks by Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Billy Lee Riley) received the Founder of the Sound Award from Jerry Phillips (son of Sam Phillips). Phillips poignantly said, “If J.M. Van Eaton hadn’t played on all those records, I’m not sure my father would have had the success he had.”

In another Memphis-related development, Goner Records recording artist Bloodshot Bill won the award for Best Rockabilly Male. Here he is playing bass and singing “Gone, Gone, Gone” with his fellow nominees:

When Ameripolitan Lets Its Hair Down: Unforgettable Images From Hernando’s

2020 Ameripolitan Music Award winners

Western swing Female – Georgia Parker
Western swing Male – Dave Stuckey
Western swing group – The Farmer & Adele
Honky Tonk Female – Sarah Vista
Honky Tonk Male – Charley Crockett
Honky Tonk Group – Country Side of Harmonica Sam
Master Award – Duane Eddy
Founder of the Sound – J.M. Van Eaton
Musician – Sean Mencher
Venue – Dukes Indy
Festival – Bristol Rhythm & Roots (Bristol, TN)
DJ – Eddie White (Cosmic Cowboy Café 2RRR 88.5FM, Sydney, Australia)
Rockabilly Female – Laura Palmer (of Laura Palmer & Screamin’ Rebel Angels)
Rockabilly Male – Bloodshot Bill
Rockabilly Group – The Lustre Kings

The end of the show served as an impromptu tribute to Carl Perkins, with the 2020 Rockabilly Male nominees, Shaun Young, Bloodshot Bill, Jittery Jack, and Eddie Clendening, all performing Perkins’ “Gone, Gone, Gone” together, followed by a grand finale with Watson, Tammi Savoy, Jim Heather, Jerry Phillips, Jittery Jeff, Dave Stuckey, Nick 13, Laura Palmer, and more singing Perkins’ “Boppin’ the Blues.” [slideshow-1]

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Cover Feature News

“All About That Feel”

CREDIT: Kyle Christy

With the Mempho Music Festival back this week — and bigger than ever — it’s worth noting that three of its biggest acts have a history of recording here in the Bluff City. Though two are legends of hip-hop and one is rockabilly royalty, they have much in common. For one thing, all three acts rely on the younger generation, direct heirs to the musical bedrock their forerunners created, to carry the torch forward. And, even more significantly in this age of cut-and-paste sampling, all three acts hold live musicians in high regard. It’s all about that mysterious quality called “feel.”

Wu-Tang Clan: Sonic Roots in Memphis

Few hip-hop groups have maintained the ongoing credibility and viability of the collective known as the Wu-Tang Clan. The group has risen above differences to work collaboratively for decades, even as appreciation of its individual members — rapper-producer RZA and rappers GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard (deceased), Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and Cappadonna — has made them stars in their own right. And one distinctive element in their sound has always been the use of old-school Memphis soul and R&B.

Kyle Christy

Wu-Tang Clan

This dates back to their third single, 1994’s “C.R.E.A.M.,” which made extensive use of “As Long as I’ve Got You,” a 1967 single on the Volt label by the Charmels. The group dug even further back for “Tearz,” which used Wendy Rene’s “After Laughter (Comes Tears),” a 1964 Stax track. It was part of a distinctive Wu-Tang sound that arguably culminated in 2000’s double platinum disc, The W. Even then, Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s participation was hampered by prison time he was serving during its creation, though he was able to literally phone in some vocal parts.

After Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s death in 2004, the group members focused more on solo recordings, though Wu-Tang did release 8 Diagrams in 2007. Then came a long hiatus, the end of which was marked by RZA’s renewed commitment to live-recorded ensemble tracks that evoked older soul records. A significant chunk of those tracks was done at Memphis’ own Royal Studios, for what would become the album A Better Tomorrow. Hiring classic local players from the heyday of Hi Records hits, RZA played guitar himself and created that rare thing, a comeback album that broke new ground.

It also marked more participation than ever from erstwhile Wu-Tang member Cappadonna. And, though some in Wu-Tang were not enthused about RZA’s focus on live-cut tracks, Cappadonna was happy to roll with it. “Yeah, I was there. I worked out of Royal,” he tells me in a recent phone chat. And, for him at least, RZA’s approach worked out well. “Like I said, I’m just trying to get it popping the best way I know how. As soon as they give me the cue, I’m on my ground with it. We can adapt to any situation.”

