The actual truck, crux of the situation with Elvis was after many, many, times of having Scotty, Bill and Elvis come back in to the studio and I'd listen to them and I... I just was determined not to do anything on Elvis until I felt we had exhausted all of the avenues of getting something different or we'd throw the whole project away. Period. This day, we had wound up and, ah, the session and, ah, about ready to bag up the instruments and go home. So I went in and talked to him and said, hey we're still not where I believe we should be and I think we all agree on this. And so I turned around and went back in the control room and the next thing I know, Elvis still had his guitar, his flat top around his neck with strap on his shoulder and he cut out on "That's Alright Mamma", which number one it, it was, ah, it, to me it was just a great tune by ah, Arthur Big Boy Crutter. And number one, it shocked me, although Elvis new a lot of different blues and as I said, country and the whole, the whole bit and pop, but I mean, he came and there just a certain rhythm that he started out with and man the minute I heard that thing I said Lord, I mean if we can just attach a few little appendages to this thing, it's going to come out, I mean, I mean this is what we've been looking for. And I kidded him, I went in there and I think I cursed all of them out you know, but everyone of them is bigger than me so I had to be kind of careful. But anyway, "That's Alright Mamma" was absolutely the beginning and I mean I think we had a couple of takes on it and that was all after weeks, months of going. But that shows you that it's worth it and I don't believe in rehearsals as such. I don't believe, - hey, uh, uh, I believe in spontaneity of it, but it, it, it's got to be that thing. And, and you know, I always let my artists like, Elvis, Scotty and Bill, I mean, hey I let them have some input, but when it got right down to it, I was going to make the mind 'cause when they got through my work was just beginning, I had to sell it. Now and, and we turned around and I said hey, do you know anything else, I says, as wild as that? And he cut down on, I mean a class you talk about a classic "Blue Moon of Kentucky", blew me away, blew me away, just I mean, you know. I mean just the idea, here is a classic, classic bluegrass number and here is a classic blues and here is a white cat not imitating or mimicking or anything but just putting his feel into it. And Paul Ackerman told me with Billboard who was one of the great critics in the music industry and he was a born native New Yorker but he loved what we were doing in the South. He told me, he said, Sam, you had to be crazy or the most brilliant person in the world, number one, to take a white young kid like Elvis Presley or anybody and record a black, lowdown, gut bucket, almost gut bucket blues, that's, and turn around and put a classic bluegrass, "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the other side. He said, did you not know what you was doing? I said, hell, no. That really wasn't, I, I was real smart and I did know. No, I didn't. No, I was just, the, the elements there that were, the things that I had thought of and prayed for so long that came together, it didn't have to have a color, it didn't need a color and by God it didn't have one. Okay? Then let's follow that up with, ah, an idea like, ah… There was Junior Parker the thing that brought Elvis in was "Mystery Train" okay, that I had out on Sun one of the, aye, it was our first, one of our first releases. Elvis loved that thing and I mean we recorded that and it's just amazing - you listen to Junior Parker and it's got that fantastic sound to this day. I mean feel, it's a feel, you know, to hell with all of this great sound. Then you listen to Elvis and it's got it's own individuality. What an amazing thing that music can do, black, white and any classification you want to put it. That, after Elvis, Carl Perkins come in from, Beemis, Tennessee, right outside of Jackson, Tennessee, 85 miles away, east, northeast Memphis. And I heard something in this dude and we played around with some country type things then we finally got around, I wish I had the time to tell you but we don't, we got around to "Blue Suede Shoes". And I got news for you, if I hadn't believed so much in "Blue Suede Shoes" Carl Perkins' version of it, what we did with it, I would not have sold Elvis Presley contract. I needed the money so bad, believe me, that I couldn't give Carl Perkins away because, you know, we hadn't released "Blue Suede Shoes" and when we did, we didn't know absolutely it was going to be a hit. We knew we had something hot with Elvis, there was no question about it. And I knew I had "Blue Suede Shoes" in the can. And people have asked me repeatedly, do you regret selling Elvis Presley? I do not. And I did not. And I will not. It, it gave me the financing when I sold it, his contract, to RCA to merchandise "Blue Suede Shoes" which, I mean, you know what it is, don't you? It's an anthem. Okay. After that comes a guy along by the name of Johnny Cash. Hello, I'm Johnny Cash, Diaz, Arkansas. What about it? I mean this guy is so damned distinctive, I mean, you know, so you don't go in there and start changing folks around. What you do is you go in there and unlock that door. I mean you pull it open, say, - walk right in, yeah, glad to see you. You know that's exactly what you do. Ain't no secrets about it. But you better know how to handle the psychology of folks. Music is, deals with the emotions so much in so many different ways not just from what you say but the disappointment you can have in music, the disappointment you can sing about in music, but the happiness you can sing about in music. It, it, the, the, the context of music to people, well we had this in these country unpolished, I call them, more than diamond. What's harder than a diamond? I don't know anyway. Ah, then Johnny Cash and everybody felt, well, I know Phillips going to try to make a rocker out of him. I sure did but I mean it, I didn't try to make no, I mean, I mean I made a rocker but I didn't take Johnny Cash and try to refashion his soul. We just took that old vamp tune, du, da da dune, and I want to tell you something. Hey, that was distinctive. That was different. That had all of the elements of feel blues. "Give My Love To Rose", "Big River", "I Walk The Line", "Folsom Prison Blues". Give me some better music than that, will you please. There just ain't any. I'm sorry, it ain't any. So, then we have a guy by the name, you know, Jerry Lee Lewis. I think a few people probably listening to this program have heard about Jerry Lee Lewis. Jerry Lee came into the studio and he had been to his, ah, cousin's house who lived here in Memphis, he came in from Ferriday, Louisiana which is somewhere close to Vicksburg down there, just off of the Mississippi. And I had taken my first vacation and God only knows if I'd ever had one in my life. And we had gone with Knocks and Jerry, my sons and Becky, my wife, we had took off and gone to the big vacation resort of Daytona Beach - boy, man, living high on the hog. Now, let me tell you, let me tell you, I got back here, Jerry Lee had been to the studio. We took a week off, Jack Clement was working for us by that time 'cause he was unconventional and I could see that in his eyes, okay. So the killer came in, as he was later known, or he is now later know, the killer - Jerry Lee Lewis - a fabulous, fabulous, instinctive, - oh, good God, I, you know, I just don't have very good command of the English language. My grammar may all right but I can't be descriptive enough about Jerry Lee Lewis. This guy is an unbelievable, unbelievable talent. Ah, okay, he came in and, ah, did a little piece of tape. Says, I, I'm going to wait here until Mr. Phillips gets back in town. So he talked Jack into going back, putting him on a piece of tape.

