…a few weeks when producer Sam Phillips at Sun Records, a local blues label, responded to his audition tape with a phone call. Several weeks worth of recording sessions ensued with a band consisting of Presley, guitarist Scotty Moore, and bassist Bill Black. Their repertoire consisted of the kind of…

…biographer Peter Guralnick, Presley and Sam Phillips, Sun’s owner, knew exactly what they were doing when they blended country style, white pop singing, and African American rhythm and blues. What was new was the mixture, not the act of mixing.

…he rerecorded the song for Sam Phillips at Sun Records, it became his first hit. Phillips’s efforts to make Orbison a rockabilly star were unsuccessful, however, and the shy Texan (whose trademark sunglasses masked eyes the singer feared looked beady) moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he concentrated on writing songs…

…his early recordings with producer Sam Phillips, guitarist Scotty Moore, and bassist Bill Black for in Memphis were less about any one style than about a feeling. For decades African Americans had used the term rock and roll as a euphemism for sex, and Presley’s music oozed sexuality. Presley was…

Former radio engineer Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue in 1950. Among his first customers were out-of-town rhythm-and-blues labels Modern (based in Los Angeles) and Chess (based in Chicago), who hired Phillips to find and record local artists on their behalf. Phillips was…