The fact that those sessions were all of five years ago makes Wu-Tang’s Mempho appearance especially meaningful for Cappadonna. “That’s why it’s gonna be so beautiful. It’s gonna be like a reunion. We’ve all been on this tour pretty much, with the exception of Method Man here and there. He’s constantly doing movies and stuff like that. Other than that, everybody’s present and accounted for. And we also have Young Dirty Bastard, to fill in for his father, Ol’ Dirty Bastard. He’s doing a great job. He’s bringing the energy, and that’s more than we can ask.”

That energy is more of a precious commodity as the collective grows older. Cappadonna is trying to be prudent, even as he brings his distinctive flow. “Now we’re touring. I’m just coming off a 23-hour drive from Texas, and I need a blunt, like right away, yo. We’ve been on the road for three months straight. My neck went out in Chicago, I couldn’t do the show. I cancelled Atlanta. So it depends on my health. I just turned 51 on September 18th. So depending on my health, that comes first. If I gotta take another day off, so be it.”

Nonetheless, Cappadonna is especially energized for the Mempho show. “Man, it’s gonna be crazy, yo. I might have to bring my derby out for that. You know what I mean? Cappuccino Gambino! And my gold teeth are ready, man! I’ve got diamonds in ’em this time. Tell all the ladies I said, ‘Bring me some flowers.’ Yo, mad love to the South. Memphis, hold your head up. I’ll see you soon.”

DJ Paul: Hometown Hero Talks Musical Roots

The fact that his Mempho appearance will be in October is especially meaningful to DJ Paul. It’s a pivotal homecoming for the star, who now lives in Los Angeles. On this trip, the group he rose to prominence with, Three 6 Mafia, received a key to the city from Shelby County Commissioner Edmund Ford, but the significance of this trip goes beyond any such official recognition.

DJ Paul

For one thing, he’s performing material from his highly autobiographical album, Power, Pleasure & Painful Things, released earlier this year. Interspersed with spoken segments in which the artist recalls pivotal moments in his Memphis youth, the tracks make use of a wide-ranging musicality and inventive, turn-on-a-dime production to create what may be Paul’s best work yet.

As he puts it: “1986 was the year that me and Lord Infamous, may he rest in peace, told ourselves on Halloween night that we wanted to be rappers. So Halloween is that anniversary. October is a very special month for me to be in Memphis. A lot of my closest family members, including my daughter, have birthdays in October. And where I live, we don’t get a fall. So I’m so happy to be back in Tennessee where we’ve got the prettiest falls in the world. I’m doing two back-to-back shows in my hometown, in my favorite month and my favorite season. You can’t beat it.”

The personal importance of his Memphis roots also resonates with some of Paul’s guest rappers, Seed of 6ix, on his latest album and recent performances. “Seed of 6ix is actually my nephews. One of ’em is Lil Infamous, son of Lord Infamous, my brother who passed away. That’s his son, Ricky Dunigan Jr. The other one, Locodunit, is my nephew from one of my oldest brothers. They’re signed to my label, with an album out and some EPs and mixtapes and stuff. They still live in Memphis. They’ll be there with me at Mempho.”

Their raps at the end of the track “Easy Way” are a highlight of the album, with surprising rapid-fire verses marked by disorienting rhythm changes. It’s in keeping with an album full of surprises, not the least of which are the creative chord changes performed by a string section in the same track, taking Three 6 Mafia’s use of film sountrack motifs to an even more inventive level. As Paul himself notes, “You don’t hear music like that in most rap.”

According to DJ Paul, it’s all in keeping with his first exposure to music. “I took organ lessons. I didn’t take piano lessons, I went straight to the organ. That’s what helped me create Three 6 Mafia’s sound. That’s why we always had an eerie, underground, spooky feel. Because that’s what I had back in the day, I had an organ. I still have the same organ that my daddy bought me in 1985, in my house here in L.A. It’s a Wurlitzer.”

And it wasn’t just Paul’s own musicality that shaped his latest album. “I work with a lot of Memphis musicians who we brought out to L.A. We actually moved ’em out here. There’s a guy named Billy West and a guy named Kyle Brandon. They’ve played for Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, Macy Gray, and people like that.”

