Next to the new recording space was Taylor’s Restaurant. Sam Phillips opened Memphis Recording Service on January 3, 1950. After he secured the lease on the garage, he replaced the tin ceiling with acoustic tile and walked around the room clapping to hear the exact echo from each spot. He found that place in a 1905 building that had been a former auto glass garage. He was looking around Memphis for a place to open a recording studio. He was already experimenting with recording, moving the microphone closer to certain instruments to emphasize their sound. Skyway Ballroom at the Peabody where it is said that he could hear the music from Beale Street.
#Sun records full#
But just a visit to Sun Studios can leave you full of stories and reminiscences of mid-century Memphis.īeginning in 1945, Sam Phillips, originally from Florence, Ala., worked as a DJ and sound engineer for radio station WREC, recording the weekly radio shows from the This unassuming place belies the wildly creative music that originated here beginning in the 1950s. They might not realize that inside 706 Union Avenue is an approximately 600-square-foot room where rock and roll was invented. It’s the one with the giant Gibson guitar hanging over the front door. The studio operates as a recording business after the last tour of each day.īlink and one could completely miss the angled building at the corner of Union and Marshall. More recently, bands like U2, Def Leppard, and Bonnie Raitt have laid down tracks. Stars like Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison recorded there around that time as did Blues and R&B artists like Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. Reputedly the first rock and roll single, Jackie Brenton and his Delta Cats’ “Rocket 88” was recorded here in 1951 with song composer Ike Turner on keyboards, leading the studio to claim status as the birthplace of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Sun Studio was originally called Memphis Recording Service, sharing the same building with the Sun Records label business.