My first big lesson as a writer came with that review’s publication. Untrained, I’d fashioned a piece that built to a climactic image—Sonic Youth leaving the stage, a boombox at the center playing Madonna’s “Into the Groove.” When the piece ran, the last line was lopped off to make space for a lingerie ad. I thought what was left made no sense and went to a friend’s older brother at the paper to vent.
Don’t worry, he told me, it’s just words.
Even after all these years, I still find that advice liberating. For one thing, the power of the printed piece would overcome: Most people wouldn’t notice that anything was missing, they’d just finish the article and go to the next page … after studying the lingerie ad. For another, all words are not created equal. Some can be cut without diminishing the piece, but others are worth fighting for. Since then, I’ve been easy to edit.
While in the Northeast, I’d discerned something very basic about pitching stories to magazines: There was always a clamor for the cover story—in those days it seemed to rotate between Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna. When that maw was sated, I’d be the guy who’d approach the editor with an oddball idea to be stuck among the advertisements in the back—the article that lent the magazine a little credibility for its interest in what would later be called “roots music” or, later still, “Americana.” And I just cycled through the magazines writing about characters I was interested in, black and white, who were unknown to the public at large. The roster of venues reads like a memorial plaque to an age of physical record store chains, to print journalism: Music & Sound Output, Request, Pulse, Option, Creem, Spin, Details, magazines that no longer exist for airlines that no longer exist, and fanzines whose remnants are dusty, crumbling pages in landfills hither and yon.
I was pitching the unusual, unaware that I was fulfilling the credo of Memphis’s musical godhead Sam Phillips, who said to each of his artists in the 1950s: Give me something different. While the city buried African-American culture, Sam put it on the pedestal to exalt. He didn’t talk down to the black musicians he recorded—including Howlin’ Wolf, B. B. King, and Rufus Thomas—instead he elevated everybody: himself, the artist, and the audience. When he met other white musicians who, defying social norms, heard the world like he did, he encouraged them; Elvis Presley was the beacon. Carl Perkins followed, though first he went to Nashville and was told, before being sent away, I like what you’re doing, young man, but I don’t know what you’re doing.
The roster of Sun Records is a testament to Sam’s work as a producer, to his skill at drawing out the artist from the person. Elvis’s jacked-up country blues wasn’t something the young talent thought was a career; it was his impromptu effort to reinvigorate his sidemen when his recording session was flagging. Sam, in a different room, overheard it and asked what they were doing. When they said they didn’t know, Sam replied, “Well, back up, try to find a place to start, and do it again,” because Elvis’s hijinks provided the doorway to the sound Sam wanted.
Memphis—my Memphis—likes the unquantifiable. Nashville, New York, and Los Angeles—they promise stardom. Had Elvis gone there, he might have enjoyed minor success as the lame-ass Perry Como imitator he thought he was supposed to be. Elvis needed Sam to identify and affirm his renegade spirit, to allow him to express what he felt rather than what he imagined others expected. Memphis wants something different.
These pieces were published because they were different. I was reporting from where others weren’t, about something others were not heeding. But history was on my side—the music had lived on from generations before me. Now the magazines are gone, and so are most of these artists, but the art continues to thrive. None of us will be here to know, but I’d wager that this music, in a hundred years, will still be popularly unpopular—will still be hip. Its honesty abides.
Others left that Rolling Stones concert with their lives unchanged; another ticket stub for the collection. I left not realizing I’d been struck by lightning, that a fire within me was beginning to burn and the embers would be warm for my lifetime as I pursued an understanding of blues, of how music related to environment, of what made some people popular and others impoverished. My journey began with Furry at his 811 Mosby duplex and led to It Came from Memphis and a number of other books and films. More than two decades since that first book, more than four decades since that first personal encounter with Furry, it leads to this collection. I’ve chosen to run these pieces not in the chronological order of their publication but rather in something like the order of my immersion—who I met and when they influenced me. And now, watch this: In honor of Sam’s credo, I break that rule immediately, entering the story on a spiritual plane with Sam Phillips.
Memphis can be slacker city, all ideas and no action—or, worse, all the wrong action. But if you listen to the past here, it propels you forward. There’s truth in the spirit of our blues, rock and roll, and soul, and that’s why they have each transcended their time. Each explosion remains vibrant and influential. Each was triggered by a defiance of society’s norms, by benightedness and hubris, a striving for something new and different. Memphis is not for the moment, it’s for the horizon. I learned from the generosity of Furry Lewis and Odessa Redmond, from artists and musicians, black and white, all living in the face of ignorance, sloth, and hate, what great art is possible in the shadows.
SAM PHILLIPS
Memphis has been mythologized, and so has Sam Phillips. The rough edges have been smoothed, the multitudinous stories have been blended into one, creating a macerated, noncontroversial, and all-American narrative. I think Sam hated that. If the conflicts were erased, if the controversies were diminished, the achievement could not be properly understood. The devil is in the details, and Sam welcomed the demons.