As with the Wu-Tang Clan, the instrumental musicianship of Memphis has had a profound effect on the quality of Paul’s work. And, as he notes, that live musicianship will only be more pronounced with a new EP he expects to drop soon. “The new project’s coming out on Halloween,” a significant date in his life and career. “I’m gonna start doing more movies and television stuff as well. And I got a restaurant opening up in a few months in Beverly Hills. So just stay tuned.”

Jerry Phillips: All About That Feel

Meeting Jerry Phillips, son of legendary Sun Records producer Sam Phillips, at the headquarters of the Phillips radio empire in Florence, Alabama, seems appropriate. The Shoals area is where Sam got his start in the music industry, and radio is just as much at the heart of his legacy as the iconic studios, Sun and Phillips, that helped put Memphis on the map. Jerry and daughter Halley still identify strongly with both Memphis and the Shoals, splitting their time between the two metro areas. And, as Jerry sees it, both have similar musical qualities that are hard to find elsewhere.

“In the ’60s and ’70s, we’d swap musicians from both cities a lot,” he tells me. “The Swampers [from the Shoals] would go to Memphis. Or we’d send Travis Wammack down here, when he was living in Memphis. Even today, Halley’s been recording with different people and using that same combination, as a producer. They’re definitely sister cities. I think the closest thing to Memphis and Muscle Shoals might be New Orleans in a certain way. They have their own thing going on down there, too.”

Jerry & Halley Phillips

That “thing,” is hard to pin down, but to Jerry Phillips, it’s something that unites Mempho acts as disparate as Wu-Tang Clan, DJ Paul, and the all-star tribute to Sun Records in which he’ll perform at Mempho Fest. “It all has a common denominator to me, which is feel,” Phillips says. “Whatever the genre is, if it doesn’t have any feel, I’m just not interested in it, period. Sam was the same way. He kept the telephone ringing in one of his recordings. His secretary was gone, phone started ringing, and the noise bled through the wall. So everybody said, ‘We gotta do it again,’ and Sam was like, ‘Are you kidding? We’re keeping that one, that’s got the feel.’ You couldn’t have planned that, the phone ringing in the middle of it. He was all about things that just happen. The magic, when it happens, it happens.”

Much like the tribute to Royal Studios at 2018’s Mempho Festival, the Sun Records Tribute will feature an all-star cast of players in addition to Jerry Phillips, including Jason D. Williams, Amy LaVere, Will Sexton, David Brookings, John Paul Keith, Pete Degloma, Seth Moody, and Graham Winchester. That will also mark the official announcement of a new note on Beale Street devoted to the Phillips family. “It’s gonna have my mother’s name on it, my name on it, Judd Phillips, my cousin, and then Sally Wilbourn, who was Sam’s right-hand person for 50 years. So that’s gonna be interesting,” says Jerry.

He’s especially looking forward to the set’s closing act, Jason D. Williams, who has fueled a decades-long career with a manic emulation of Jerry Lee Lewis’ most fiery rock-and-roll days. “You don’t want to follow Jason D. He’s crazy. He does a great job, he’s got a great band. I think he’s fantastic. I worked with him years ago in the studio. And he’s gotten to be a lot better. His live performances, man — he goes between so many different extremes.”

Halley adds, “I always give it up for his band. His performances are never the same. The tempo is never the same. It depends on his mood or what he’s had that day. His band members are just watching him and reading him. He throws them curveballs all the time.”

To Jerry, this is the true spirit of rockabilly and rock-and-roll. “There’s a lot of imitation rockabilly, but rockabilly’s a feel. You can be influenced by those licks, but when you copy it note for note, that’s not gettin’ it, man. Whenever I cover one of those old songs, I tell the musicians, like the guitar player, when it’s time for you to solo, don’t play Carl Perkins. Play you. With that feel, but play you. I don’t want you to sound like Carl Perkins.”

If Jerry Phillips is not a household name, it’s understandable. Through most of his life, he did not pursue the spotlight. He even gives his brother Knox the lion’s share of the credit for keeping the family recording business afloat through the ebb and flow of trends in the music industry. His first taste of performance, in fact, was not musical at all.

