Sam, do you feel comfortable at starting with when you came to Memphis and the music that you heard and how that led you to want to open up a recording service, that whole beginning area. Do you want to get into anything about how when you were growing up, about the music that you heard, about the church music and all that?

No, that's ah- ah- ah- really my m- m-, the bases of me.

Okay, let's do that.

Okay. First of all in response to the question and what happened in Memphis with me was something that started many years before that ah- in Florence, Alabama. Lauderdale county on the Tennessee River and what we call the bend of the river, which is about the only farm land in Alabama. Northwest Alabama. And ah, I was living through the depression of the `30's and I was, gosh in 1930 and the crash of `29 I was like 6, 7 years old and we went through 10 years up until World War ah, II. And so, cotton was 5 cents a pound and ah, we lived ah, and we were tenant farmers ourselves and then we had black tenant farmers on the farms with us that were working there. It so happened my daddy loved the soil and but when cotton got to be 5 cents a pound and we all were very hungry and we all look forward to hog killing time. And I want to tell you something, I found out in this, hey, th- th- th- the truth of the matter is that if you can smell chitlins cooking you would never eat them. But if you can let somebody cook them way across the way chitlins taste good. And you be surprised for what affect the lack of having the things that ah, we've dreamed about I guess, did for us emotionally, what a foundation, as we look back upon it now, that it built for the creativity of what are we all about. We don't have a hell of a lot of food, even on a farm. We certainty don't have much money. That goes for our black or negro friends. That goes for us, there's a certain camaraderie that ah, came about during those days and as a child I was all eyes and, I would say more ears than eyes. The way people said things in those days seemed to have such a curve of how they felt. It ah, it gave an almost instant insight into that individual and ah, his or her or their surroundings and what they were confronted with each morning when they would wake up and what they were confronted with when they would hit whatever type of bed or palette that they had for the floor. Now, people may not think this is highly important to music. I got news for you. It is singularly the most important ingredient into creativity. When mankind is confronted with the things that I saw, that I could recognize as a child, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 years old, and recognize that the elements that were going on that was completely out of out hands so far as the depression and what we could do about it. That made an impression not only on Sam Phillip, of which it made a mammoth impression on me, and I'm not sure that I absolutely knew it at the time, but it made a mammoth impression on the whole feel of civilization. Especially in the South. We know we had bad times in the North, we know we had it all over the country, we had a world wide depression. But that depression is kind of home to you where it happens to you. And that's very important. Our's happened to happen where people had some way were able and smart in, as a matter of fact, brilliant enough, to not let love get away. Not let it get away when things were, I mean hell, I'm talking about rough. Now, I'm not talking about going without a meal or two, I'm talking about, man I mean ah, Saw Mill Gravy made out of fat back, cooked in some flour and eat that with some biscuits and that, if it was hot, that was a good meal. That was a good meal.

Sam, are you ready to just pick it up?

Yeah, I don't know that I'll hit exactly, but ah. Ah, the essence of these things ah, basically are the fundamentals by which man is made up. Then how does a person that is frustrated, how do they vent their frustrations? How do they do something to relieve the pressures that are brought on physiologically, in addition maybe physically from not having the things we aught. So, I- I found in a hurry that my black friends in the cotton patches, they turned to music. I mean music that came from their souls that they made up as they were picking. Some of it had been in ah, their family probably for generations. On the other hand on ah, being a small kid, my sister, I had 2 sisters, older than me, and uh, I had 4 brothers and they would have these ah, parties about once every 2 months. And they would be Round dances and Square dances and what you did, you would go up to these homes and ah, they'd take out all the living room furniture and put it in the yard if it weren't raining an- an- and on the porch if it was. And I would go and sit in the corner kind of, an- and you would have these amateur ah, people that worked every day with, I mean hands, I mean, you know, blacksmiths from an- an- an- an- and they ah, wasn't changing a tire, I mean it was changing a wheel on a wagon. And these people could play music. Now why is that? I mean, that was a release. There is no question in my mind about it. It was as much a part of developing a part the personality of what we are all about in regard to music, and what releases our spirits and what is a part of our individual psychological make up as anything in the world. As a child I observed that. I never knew if I would have any part in music but I did see that this did afford something great for people. I became later on, as a young man in the 6th grade at Gilbert School in Florence, Alabama after I had moved from Oakland, a little burgh in Lauderdale county the same county, I became interested in the band. Of course all we had was a little marching type of band and this sort of thing in the 6th grade. An- an- an- so I started playing the drums in the band. Now this- this- this sounds like it, it might be believable it might not be believable, I never thought I was "musically inclined." I knew I enjoyed it and I was to a great extent fascinated by it. Now let me tell you though, did you know, now Mr. Stubrew was the land director in Florence, Alabama in ah, the city schools there. And we all had class lessons. None of us poor folks could afford private lessons. But he told me I was one of the most natural born rhythm people that he'd ever taught. Now I... that came from certain influences. I mean I don't know that it was in my family -- I don't know of any of my family being great musicians or anything like that. So it had to be outside influences.