So I was fully gripped when I saw a VHS tape of Sam’s 1986 appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. This was pre-Internet, when the mode of sharing was more arbitrary, when touring musicians were cultural pollinators, carrying tapes, tunes, and ideas from city to city. My friend Jim Spake was a busy bee. (Jim’s Memphis sax has backed Mavis Staples, Rufus Thomas, Lucero, My Morning Jacket, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.) After touring with rock and soul bands, he’d return to Memphis with new sounds and also VHS tapes—mostly freaky local cable shows from far-flung places. This was a time when cable was the domain of balloon artists, fetish talk shows, and rather unphotogenic hobbyists. In those analog days, someone who caught a great TV broadcast would duplicate it for a friend, the visual deterioration increasing exponentially with each copy. So if the image was really bad you’d know you’d tapped into a national cabal, were in on what was hip.
Sam Phillips: The man who sired rock and roll. (Courtesy of Ted Barron)
Jim’s dub of Sam on Dave was worth fighting through the visual degradation. Letterman was just enjoying his stride, comfortably offbeat in the late-night world, cozily antiestablishment from his major network hub. Only four years on the air, Letterman’s show was a late-night hipster paradise; showcasing the eccentrics and mocking their oddities, he augured reality TV. Irony was as comfy and unthreatening as the couch from which the viewer lounged and laughed. My guess is that Sam was unfamiliar with Letterman and had been warned about David’s potential to ridicule. Sam was wary, and he was accustomed to being in charge. What we get is a battle of the producers—who’s going to get what from whom. Because Sam was giving nothing, and certainly not going to help prepare a bland TV dinner version of his achievements—dismissive, simplistic, generic. This appearance is a beautiful window into how Sam Phillips worked, how he got that something different, those gleaming gems from musicians whom others would have paid no mind.
Sam on Dave
Oxford American, Spring 1997
More than thirty years after Sam Phillips first recorded Elvis Presley, he’s tired of telling the tale. But it’s 1986, and David Letterman has reinvigorated the talk show format with a rock and roll attitude. Letterman invites Sam Phillips to come on national
television, figuring they’ll spin the yarn one more time: How Sam was recording black blues artists when hardly anyone else paid them any mind or any money. How he thought a white kid playing that sound could make a marketing breakthrough. How he never suspected Elvis Aaron Presley would be that kid. And “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” how they became beacons for Sam’s label, bringing Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. And Roy Orbison. And Charlie Feathers. And Billy Lee Riley, remember how he got mad that night and poured whiskey on the console …
But Sam must have figured otherwise, must have decided not to rehash the grand old tales. For his appearance looks like nothing less than a surprise emergence from retirement to produce David Letterman.
Samuel Cornelius Phillips, Florence, Alabama, born (1923), Memphis matured, had done it all by the time he was thirty-one, and when he sold his Sun Records label fifteen years later in 1969, he retired from the recording studio. However loud Led Zeppelin would play or however long Eric Clapton might solo, their contributions would not add to the sum of Sam’s life experience thus far: He’d recorded Howlin’ Wolf, dusty from the fields; Harmonica Frank Floyd imitating a barnyard with his instrument stuck longways in his mouth; B. B. King with a backing band that included jazz greats Calvin and Phineas Newborn. Before retiring from the studio to work in radio, Sam had even done his part for the British Invasion, recording the Yardbirds’ primal “The Train Kept A-Rollin’.”
“This man was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—you were there that night, Paul,” says David Letterman to his band-leading sidekick, Paul Shaffer. “Folks,” Dave continues, “it’s a pleasure to have on our program tonight, Sam Phillips. Sam, come on out.”
The video shows us the wall around which guests enter, and there’s a good few beats where there should be Sam and there is none. A producer’s best tricks are always the hardest to see.
When he appears, he looks remarkably good. His hair and beard are red and long, he’s dressed casually, and goddamn, a record label with any sense would sign this man. Phillips spots the camera. He claps his hands together. He looks at Paul. He smiles wide, does a little twist, says something that, over the applause, only Paul can hear.
Letterman is up and across the set, his hand extended. “Hi Sam, how are ya?”
“Hello there, Mister David.”
Sam has halted so Dave must invite him further onto the set, over there where the guests’ chairs are, and his desk, and the microphones and the lights and all the equipment that makes these interviews possible. “Nice of you to be with us tonight,” Dave tells Sam, who is walking with a distinct bounce to his step, a swing even. As he’s seating himself, Dave asks once again, “How ya doin’?” and when he glances up he suddenly halts.
Sam has his back to the camera, his back to the national audience. Letterman’s head tilts a bit sideways, like a dog that’s heard an unusual sound.
“This is a beautiful set, David,” says Sam’s back, his arms spread wide.
Letterman leads his studio audience in some nervous giggling, and then Dave tries to move things along. “So how’re things?”
We get our first close-up of Sam. “You know,” Sam says, and he sort of licks his lips and cocks his head back, building a few seconds of his beloved silence into Letterman’s preferred rapid and vapid patter, “you know everything is—uhh,” he cocks his head the other way, thinks another second and then drawls, “fihhne.”
While they’ve been situating themselves, the horses have begun moving. Now there are four hands on the reins, and though this is clearly not a hijacking, there’s some confusion about who’s in charge.