As detailed in Robert Gordon’s indispensable book, It Came from Memphis, Jerry was about 12 when local professional wrestling hero Sputnik Monroe helped cook up a plan to bill him as “The World’s Most Perfectly Formed Midget Wrestler.” Not having the proportions of bona fide little people, who did indeed occupy a niche at pro-wrestling events, Jerry jumped in the ring with them anyway, on the thinnest of pretexts. “If I had been 25 and the size of a midget, it might have been believable, but I was obviously a kid,” Phillips told Gordon. “They’d have me walk through the crowd, chewing a big cigar, taunting people. … The audience knew I wasn’t real, and I just made ’em madder.”

Halley gleefully recalls, “Last year we were walking down Main Street in Memphis, and a guy comes up, pointing at dad, and says, ‘Hey! Hey! Aren’t you that wrestler? The midget wrestler?”

Jerry finds this chapter of his legacy amusing. “It’s gonna follow me forever. When I first met Bob Dylan, he said, ‘You’re the wrestler, aren’t you?’ But that was a great experience for me, my introduction to showbiz. Between Sputnik Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Phillips, and all those guys, it really gave me a taste of what real rock-and-roll was all about. Those guys were not fooling around. They were all in.”

For a time in the ’60s, Jerry performed with Jim Dickinson in the Jesters, and he’ll be tipping his hat to that group during his Mempho set, playing their version of “My Babe.” But even as he nods to his sporadic musical past, he’s laying the groundwork for the first proper solo release of his life. Noting his increasing interest in writing songs and performing, he points to an odd moment that crystalized his embrace of such pursuits, as he rolls up his sleeve.

“You know it’s funny, this tattoo, in some kind of weird way, completed my life. Isn’t that weird? I just feel like I’ve been branded the way I should be branded. Like I’m in the right pasture. I put Howlin’ Wolf on there because he’s my favorite artist, and he was Sam’s favorite artist. And I sign everything ‘Rock On.’ So something about it made me feel complete. I’ve seen so many Sun tattoos on people, with the exact label and everything, but I was like, ‘No, I just don’t want that.’ That’s following the same path. Like my dad said, ‘If you’re not doing something different, you’re not doing anything at all.'”

Mempho Must-Sees

True to its spirit of diversity, this year’s Mempho Fest sports a dizzying lineup of eclectic acts; and true to its commitment to its hometown, there is plenty of local talent swapping sets with national acts. Aside from our featured performers, here are some others you won’t want to miss.

The Raconteurs

The Raconteurs — After taking stages by storm nearly 15 years ago, the classic rock sounds of this combo, which includes Jack White of Third Man Records and the White Stripes, went dormant for a time in 2010. The past year, though, has seen reissues of their old work and a new album, Help Us Stranger, which bodes well: It was the group’s first U.S. No. 1. Saturday, Oct. 19th, 9:15 p.m., First Horizon Stage.

Brandi Carlile — Having begun on the more alt-country and folk side of things 15 years ago, Carlile has gone from success to success, with seven Grammy Awards to her name. Though she’s made quite a dent in the rock charts, her lifeblood is still classic country songwriting, especially with her new collaborative project, the Highwomen. Sunday, Oct. 20th, 8:15 p.m., First Horizon Stage.

Margo Price — Though she’s also considered alt-country, Price is of a more traditionalist bent than Carlile. Not that she can’t rock out with the best of them; it’s just in a rootsier mode. She lists Tom Petty as a great influence. Memphians especially appreciate that she’s made her mark via recordings involving local producer/engineer Matt Ross-Spang, with 2017’s All American Made cut at the legendary Phillips Recording. Saturday, Oct. 19th, 5 p.m., First Horizon Stage.

Reignwolf — Eschewing the uber-thrash of all-out metal, Reignwolf, in their bluesier, more chooglin’ moments, may appeal to fans of local favorites the North Mississippi Allstars. But they also take the riffs to more hard-edged urban spaces, with dirges like “Fools Gold” wallowing in their sheer heaviness. Saturday, Oct. 19, 6 p.m., AutoZone Stage.

Marcella & Her Lovers

Marcella & Her Lovers — This groovy, Louisiana-tinged/Memphis-based ensemble put out one of the best, if under-recognized, albums of last year. Intricate soul, swamp, and world grooves all serve to support the expressive voice of Marcella Simien, who gumbos things up when she straps on her accordion. Stalwarts of the Memphis nightlife, watch for these local favorites to really light up when given a chance on the big stage they deserve. Saturday, Oct. 19th, 2:15 p.m., AutoZone Stage.