You rolling?

Yeah, we're rolling for you.

Jerry Lee was determined that he was going to stay in town until we got back from our little vacation in Daytona. Meantime Jack Clement had on a couple of sides, I think it was "Crazy Arms" on one side and "You Win Again" on the other and it just was Lewis at the piano and singing it. So I had gotten in and hadn't really got into the studio real good and Jack told me, he says, ah, I got a piano picker that I want you to hear, I mean, he's been hanging around for months, he says, and I finally agreed to go ahead and record him. And I listened to it. And, and, I kid you not, I mean, I think the first side I heard was "You Win Again", no, no, no, no, no, - "Crazy Arms". And I didn't, I didn't, I didn't get, I did not get eight bars into it and I said, - where in the hell is this cat? I mean, where is he? He said, well he's down there at his brother-in-law, J.W. Brown. I said, - how soon can you get him up here? So that was the way that it started. And, ah, I mean it took me no time just like when Presley hit "That's Alright Mama". Hey, if we weren't going to make it on that honey, it was nothing I could do ever. I mean, I mean, at least to get us started. So the same thing with Jerry Lee Lewis, just at the piano and "Crazy Arms" the old Ray Price song and yet, you know, the beauty of this thing, Ray Price had a hit on that thing. And yet when you heard Jerry Lee Lewis you didn't hear Jerry Lee Lewis copying Ray Price. He gave it, I mean he gave it that individuality that, all these great songs and, and the crossover stuff and all of that stuff. But, ah, I, I, I know that Jerry Lee Lewis, and I think the people ought to know this, and this takes nothing away from anybody, with all the misfortune and this guy has had some unfortunate things happen as I know most of you know, ah, but I still say that he probably, and I think it all stems from that intuitive thing about religion and about fervor of the Holy Ghost in us all, in some way that we may not even know about, maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the bible, maybe it does, but Jerry Lee Lewis will go down in the history of this business as one, so far as I'm concerned, as one of the most talented, creative people that I ever worked with. There again, the chemistry was right. No, I didn't have to pull it out of him but I had to let him know that it was being heard, you know. And that was important, very important to Jerry Lee. You know what was one of the most fascinating things too about all of these artists and many more that I worked with, we just don't have time to cover them all, wish we did, was, the implicit…

