What was the whole atmosphere of working in there like. Can you describe a little bit about how a session would go. How a day would go because you weren't working by the clock.

No, it was just a really relaxed ah, atmosphere. Real loose, ah, no... nobody was inhibited. We just ah, they really gave us a lot of freedom. We were allowed to play, you know, more or less what we... what we felt and ah, we played off of each other. Like Jerry Lee, he wo- when we were working with him. Of course we worked with a lot of different singers other than Jerry Lee and we ah... in those days a lot of the... the stars in the Sun Records, they were also musicians, some of them weren't, but a lot of them were. For example, Charlie Rich and Roy Orbison. We worked with... with those two people as well and ah, we just more or less fell in with whatever they were doing and tried to embellish it with... with our style and... and it just seemed to work with a lot of different people, but it was real loose, relaxed. If you made a mistake it didn't make any difference if it wasn't too bad and if ah... if it had a good feel to it, well Sam had the nerve to ah... to ah keep that cut. He didn't- he wasn't inhibited either by anybody and he ah, some of the records you know had little mistakes in them, but the mistakes ah, turned out great and it didn't hurt the record at all. So it was a real loose, happy situation. Everybody really enjoyed what they were doing and you could tell it in the records by listening to them.

They encouraged really to ah, ah, do your own thing and to experiment and try and I think another that helped us a lot... the artists we were working with really treated us like we were really their band. I mean it wasn't like...

because we played a lot on the road with... with a lot of these guys too and it was almost like, even though we really wasn't their band, they treated as such. So when we got in the studio, it was pretty much ah, it wasn't like bringing in somebody you'd never met before. It worked real well.

You know the ah, people we worked with too. I mean like Charlie Rich basically was blues, jazz player and then we worked with people like Bill Justice who a schooled musician. He was a great arranger. He did big band arrangements and jazz arrangements for all kinds of people. A lot of people don't realize that and he... later on he did arranging for Dean Martin and all kinds of Nashville sessions and hit albums and in fact he did the music for ah, one of Burt Reynolds biggest movies. But he was a great talent and we worked with him and ah, we... we were able to play what bit, a lot of different kinds of styles, so we weren't... you can't lock us into one little bag and ah, and we had a lot of people. A lot of different styles and we ah, we had, well people like ah, Rufus Thomas. I did a couple of sessions with Rufus Thomas and ah, you know you can go from Rufus Thomas to ah, Bill Justice to Billy Riley to Hayden Thompson to Jerry Lee Lewis, to Roy Orbison. JM, I didn't play on any of Johnny Cash's records, but JM played on Johnny Cash's records. Um so you know, it didn't really make a difference. We- when they called us and said come in for a sessions, we didn't say with who are we recording. We didn't care and they didn't care because we all knew each other. We all had tremendous respect for each other as talent as well as people and ah, it was just a great situation. No... no one was inhibited ah, Sam you know, he... of course he was... was in charge and he was able to get the best out of whatever we had and ah... but he let us do our thing and he would you know pick out what he liked out of what we'd do. It was a great situation. Wonderful time.

What's some of the wildest things that ever happened at some of these shows? I know you guys played on the roof, and drive-ins and goodness where else. You might tell us..

Do you want to tell us about some of the places you guys used to play when you were out on the road, some of the shows, some of the wildest shows, like maybe drive-ins.

One of the fun times I guess, we had signed a contract to play some dates for the Theater people and we were travelling all through the south and ah, you'd go into one town like Memphis, you'd play the Orpheum. It was the Michael Theater at the time and it was a real nice beautiful stage and ah, wonderful facility and then you would go over here to somewhere like Hooterville and ah, you'd be looking for the theater and they'd say, oh you mean the drive-in and ah, well you know, we go out to the drive-in thinking there might be a stage there and the guy says, well we thought we'd put you on top of the concession stand. So we had to- we think he's kidding, but in reality, I mean it really was where we played. We hauled all the stuff on top of the concession stand, getting set up to play and it's tough enough playing outside anyway. Wind starts blowing and drums and cymbals are going everywhere, so that was a pretty... pretty ah, interesting time.

Did the audience surround the concession stand when you played. How did the audience behave at those things?

They ah, they... we had- the audience reaction was great. I mean they loved the music. They loved us and we loved them too and ah, to carry the weather thing a little further, it was very exciting playing on some of the metal roofs with an electric guitar and ah... and the lightening happening you know, but we ah, we played a different things like that and ah, you know, we didn't know where's we was going to play and it didn't make us any difference. It was a lot of fun, but we played ah, later on some of the biggest auditoriums in existence at the time and we'd play ah, some of the smallest honky-tonks or drive-in theaters. It didn't make any difference. It was an exciting time. The music was exciting. The people were really into it. The total population was into it. I mean it was just a better... better time I think. People weren't so serious then. They didn't take themselves so serious like ah, they're beginning to know.

What about the whole feeling at some of those shows when the real sort of rock and roll mania hysteria started to kick in. Did you guys ever get scared of crowd reaction?

There was a times that... that I got extremely scared. Ah, we were not... the stars or the front man by any means, but... but there were some angry crowds. The guys seemed to be ah, really angry because they thought the girls were flirting with the guys in the band and... and you'd walk out after you know leaving the stage and you got ah, football teams waiting to take you on and ah, so it was... it was pretty scary.

We played in some places one place in particular where you don't have time to go into that, but JM and I had the pleasure of playing at a western swing club in Dallas, Texas after one of our Big D Jamboree gigs that was kind of exciting, but that's a whole story in itself. One times that I was most scared ah, was in Cleveland, Ohio. We played a show and there was a tremendously huge audience. JM wasn't with us at that time, but ah, Jerry Lee, when he left the stage, the audience just broke and the whole audience broke to the stage chasing him and I happened to be standing there at the time. I had just bought a brand new full bodied guitar and it was a beautiful guitar and ah, here come the audience and I just fell down on top of the guitar and they just ran right over me and as soon as I came back from Memphis, I immediately traded that guitar off, but ah, there were... there were some scary times yeah.

Back in those days we... we could get really instant reaction on record releases. For example I remember on um, Jerry Lee's first record, we ah, had recorded a thing called Crazy Arms and Sam, I think in reality, really wanted to re-cut it but ah, we ah, were working in the band with Billy Riley at the time. We were out of a town for a weekend and a couple of extra days so ah, he cut an tape he had the facilities to do that and took the tape to Dewey Phillips at WHPQ radio and he played it and he got such a tremendously immediate reaction on the record that Sam went ahead and pressed him and by the time we got back in town, they had records in the studio. It was really just that quick.