PJ Morton — Though he first sprang into the public eye as a member of Maroon 5, Morton is especially notable for taking R&B back to some earthier, though still very funky places as a solo artist. Though his album Gumbo didn’t dent the Billboard 200, it won the hearts of fans and critics alike with old-school grooves, full of vintage sounds, that are nonetheless full of surprises. Sunday, Oct. 20th, 4 p.m., First Horizon Stage.

lovelytheband — For some pure electro-tinged pop, at turns spacey or danceable, you can’t go wrong with lovelytheband. Singing about “trust fund babies” who say they “like that you’re broken, broken like me,” among other things, these hyper-produced alt-popsters invest surprisingly dark shadows and angsty vibes into their shimmering songscapes. File under world-weary escapism. Sunday, Oct. 20th, 7:15 p.m., AutoZone Stage.

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Cover Feature News

Sun Studio Makes a Comeback

CREDIT: Jamie Harmon

Sun Studio is the body around which Memphis music orbits — and where it all began. Jim Stewart at Stax saw Sam Phillips selling records and bought his own recorder. Two of the founders of Hi Records came from Sun. Phillips showed everybody the way. The radio engineer from north Alabama set Memphis music in motion from 706 Union Avenue.

“There are a lot of people who think the music is magic, and it does have a magic quality to it,” says Jerry Phillips, Sam’s youngest son. “But my dad always said it’s who you’ve got in there. Who knows how to operate the equipment and place the microphones? You’re not necessarily going to have a hit because you’re in that room. Or get that sound at all.”

The person operating Sun Studio today is Matt Ross-Spang, who was a Germantown High student when he set his sights on the room that Phillips opened as the Memphis Recording Service in January 1950. Ross-Spang is finishing a years-long effort to return the hallowed studio to its original condition, complete with period-correct equipment and all the discipline that old gear forces onto engineers and artists alike. It’s not the sort of task a typical person assumes, but Sun Studio was never a place for typical people.

“He’s a young man with an old soul. Matt’s got a lot of Sam Phillips in him,” Jerry Phillips says. “He loves that equipment and the simplicity of it all.”

Sam Phillips was famous for his ability to sense the emotional content of a recording and to anticipate how listeners would respond. Phillips’ intuition came from a childhood exposure to African-American sounds that he heard in the cotton fields of north Alabama. His love for music drew him into the radio business, where he learned to work a nascent technology through which he commanded the airwaves, electronic signals, and a generation of American teenagers to dance to those sounds. Phillips had a gift for musical intuition, but he was also an engineer.

“He took a course at Alabama Polytechnic Institute and an engineering course at Auburn. I don’t think he went to Auburn, but it was through the mail” Jerry Phillips says. “Of course, when he got to his recording studio days, he installed his own equipment, hooked it all up, built the speakers. I wouldn’t necessarily call him a gear-head, but he was a gear-head by necessity. He had to do the things he was capable of doing, because he didn’t have much money. As a general rule, he was very interested in equipment and technology.”

Phillips worked in audio when audio was new. He became a radio engineer in Muscle Shoals in the late 1940s. At that time, music was cut onto lacquer discs by a lathe. It was not until after World War II that Americans became aware of recording to magnetic tape, a technology developed by the Germans. “Tape recording” as we know it was originally funded in the U.S. by Bing Crosby, who saw that the possibility of recording sound to the quieter, longer-format medium would allow him to spend less time in the broadcast studio and more time on the golf course. Crosby spent $40,000 to bankroll the Ampex tape corporation in 1947. Phillips opened Memphis Recording Services two years later.

Matt Ross-Spang sits in the control room of Sun Studios, surrounded by machines that seem to have come from a 1950s sci-fi movie. On the other side of the glass, a large tour group sings along to Elvis’ “That’s All Right.” The tourists peer through the window at Ross-Spang as he talks about his job.

“Sometimes its like being in a zoo. You’re in the cage,” Ross-Spang says. His “office” is historic, a fascinating place. But it’s also a working recording studio as well as something of an ad hoc mental health facility. Like Sam, Ross-Spang has to understand both human and electronic circuitry.

