Tell me the story who the program director was and you had played Elvis and he told you not to.

Ah, our program director which we called PD just shortening it out, he was a Southern white man, he was from St. Louis and, ah, I guess he thought, being white, that black folk just didn't like Elvis which means that he was so wrong because when Elvis walked on the stage, when I took him on the stage and he made that twisting of the leg, and people started storming at the, beating on the doors, trying to get to him, then I was able to start playing Elvis the next day because I started to play him and he said, uh uh, you can't play it 'cause black folk don't like it. How in the world does anybody going to say what a group likes, makes no difference who they are. So he found out different and real quick.

Before Elvis came on the scene in the early fifties, late forties, tell me the difference in the records that white and black stations were playing and how it was very separate unlike today.

Yeah, ah, it's, yesteryear white stations were playing before we went on the air, before a black voice got on the air in 1948 here at WDIA, Nat Weliams… Nat Williams was the first black disc jockey, a high school history teacher, my high school history teacher. Ah, Burt Ferguson and John Pepper, they were sort of a Branch Rickey of radio like Branch Rickey was with Jackie Robinson, the first to enter professional baseball. He said, we are going to do this because this is the way it is, it's the way it's supposed to be. So they hired Nat D, a smart, brilliant black man who incidentally was teaching at Memphis State University when it wasn't cool for blacks to even be inside of a white university in the South anyway. But Nat was teaching history at the institution. So he was the first one. And being my high school teacher and being my inspiration, my tutor, after a while, after being here for about two or three years, I think I came to DIA in 1951. The music varied because whites were saying that this kind of song is too black and the blacks were saying this is too white. You had people like the Moon Glows, this was before maybe the Drifters came along, Flamingos, those are the groups that we were playing at that time and I think the white stations were playing the big bands, you know, that we just weren't a part of at that time. And this is early, early radio here but finally, finally, as of now, you still know what higher up rock is because the white stations are playing the hard rock and we are not. You know I hate the word to have to separate, it, it kind of bugs me to have to say black white, always trying to differentiate between the two. Let, let, let me kind of open up a can of worms here. If you would take a musical note, this is music now, not black music as it, as it is called, not white music as it is called, take a musical note and put it on paper. When you take this musical note and put it on paper there is not black note, no white note as such. It's all black and white. You got a half note which is black and white. You got a whole note which is black. But the next note has got to be white. So you got a combination of black white. And in my book there is not black music, there is no white music, you got a white voice that sings and you got a black voice that sings. Voices happen to be come from a black person and voices that just happen to come from a white person. So how do you say that that's black music and white music. It is not. It is music. You like what you like. If your taste is for the kind of music that I play, fine and great. And if my taste is the kind of music that you play as, as, as a white program director or a white stations, fine, that's great. Now that's the way it used to be. But until hard rock really came along, you didn't, you couldn't hardly tell which was who, what was what. Right now at this moment there are more white bands playing blues than ever before in history because I used to say, blues belong to the black man because there's no white man in the world ever had blues like a black man. But that's not so now. For instance, take a white man who has worked hard for a living, not necessarily the white-collar job in an office all day. Say, he's been working in construction or even helping put up a big building then he comes home in the afternoon and his wife and the children are gone. There's no furniture in the house even the linoleum is off the floor. They took the salt out of the shaker and just because he's white, you think he ain't got the blues. That man got more blues than he bargained for 'cause right then and there he will sit down in his house on the floor or anywhere and cry his heart out just like I cry out mine. White men have the blues just like black folk.

Tell me about … and Sam Phillips.

In the pre Elvis days of Sam Phillips who owned Sun Records, during the early days Sam Phillips was recording all black artists and there's where "Bear Cat" came in and, ah, "Night Working Blues", ah, "Tiger Man", all these songs that I was doing with Sam Phillips and then after a year or so Elvis came. And, and, and, and, ah, when Elvis came, I don't why, he comes up with some sort of a tale, but I don't know why, and I hope I never really know why, by Sam discarded all of his black artists, every last one of them. When Elvis came they had Elvis, Johnny Cash, ah, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins, when all of these came along then there were no blacks in the Sam Phillips stable at all which proves Sam Phillips to be wrong in a lot of things that he's done wrong and, and since he's had Sun Records, ah, because a few years later in came Stax, which proved that maybe, just maybe, Sam was thinking that blacks and whites couldn't make it together, Stax proved it wrong, so wrong.

I'm Rufus Thomas, the world's oldest teenager of course even with that somebody wanted to jump on it. Dick Clark said he was the oldest teenager but I'm older than Dick Clark. But when he came to Memphis I said, Dick, they're saying that you say that you're the oldest teenager and I say that I'm the oldest teenager. Well, he separated it again, he said, you are the world's oldest black teenager and I'm the world's oldest white teenager, - yeck.

Say your name again.

I'm Rufus Thomas.