Before David can lead, Sam launches into a discussion about Robert Morton, the backstage staffer whose job is to pump the guests for stories so that on the show Dave can pull questions out of the air that, amazingly, draw fascinating responses. “Why don’t you have him as a guest on your show?”
“We should do that, maybe. You know, from time to time we have staff members on and we talk …”
“You do?!” Sam responds, and the enthusiasm in his answer reveals that either Sam has never seen Letterman’s show or that Sam perceives something about that concept as striking, and Letterman might want to pursue that line of discussion.
Alas: “We want to talk about you tonight, Sam.”
“I see.”
“Is that all right?”
What is a producer? It is a person who guides the recording process. But what does that mean, guide? The producer may be the person in the studio who knows the most recording tricks. But the producer can know few tricks and still manipulate the process—with psychology. If artists are trying too hard and have lost their natural feel, the producer can deflect their attention, loosing their innate artistry. A producer might also set an artist on edge, if that discomfort will create great art. Sam and Jerry Lee Lewis once carried on a heated argument: Could the devil’s music save souls? Immediately after Sam withdrew from the room, Jerry Lee cut the master take of “Great Balls of Fire.”
When Dave asks, “Is that all right?” it may be rhetorical—the host tricking the guest into thinking he’s in charge. But Sam has, naturally if not consciously, designated Dave the artist, and he is extracting from him a nervousness and a deference that is very unlike the host’s usual suave and cool performance. One man is at ease, slouched in his seat, an extension of the upholstery; the other man is upright and stiff, his movements sharp and jerky. Sam is producing Dave.
“David,” answers Sam, and the camera moves in for a close-up as he jiggles his eyebrows up and down—for the cameras too are trying to get their footing—then he sits up and inhales, still unhurried and out of step with late-night banter. Sam leans over and, lampooning the southern peckerwood he knows Dave wants, he drawls like a minstrel, “David, we will try to talk about me just chere fo’ a little while …” His statement ends with the high notes of a question, and there’s silence while Dave awaits the answer. The camera leaves the close-up for a two-shot, revealing that Sam has more than leaned toward Dave, he’s actually hypnotized him like a rooster, and during the dead air that follows, they are nose to nose, their eyes locked.
Dave breaks the spell, says, “Okay,” and his hands automatically come up in defense. He turns away and tries to make a crack about his background scenery but Sam does not retreat, and he interrupts with, “Are you going to have your teeth fixed before long?” Letterman, who must be glad he doesn’t hide a toupee, is getting a dose of his own; he is, after all, the one who changed talk show rules when he asked boxing promoter Don King, “What’s the deal with your hair?”
Sam continues, “Now how did you, with buckteeth—” the audience’s laughter halts—“make a million dollars? You know not a lot of people can do that.”
Thunder cracks from the set’s fake skyline as Dave gingerly reaches for the reins with, “Now, Sam,” and Sam covers the hint of a smile with his hand and he looks away from the host, who is addressing him.
“Now tell me about the early days at Sun Records?”
Sam sits stone-faced.
“Now who, who—what kind of a sound were you trying to establish there?”
Sam Phillips stares at David Letterman. He is not incredulous, not shocked nor hurt. This is the question everyone asks, has asked for decades, and will continue to ask as long as Sam lives and, if Elvis is any indication, will ask long after Sam is resting in peace. If Sam Phillips’s work at Sun was a question, the answer is the music and the national and international uproar that followed—or follows—in its wake.
“Let’s see,” says Sam. “Let me think about that.” Now Dave is laughing and starting to relax, to settle in and roll with the punches. But only silence follows, and the audience is left to project their favorite rock and roll moment onto Sam’s blank face.
“What kind of sound …” Sam mulls, as if he’s considering it for the first time or, perhaps, for the first time seeking a different answer.
“Why certainly, David,” says Sam in a solo shot, and from his movement, we know he’s moving in to hypnotize Letterman again. But Letterman averts his eyes. Sam’s behavior is erratic. If he’s drunk, that’s beside the point. He parks his head halfway across Letterman’s desk and leaves it there, finally saying, “You gotta work for this a little while tonight, son.”
Dave, needing to feel in control again, says to Paul, his lackey, “Yeah, I believe so, yeah, yeah.”
“You know I don’t give away all my secrets, because when this show goes under, you might want to start recording … If I give away all my secrets, what am I going to have to write about in a book and a movie, you know, you could copy me and you’re so young, I might drop off dead.”
Sam Phillips dials in David Letterman, preparing to hypnotize him like a rooster. (Courtesy of Trey Harrison)
“Well then,” David says, the breakthrough of truth drawing great laughter, “let’s just talk about anything you want to talk about, which I have a feeling we’re gonna do anyway.”
The new stagecoach driver leans back. “I’m old and retired—”
“Hey, Sam—” Shouldna leaned back, dude! Dave grabs the reins because he’s got a show to run and no one wants the road of the old man’s ailments. “Look at this, we’ve got some photos.” When in doubt, pull out the props. “Take a look at some of these pictures, Sam. You just tell ’em your first impression and we’ll talk about those for a little bit.”
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