ABSTRACT
American record producer, record company owner, born in Florence, Alabama. Phillips originally worked as a disc jockey out of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in 1942, moving in 1946 to a local station in Memphis. In 1950, he opened the Memphis Recording Service, mostly to record weddings and other local events for a fee. He began recording local blues musicians, initially licensing his recordings to Chess, RPM, and other labels; in 1952, he founded Sun Records to release his own recordings, releasing discs by local R&B singer Rufus Thomas and “Little Junior Parker,” among others. In 1954, Elvis Presley walked in the door of his studio, and Phillips guided the young singer to national success before selling his contract to RCA Victor in late 1955. Phillips’s recordings of Elvis were noteworthy for his use of slap-back echo, a recording technique that he pioneered and that became a signature for rockabilly recordings of the later 1950s. After Elvis left Sun, Phillips oversaw the early careers of Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and others. Phillips formed the Phillips International label as a subsidiary of Sun in the later 1950s, and opened a studio in Nashville in the early 1960s. He sold Sun Records to music industry entrepreneur Shelby Singleton in 1969.