Tell me about Sam Phillips early recordings. Tell us some of the other artists he was recording. What category of artist did he record in the beginning.

What it, it was, what Sam Phillips was doing in the early days was all, all rhythm and blues with only one group but they called that rhythm and blues when there was a black voice doing it, it was always rhythm and blue and if a white voice was doing it, it was called pop. So it was rhythm and blues. You had Rufus Thomas doing like "Bear Cat". And you had Ike Turner out of Clarkesdale, Mississippi. He was playing piano at the time, not guitar. So he came up with "Rocket '88", that came through Sun Studios. And then you had a group that he recorded in prison called The Prisonaires, so all of it was rhythm and blues because naturally it was rhythm and blues because it was a black voice and that's all it was because it was categorized as rhythm and blues anyway so you couldn't get out of it. It had to be rhythm and blues because of the black voice.

Was Sam the only game in town in those days in terms of a place to record?

Sam was, Sam was the only place in that, at that time with the exception of, there was a small place on the north side of Memphis called Meteor, Meteor Records. And I did a couple of discs for them, ah, "I Got a New Kind of Lovin’" that the other men can't catch on, which I still have. And I did "I'll Be a Good Boy". I did "I'll Be a Good Boy" in 1943 in a club called Curries, Curries Club, on the north side of Memphis. And that song that was done in 1943 was recorded last year and it sound like right up to date now.

When he was recording all of the black artists these would have been people who might have been playing on Beal Street. Did he love the music or was he trying to make a buck? How do you look at Sam?

I'm looking at Sam in those days as trying to make a buck and I guess he would have to have some kind of a liking to this kind of music because I think even B.B. King came through there, Howlin’ Wolf came through and, and there were people who later were, were notables in, in, in the profession so he had to have some kind of a feeling. But he was still capitalizing and trying to get something going where black music was concerned. So I think that's why he needed them, because Sam charged for everything. If he went out and got you a sandwich he'd charge you for it. He'd put that on your account, any little thing, soda, nickel, dime, whatever it was, Sam was charging you for being in that studio.

He says that he loved that music and was trying to spread it around as wide as he could because everybody should be hearing it. Do you think that's genuine?

I, I don't, I really don't think that's genuine. I just don't think that was genuine. He was, he was spreading it around alright but, ah, if you, if you ever listen to him and let and, and try to vision or visualize in your head, ah, if he was so much in spreading this that why should he kick us all out because a white boy came along? He was doing something, in the meantime the on., the whole time he was doing this, he was lo., looking for a white boy who could sing black, who could sing like a black boy which means his head, his head was not really there. His head was somewhere else, really.

There are so many white disc jockeys that sounded black in those day. They were copying what you all were doing here. How did you feel about that, people like Horse Allen, John R, … Noble, a lot of people thought they were black.

Well back in those days when there was people like Horse Allen and John R and Gene Nobles, well you knew Gene was white he just couldn't disguise his voice but as for John R and Horse Allen, they did a wonderful job of disguising their voices as black which really put them over with the black folk. But John R was the kind of a man that loved, loved, I loved this kind of music, there's no doubt about his love for the music. He truly, truly loved it. And he played it and you could tell in his voice how and how he felt about the music that he played and everybody thought he was black. Then came Horse Allen, same thing, loved this kind of music and they proved it and you could turn on that radio in the middle of the night and you could pick up Hoss Allen coming through, man, it was something. He gave, he glave… gave black music a lift like no other individual disc jockey ever gave black music that kind of a charge. And people knew about black music all over the country because it was a 50 thousand clear watt station and he went way down, way up, way over, way across, you can hear - Horse Allen. And then came the other disc jockey that used to go through Coahuila Mex… Mexico.

What about Dewey Phillips.

The greatest disc jockey of all time was Dewey Phillips right here in Memphis, Tennessee beside me of course. But, ah, Dewey Phillips had this kind of a rapport with black folk. Dewey Phillips gave black music an injection like no other person ever did it right here in Memphis at WHBQ. Now all these things was before DIA went on the air. This was early. Dewey Phillips, you said, go down there and take a guitar, take a wheelbarrow full of cabbage heads or, or some turnip greens and everything and run around to the front door, break the door down and say, Phillips sent you. He's the only white man in that day that could go in a black neighborhood and they lauded him. They were so happy to see a man like that, white, going into a neighborhood of blacks and they treated the man, almost I would say, like a king because of what he had done for black music in this area. And he was playing black music when it wasn't cool. It was not cool to play black music on no radio station. And if his popularity had been so good and, and, and, ah, his listenership hadn't been so good, with the kind of music that he was playing, he'd of got fired right off the reel, he would have gotten fired right like that. But he was too hot. So they had to keep him. I mean he, he, what he did, he demanded and got the respect of one of the finest disc jockeys that had ever been in this city. He gave black music, he played my records, he played my records like they'd never been played before like almost wore the grooves off of them. And we all loved him, Dewey Phillips.