“When people come to [record at Sun], they are freaked out. You have to let them Instagram and calm down. If you’re not a sociable, welcoming guy, they’ll be puking or freaking out. You won’t get anywhere.”

Ross-Spang asked for these problems. He’s had Sun on his sonar since he was a kid.

“I recorded here when I was 14,” Ross-Spang says. “I did this god-awful recording, I mean god awful. It was so bad. I played acoustic and this guy played a djembe drum with eggs. That’s how bad it was. But I met James Lott, who had been the engineer for 20 years at the time. So, to me, it was like the coolest thing in the world being in Sun. A lot of people get captured by sound. I wasn’t captured by sound at that point, but when I watched him manipulate the sound, I was like ‘You can do all of that?’

“Trying to save what I did out in the studio, I just bugged him a bunch, and he told me to come back and intern with him,” Ross-Spang says. “I came back when I could drive. So I came to work here when I was 16. The other intern didn’t last that long. I started interning for him when I was about 17 or so. After high school, I would come down and do tours as a tour guide. And then I’d intern until about two or three in the morning. I did that for about six or seven years and then took over as head engineer about five years ago. I’m one of the few people who figured out what they wanted to do really early on. And it was Sun Studio.”

Long before Ross-Spang arrived, the facility had been abandoned by the Phillips (who never owned the building) in 1959. It sat empty, then housed other businesses. According to Jerry Phillips, a combined effort by Graceland, the Smithsonian, and Sam himself saved the place from the typical Memphis fate of abandonment, demolition, and dollar store. The studio was rebuilt according to Sam’s memory before being purchased by Gary Hardy in the late 1980s. The current owner is John Schorr. But Ross-Spang is the driving force behind rebuilding the room to Sam’s specs.

“It’s fantastic that [Ross-Spang] has pursued this with such scholarly devotion,” says Peter Guralnick, author of the definitive, two-part Presley biography, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, who is currently at work on a biography of Sam Phillips. “Sam was systematic in thinking about sound and gave great thought to it — no square angles; the tiles. In addition, he felt there was something unique about the room at 706 Union. He didn’t know it when he rented it. To have reconstituted it is an exercise in creative archeology.”

Ross-Spang is certainly diligent, but there were some lucky (and unlucky) breaks along the way.

“I became the head engineer at Sun Studio when I was 22. I didn’t have any money. I had one guitar. It was a beautiful, big Guild. It was signed by Robert Plant, Elvis Costello — people I’ve met over the years and hung out with here. One night, while I was away, it got smashed, and I got an insurance check from the studio for it. It was a huge chunk of money for me. The whole time I’ve been at Sun, I’ve wanted to put the original stuff in. Sam used this old 1930s RCA tube console. But you could never find those things. People just threw them out in the 1960s. But one popped up on eBay, two days after my guitar was smashed. The only way I could have bought it was with the insurance check. To this day, I think my X-Men ability is that if I need something and I think about it hard enough, it pops up on eBay. I bought that, and the studio bought other stuff. It’s taken about five years, but now it’s all here.”

Ross-Spang bought a 1936 RCA radio mixing console, the same model Phillips paid $500 for when he opened Memphis Recording in January 1950. Phillips originally cut records onto discs with a lathe and switched to analog tape in late 1951.

“I’ve got the same 1940s Presto lathe that I can cut 45s on. All the Ampex, all the microphones are period-correct to what he used in the day. It’s becoming exactly like it was in 1956.”

In 1956 at Sun, Johnny Cash recorded “I Walk the Line.” Orbison cut “Ooby Dooby.” Billy Lee Riley recorded “Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll.”

“Mark Neil, who did the Black Keys’ Brothers album, is a huge Sun fanatic,” Ross-Spang says. “He helped me locate stuff and figure out how Sam did it. Back then, there was no ‘normal’ way to do things. A lot of the stuff was homemade. We really had to use our ears and listen to records. There were only five pictures in the studio back then. It’s not like the Beatles, where we know exactly on June 2, 1966, George Harrison sneezed. We don’t have any of that kind of info. A lot of the old guys don’t really remember. Scotty Moore was an engineer after Sun, so he remembered a lot more than anybody else. But even then, Scotty might say one thing, somebody else might say another.”

Moore, who played guitar on all of the better Elvis records before the late 1960s, proved to be more than a historical resource for Ross-Spang.

