Phillips:
Okay, let's see where Elvis Presley liked to do his
work. He actually, literally spent every minute just about of his time when
he was in here on every session. He is, there was something, just a little
circumference around here that Elvis didn't like to get out of at all even
when he wasn't actually recording or taking a take. And he loved to glance
at me. He would see Scotty Moore playing the guitar and Bill Black playing
the bass. Now, everybody had their little place they liked to get because we
had to have them in certain places to mike them, depending on what they did,
whether they played an instrument and song or what. Then, Jerry Lee Lewis
liked his piano right here. He loved to have it pointing right in this
direction and looking at me. And he had, ah, Roland Janes would always stand
about the middle of the room with his guitar. Then for some reason the
other, we liked to have the drums with J.M. Van Eaton back about where they
are right now if you saw them in the picture a while ago. Somehow or another
it was very important that we make sure that these different acoustic sounds
were just absolutely a part of the way it was set up and no bigger than the
studio is you can see that that could be a problem on things to change the
sounds. But it, a lot of time six inches maybe just a little bit off of the,
the port of a, a guitar, the opening of the hole, would make all the
difference in the world. A little further up on the neck of a guitar could
make the difference in the acoustics. That's how we got the unusual sound,
that's how, ah, that we've been credited for getting, you know, a little
different sound. And that's, that's, that's what this business is all about,
is get a sound, get attention. Now then, ah, we, ah, we had some of the
black artists before Elvis and Jerry Lee and Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash
and, and all of these. And Cash was always the man that liked to stand right
here looking this a way. And, ah, he was a very, very unusual singer. He was
a singer that had that acoustic type of sound to his voice even. It was just
really, you may like him, you may not like Johnny Cash but you knew who it
was when he opened his big mouth, you know. Now, ah, let's see we had
probably, the "Rocket 88" thing with Jackie Brinston was one, it, it was the
first super big record that I cut right in the studio here with Ike Turner
and his band and Jackie Brinston playing a, a fantastic tenor sax and then
doing the vocals on it. And it all took place right here with Jackie
standing and just playing that sax and pulling it to the side and just
singing with his eyeballs this big, you know. He had no idea he was going to
be the vocalist that day, Ike turner was supposed to be the vocalist. But we
hit upon this song "Rocket 88". And it came off, I mean it just came off
fantastic. Now this was getting so bright for me around here, I'm going to
put on my glasses for just a few minutes. And, and then I'll show you right
over here in this corner was an unusual sound. It, it, it is made like this
corner. This one is made horizontally if you'll notice that we got the, the
V shaped walls and the V shaped ceiling. But we could get a certain unusual
sound on acoustic instruments like a plane, what they call, flat top guitar.
We would run them off every now and then over in that corner. When they had
a little solo I'd take Jack Clement run him over there and he was just
fantastic. I mean he loved to pick now, he didn't strum, he picked. Put him
in the corner like that, I mean that corner. Put him over here, it wouldn't
be the same. Now these are the things that fascinated me no end. I knew we
were touching the elements that were different in music because I haven't
hear the effects that we were getting with a simple little studio with just
some very relatively inexpensive microphones, all of our equipment was
relatively inexpensive, but believe me we had to know what to do with it or
we would have nothing. And, and all of the young people - this is the thing
that I'm proudest of I guess - that we had here in this studio, black and
white. Believe me, take my word for it, unequivocally, the thing I'm
proudest of, all of were just, we were just beginners, you know just
beginners. And I, I can tell you without any hesitation whatsoever, this is
a room that the world really could see because I can tell you and this is
not for any aggrandizement of my part but this is the cradle right here of
rock and roll. It started right here. It was heard around the world and it's
being heard today.
Okay, okay, just trying to catch
my red carpet there. Can you believe, look at that Sun label there, I mean
that would be, look who's there. I mean, I mean these are such an , look at
the old 78. What about that? Now, we're talking about CDs. Man, I'm telling
you when you look at the walls here and you see the Howling Wolf, Chester
Burnett, that was one of the greatest guys to record I have ever in my life
recorded. And this is of course the million dollar quartet. Now that would
be, now you would call it the billion dollar quarter, I mean that's how
inflation has taken over. Then we have the places we go around here and we
just look at the different pictures. And I'll have to say that you just got
Gary some fantastic pictures. That's the first car that I bought Carl
Perkins. I said, if "Blue Suede Shoes" sold a million I'd buy you a brand
new blue swede Cadillac and that's what I did, I ordered it special for him.
Was he glad to get it.
File past them, yeah, oh,
they do make sense there, don't they? They make sense for this. Take an
anagram. Alright boy, I'm walking. Yes indeed I'm a talking about you and me
and a hoping that you come back to me, hey, hey. Well let's see, I'm tell
you what. This…