Fact #111514
When:
Short story:
Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, releases its first single, Drivin' Slow by sixteen-year-old saxophonist Johnny London.
Full article:
Sam Phillips (owner, Sun Records) : Negro artists in the South who wanted to make a record just had no place to go... I set up a studio just to make records with some of those great Negro artists.
Negroes with field mud on their boots and patches in their overalls... battered instruments and unfettered techniques.
To me Beale St was the most famous place in the South... it was so much more than I had even envisioned.... I saw everything, from winos to people dressed up fit to kill, young, old, city slickers and people straight out of the cotton fields... every damn one of them was glad to be there.
I truly did not want to open a record label, but I was forced into it.
A lotta' people thought of Sun Records as just bein' a little southern label - that's a bunch of crap. We were small, certainly limited, and when we started out we had just hardly any money at all and we did it on a shoestring. But, man, I started off with 42 distributors, I had contracts with pressing plants in L.A., Philadelphia and here, y'know - Monacho on the West Coast, Paramount in Philadelphia and Plastic Products here.
And we'd break records every night. I released very few records; I didn't want to substitute... y'know... the major labels, you have a budget and you meet those goals one way or the other, to hell with the artist and everything else. If this record don't look like it's gonna' do it you give it up to this date and here comes another one, and if that don't do it, here comes another one.
I knew what I was doin'. Number one, I didn't think that was the way to do it. Number two, I knew that we were doin' somethin' different and people just don't change their habits that rapidly, you have to be patient when you really are hurtin' and you wanna' get on.
We released records and I had some distributors that would call me and say, "Well, Sam, we've done all we can on this record and we've sold a lot of 'em..." And I said, "That's right, but I'm still doin' these..." and they'd say, "Well, we're gonna' lose him if we don't get another record". I told 'em, "Well, I'm sorry, the way this has got to go in my opinion - and you know I'll work with you any way I can, but the way I gotta' go is the way I'm doin' it", and that's just exactly the way I felt.
If I'd substituted like I was talkin' about earlier, numbers of instrumentation, if I'd substituted releases to say, "Well this is not gonna' hit it", not give it time, not work my butt off on it with the distributors, the counter boys and counter girls and the packaging boys at the distributors and the drivin' of 65 - 75,000 miles a year by myself, sleepin' in YMCA's initially - doin' any damn thing... I didn't have any time to waste, I had to get on with it, but I had to do it my way. I was tryin' my best to learn but I had my conceptions of what I was tryin' to do and nobody else was tryin' to do that particular thing.
There was a lotta' great rhythm and blues things on the market, certainly even when I started, but when we got into the white situation... I just didn't want to put out too many things, and 'course albums weren't the big thing at that time. The EPs came out about that time, a little later on, '56 I guess, or '55, but no, I didn't want to just put a record out and not work it. I wanted to stay with it and I did, so I didn't even entertain the idea of albums...
I even held back on Jerry Lee Lewis and people later on. I wanted to get them established and not have so much product out there until they were an accepted entity or they were proven that they weren't gonna' be. That was a smart thing on my part because I didn't let the almighty dollar, as bad as I needed the money to operate, I didn't let that dictate beyond just the bare necessities.
That was among the main reasons that I didn't think about albums. You gotta' keep in mind, you're doin' a whole new thing and you gotta' stay afloat... I always said from the beginning, all I wanted... I didn't even wanna' start Sun Records, I wanted to go ahead and produce for other labels and let them handle all the headaches, the mechanics, the promotion, sales, pressings, collections - believe me, that's a hell of a job in itself.
But I didn't get treated right by some labels and then I was forced to start the Sun label. I knew that if I failed at this I might not have another chance because I knew I couldn't work for anybody else and do what I wanted to do.
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Negroes with field mud on their boots and patches in their overalls... battered instruments and unfettered techniques.
To me Beale St was the most famous place in the South... it was so much more than I had even envisioned.... I saw everything, from winos to people dressed up fit to kill, young, old, city slickers and people straight out of the cotton fields... every damn one of them was glad to be there.
I truly did not want to open a record label, but I was forced into it.
A lotta' people thought of Sun Records as just bein' a little southern label - that's a bunch of crap. We were small, certainly limited, and when we started out we had just hardly any money at all and we did it on a shoestring. But, man, I started off with 42 distributors, I had contracts with pressing plants in L.A., Philadelphia and here, y'know - Monacho on the West Coast, Paramount in Philadelphia and Plastic Products here.
And we'd break records every night. I released very few records; I didn't want to substitute... y'know... the major labels, you have a budget and you meet those goals one way or the other, to hell with the artist and everything else. If this record don't look like it's gonna' do it you give it up to this date and here comes another one, and if that don't do it, here comes another one.
I knew what I was doin'. Number one, I didn't think that was the way to do it. Number two, I knew that we were doin' somethin' different and people just don't change their habits that rapidly, you have to be patient when you really are hurtin' and you wanna' get on.
We released records and I had some distributors that would call me and say, "Well, Sam, we've done all we can on this record and we've sold a lot of 'em..." And I said, "That's right, but I'm still doin' these..." and they'd say, "Well, we're gonna' lose him if we don't get another record". I told 'em, "Well, I'm sorry, the way this has got to go in my opinion - and you know I'll work with you any way I can, but the way I gotta' go is the way I'm doin' it", and that's just exactly the way I felt.
If I'd substituted like I was talkin' about earlier, numbers of instrumentation, if I'd substituted releases to say, "Well this is not gonna' hit it", not give it time, not work my butt off on it with the distributors, the counter boys and counter girls and the packaging boys at the distributors and the drivin' of 65 - 75,000 miles a year by myself, sleepin' in YMCA's initially - doin' any damn thing... I didn't have any time to waste, I had to get on with it, but I had to do it my way. I was tryin' my best to learn but I had my conceptions of what I was tryin' to do and nobody else was tryin' to do that particular thing.
There was a lotta' great rhythm and blues things on the market, certainly even when I started, but when we got into the white situation... I just didn't want to put out too many things, and 'course albums weren't the big thing at that time. The EPs came out about that time, a little later on, '56 I guess, or '55, but no, I didn't want to just put a record out and not work it. I wanted to stay with it and I did, so I didn't even entertain the idea of albums...
I even held back on Jerry Lee Lewis and people later on. I wanted to get them established and not have so much product out there until they were an accepted entity or they were proven that they weren't gonna' be. That was a smart thing on my part because I didn't let the almighty dollar, as bad as I needed the money to operate, I didn't let that dictate beyond just the bare necessities.
That was among the main reasons that I didn't think about albums. You gotta' keep in mind, you're doin' a whole new thing and you gotta' stay afloat... I always said from the beginning, all I wanted... I didn't even wanna' start Sun Records, I wanted to go ahead and produce for other labels and let them handle all the headaches, the mechanics, the promotion, sales, pressings, collections - believe me, that's a hell of a job in itself.
But I didn't get treated right by some labels and then I was forced to start the Sun label. I knew that if I failed at this I might not have another chance because I knew I couldn't work for anybody else and do what I wanted to do.