“I’m lucky enough to have known the Sun guys for a long time,” Ross-Spang says. “I’d go visit [Moore] every couple of months in Nashville. Once, Chip Young was there and they both busted out guitars. Chip brought out his Gibson Super 400. Chip Young is one of my favorite guitar players of all time. He played with Elvis and some other people. So they are all playing at Scotty’s, and then they passed it to me.”

For Ross-Spang, who plays guitar in the Bluff City Backsliders, it was terrifying: “I’m thinking ‘What am I going to play in front of y’all?'”

The job and the friendship with Moore later put Ross-Spang in an awkward place.

“A year or two ago, I did a record with Chris Isaak here. And, this January, the BBC wanted to do an interview with Scotty, but about his life, not about Elvis. They called me up and we kind of got some things together. We got Chris Isaak to host it. Then about a week before the producer called and said, ‘Hey, we thought it would be great if they cut the Elvis songs again.’ That’s great, but Scotty hasn’t played guitar in like five years; he just doesn’t do it anymore. They said, ‘That’s fine, you do it.’ I was like, ‘Great, you’re going to make me play my hero’s guitar licks in front of him in the place where he did it.’ Of course, I know all his licks. I’ve stolen them a thousand times. He’s saved my butt on sessions. But I’ve never had to do it front of everybody. And to make matters worse, I had invited Jerry Phillips, J.M. Van Eaton, everybody.”

But things got even weirder.

“A side funny thing was that Chris wanted to do the songs in E,” Ross-Spang says. “If you’re a guitar player, you know they’re in A. You can play them in E, but they don’t sound the same. I’m setting up the mics and I hear ‘Let’s try this in E.’ I’m going, ‘crap.’ I told Chris, ‘You know these songs are in A,’ and he says, ‘E is better for me.’ I’m wondering how I’m going to save my butt. I’m just thinking about me at this point. I know one person in this room who can get him to go with A.

“I said, ‘Scotty, Chris is talking about doing ‘That’s All Right’ in E.’ He was like, ‘What? Why?’ I said, ‘You should go talk to him.’

“We did them in A, and it sounded great. It came out really well. But I had bought a tube tape echo because of the one Scotty had at his house. Afterward, he said, ‘You know I’ve got one of those.’ I said ‘I bought one because of you.’ He said, ‘Well, hell, I’ll just give you my old one.’ About a month or two later he called me up and asked ‘When are you going to come get this thing?’ I wasn’t about to bug him about it. So I went up there as fast as I could. He gave me whole live rig setup from the ’90s. It had his tube echo. He used [effects] to try to simulate the quirks of tape. They all have his hand-written notes on them. It was one of the greatest days of my life. It’s like Yoda giving you his light saber.”

Working with the limitations of the last century might seem like a pain, but Ross-Spang, who was recently named governor of the producers’ and engineer’s wing of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ Memphis chapter, appreciates the discipline it takes to record an entire group’s performance without stopping — an art many consider lost.

“When you look at old pictures of Willie Mitchell and Sam, they’re kind of crazy looking,” Ross-Spang says. “They’re smoking, and they’re hunkered over a big piece of metal and knobs. Nowadays, if I get tagged in photos, it’s me hunkered over a mouse. Why would you take a picture of that? The magic is gone when you go all digital.”

Recording a whole room to mono means everybody has to get their parts right. You can’t fix a mistake. Perhaps the reason Al Green, Johnny Cash, and the Killer keep selling records 60 years later is that they made great music together at the same time.

“I love that way of making records. Everyone has to pay attention to each other instead of themselves. It’s a team effort, including me,” Ross-Spang says. “It’s not very forgiving. But I think one of the reasons people come here to do that is because it makes them a better musician. With the computer, you can play five solos, go home for the day, and the engineer will make a solo for you. But here, if you don’t get a solo right, you may have just wasted a great vocal take. There’s so much more on the line. But that makes you play better too. It’s the only way I like to work now. People hire me to work in other studios, and I try to take the same mentality. It doesn’t always work, because they’ve got booths and headphones. You say, ‘Can you turn your amp down.’ They say, ‘Can I just put my amp in the booth?'”

He shakes his head.

“If you give a mouse a cookie, it wants a glass of milk.”