MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The last group of tourists of the day emerged from an exhibit space and entered a packed room to the sound of “Cry! Cry! Cry!”, by Johnny Cash.
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They had spent the end of the afternoon absorbing stories about this small space with enormous weight—Sun Studio, in Memphis—where the nascent sound of the Rock ‘n’ roll took shape in the mid-1950s. It’s where Elvis Presley became Elvis, and Sun Records made Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and others famous. It happened between the same worn acoustic panels that still line the studio’s walls and its corrugated ceiling.
Visitors took turns holding a non-working, studio-original Shure Series 55 microphone that was available under two conditions: no stealing or kissing. They settled for taking photos before heading out into the hot summer afternoon.
Then the back door opened and local indie-rock band Blvck Hippie started walking in with their gear.
The no-kiss mic was swapped out for a working one and the cables were wired into a power grid while the drummer screwed on the cymbals.
Before long, a room meant to keep the memory of old songs alive had been transformed and wired to capture new ones. “We’re ready,” said Josh Shaw, 29, a guitarist who fronts the band, after a couple of runs through a song.
The nightlife at this National Historic Landmark site echoes the early business established here by Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records: an open-to-all recording service that first lured an 18-year-old Presley through the door. in 1953, when he spent $3.98 of his own money to record two ballads.
Phillips, who died in 2003, was 26 when he signed the lease on the one-story building in October 1949. On just over 1000 square feet he built a main office, a recording studio and a control room. In January 1950, he opened as Memphis Recording Service, aiming to amplify the verve of an “overlooked humanity,” particularly that of black musicians, that he believed could transcend social divisions.
“I knew the physical separation of the races — but I knew the integration of their souls,” he told author Peter Guralnick in the 2015 biography “Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
Phillips made the first recordings there of future stars, including BB King, Howlin’ Wolf and Ike Turner. To pay bills, he also recorded audios of weddings and funerals. Sun Records launched into the space in 1952 and remained there until opening a larger studio in 1960, a few blocks away. In 1969, he sold the label, now based in Nashville.
The building was reopened in 1987 as a tourist destination and late-night recording studio by local musician Gary Hardy, who eventually incorporated the two-story building next door, which now serves as a souvenir shop and exhibition space.
Mike Schorr, who now owns and operates the business and buildings with his brothers, John and Chris, said visitors ask if the site is still in business. “Frankly, we believe it is essential to remain an active studio,” he said. “This place is the heart and soul of this business.”
The recording studio is typically booked four nights a week, with enough demand to cover seven, said Lydia Fletcher, Sun Studio recording and booking engineer. Rates, which reflect the need to set up the studio and then prepare it again for tourists, are $200 an hour. The musicians are sometimes household names — including, in recent years, Wynonna Judd and Grammy winners Dom Flemons and Steve Cropper — but most are more likely to be best known on local stages.
“This place feels more punk rock,” said Shaw, the frontman of the band Blvck Hippie. “You can pay a lot of money and go to a place that has it all—or you can go to a place that has everything you need to get the best out of what you can do creatively. That’s why many figures still come here. There are things that cannot be bought.”
And still an emphasis on what Phillips called “perfect imperfection,” his eagerness to capture the brilliance of an authentic moment, despite a botched note or lyric. “Perfect? “That’s the devil,” he told Guralnick, recounting how the sound of a phone ringing in the office appeared on one of bluesman Jimmy DeBerry’s records. “Who in this world would want to be perfect?”
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