7/5/2023 0 Comments Peter guralnick sam phillips![]() ![]() ![]() Then finally Phillips asked Presley whether there was a song he particularly liked. They ran through different songs, none very successfully. In the studio, Presley was tentative, insecure, but Phillips was patient. ![]() And soon, that man would arrive at Phillips’ studio - young, shy, with long, slicked-back hair and a compulsion to sing. “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars,” Phillips famously said. But Sam knew what he was after: a song that sounded different, raw, with the indefinable power he remembered from the music of the cotton fields. ![]() Phillips wasn’t happy with Turner’s vocal and asked saxophonist Jackie Brenston to sing instead, which left the volatile Turner fuming. Phillips was a man with a vision, and Turner an established touring pro with an ego. Phillips, though, heard something special in the band and thought the distorted guitar might merge with the saxophone, creating something completely new. But a broken tube in a guitar amplifier seemed likely to end the session before it began. He used his experience recording big bands at Memphis' famed Peabody Hotel, and his contacts among disc jockeys, to establish his business and his marketplace.Ī young man named Ike Turner showed up one day at Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service studio with his band, the Kings of Rhythm, to cut a few songs. Phillips' intention was to record the black artists who played at the clubs on Beale Street, artists without the money or the market to sign with the big labels. ![]()
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