One of the most important and implicit things in the success that we had, and you can call it whatever degree you want to, of success, but when you go and you're able through Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, ah, many others that were lesser known but very influential, when, when you know that you have been able to give these people the inspiration to display their God given talent and to be proud of it and to do it under conditions of which they had never experienced before, then you know you've got to have something working for you spiritually, one to another. I think that is the essence of Sun Records. Ah, there are so many stories really about each individual that one of these days maybe we'll get to give that to the people. It's fascinating to me, being there, but even, not only being there but looking back upon it, it, it's still and nothing has diminished its value to me of what it has done for the world in freeing our minds and our spirits and breaking down these barriers that so many of us have about things, whether it be music or going to school or not going, whatever. So it is a fascinating thing, Sun Records, 706 Union, if the people are ever in Memphis, Tennessee, I don't have anything to do with the studio but it is exactly like it was when I recorded all of these people starting in the early Fifties. They should see it. Ah, it's no plug for anything other than you should see where it was born and the meager circumstances under which it was born. But all of these people understood and I understood where we came from and what we were trying to achieve and that was to give our expression through music to the world even though it was very unconventional and not immediately accepted. It truly did strike - pardon this pun - the right chord.

How did you react when there started being a lot of opposition in the larger culture to rock and roll? People banning concerts and records, was that like the resistance you got here recording the black music early on? How did that affect you?

You know to have done what the early elements required in this business you just could not be discouraged easily. I mean, ah, you, you just, you couldn't. My total intuitive feel about the things that I was attempting to do, now you, I, I think it's totally important that we understand that I didn't know whether I'd live long enough to see the things that ultimately did happen with the artists I worked with. There was no way of knowing, certainly in the early stages of it, and certainly when you didn't have much money and certainly that's the reason I sold Elvis' contract was to get a little money to where we could give it a little further chance. The, the thing I knew I had to have on my side was time. I had to have some time. You don't change anything overnight. And so, especially, if, if, if I could just make one point for this whole program, so far as I'm concerned, is that we were successful in changing, now, I, I, you know, hey man, I don't care anything about changing your attitude and all that, but, changing your receptivity to something that was good all along but somehow the other, we weren't permitted to hear, more ways than one, not on the air and then sociologically it wasn't the thing to do. So, believe me, Sun Records is bigger than me, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Orbison, any of these people. It turned out that we were the catalyst by which this little label with the damn yellow and burnt umber brown on it, we never changed when they had these labels with ten different beautiful colors, we just stuck by our little, simple label with the rooster on it that we had to cut it out for the big hole for the 45, the rooster. But it, it, it really is truly something that we, that Sun Records and I, hey, I'm not pointing at me alone but it's something Sun Records did. And hey, Lord, all of these other great independent labels were doing it too. What we are proud of is we believe that we broaden the base of rhythm and blues, race music, spiritual music, gospel music, and if you please, - rock and roll, thanks to Alan Freed.