0:19 [SPEAKER_00]: You went with the herd of tilapid, you heard the noise, they make, but let me rid of those, my new rocket ain't yet. 0:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's great, just what we know. 0:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody likes my rocket ain't yet. 0:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Baby we'll ride and style, moving all along. 0:39 [SPEAKER_02]: You're hearing the song, Rocket 88. 0:43 [SPEAKER_02]: Widely considered to be the first rock and roll song ever recorded. 0:47 [SPEAKER_02]: It was recorded here at Sun Studio by Jackie Brinston and his Delta cats. 0:56 [SPEAKER_02]: The Delta Cats included Ike Turner, one of the many legendary musicians to record here. 1:02 [SPEAKER_02]: Artists from many genres such as BB King, Roy Orbison, and Rufus Thomas, all used Sun Studio. 1:11 [SPEAKER_02]: It was the home to one of the most legendary knights in music history when the million dollar quartet consisting of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis, recorded 1:26 [SPEAKER_02]: Sun Studio, even played a central role in the feud between Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. 1:32 [SPEAKER_02]: I'll get to that over the next few episodes and you won't want to miss it. 1:37 [SPEAKER_02]: In this next episode, I'll take you on an audio tour of this legendary studio that changed music forever. 1:45 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Crocodile, I'm the audio engineer here along with Joey and I also one of the tour guides. 1:51 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Zoe Doran, I'm one of the tourguards here, and then I'm also one of the assistant engineers in the studio. 1:58 [SPEAKER_02]: Awesome, so why don't you start by telling us where we are right now? 2:02 [SPEAKER_02]: As we go, you'll notice that the stories just flow out of Crocodile and Zoe. 2:07 [SPEAKER_02]: That is the result of giving countless tours over the years, but it's also a product of the space itself, I think. 2:13 [SPEAKER_02]: It exudes creativity and invites you to get lost in its stories. 2:22 [SPEAKER_02]: I'd like to go back to the beginning of time, nor just getting time to go back to, up this was prior to it being an actual studio. 2:31 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's funny you say going back to the beginning of time because there's a lot of people who have theories about the electro-magnic activity here in Memphis being part of the reason that rock and roll really kind of stuck in a place like this. 2:42 [SPEAKER_03]: Jim Dickinson, who is a famous audio engineer, well, not nearly famous enough. 2:46 [SPEAKER_03]: He did some work with Rolling Stones and Big Star and other bands here in Memphis. 2:49 [SPEAKER_03]: He also cut here in this room right before they moved down the street from where we're currently sitting, but he used to say there's something about the air and Memphis where it just makes the magnet, the music stick to the magnetic tape more, so it does kind of go back some people believe to the beginning of time, but it all kind of started here because the Sam Phillips and Mary and Kisker wanting to start a place where Sam could record the incredible 3:16 [SPEAKER_03]: It's working as an audio engineer for the Peabody Hotel, WREC, which was, excuse me, inside of the Peabody Hotel. 3:25 [SPEAKER_03]: And he was very bored with the big band music that he was engineering. 3:30 [SPEAKER_03]: Because just the street over, you've got all of these incredible blues players that are not getting radio play. 3:35 [SPEAKER_03]: They don't have a studio in town where they can go and record their music. 3:40 [SPEAKER_03]: And so he builds this place with the intention of recording these incredible blues artists. 3:44 [SPEAKER_03]: How did they first meet the two of them? 3:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Marion's really awesome and also too to put into perspective the time period we're looking at like Jim Crow was 3:54 [SPEAKER_01]: happening at this time segregation laws were happening when they first opened the studio. 4:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And when he was wanting to go to Bill Street and all those Duke joints in Bill Street was segregated and that was where the black community was. 4:07 [SPEAKER_01]: So that also speaks to the progressive thought and emphasis of everything he was doing at that time. 4:14 [SPEAKER_01]: From building the space and thinking of the ceilings to how he worked with the Gary had even to that. 4:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But Mary and she was really incredible, so she was working at WRAC and Sam met her there. 4:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And she was so popular in the city that she started working in radio at 11. 4:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And she ended up becoming so popular, she had to get every single radio station in the city. 4:36 [SPEAKER_01]: She also managed one of the stations at WREC as well, and she was doing all that while her and Sam both were working in radio when they were first getting this place started, and she continued to do that as she worked here until she left here. 4:50 [SPEAKER_03]: She would literally take her own money and put it in the petty cash so that she could make change to keep the place going. 4:56 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 4:57 [SPEAKER_02]: She was devoted. 4:57 [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah. 4:58 [SPEAKER_03]: She's not an unsung hero in these walls, but to a lot of people, they know the name Sam Phillips and they don't know quite as much about Mary and how crucial she was to the studio and everything that it stands up. 5:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 5:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Like her and Sam, they painted all the acoustic tiles and they painted the floor tiles. 5:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And while Sam was building the back control room, she put in the bathroom back there. 5:22 [SPEAKER_01]: So she was very much an equal in terms of like the foundation of this place in what kept it operable. 5:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And she also too was, and she wasn't audio engineer, she was a tape operator. 5:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Now we don't know whether or not she didn't know that on any specific songs here, but she was doing that in radio. 5:43 [SPEAKER_02]: Marion and Sam Studio did so well. 5:45 [SPEAKER_02]: The Sam eventually turned it into a full-fledged label. 5:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Even like Joe Hill Lewis, he was the very first person to ever record at the Memphis Recording Service. 5:56 [SPEAKER_03]: Which is what the studio was originally called. 5:58 [SPEAKER_03]: Sun is kind of more of a slang for the building itself. 6:02 [SPEAKER_03]: It was originally the Memphis Recording Service. 6:04 [SPEAKER_03]: Sun is the record label that Sam starts in 1953. 6:10 [SPEAKER_03]: After seeing how big of a hit, Icturner and Jackie Brenston, then their band have with the song Rocket 88 6:18 [SPEAKER_03]: I gave you this. 6:20 [SPEAKER_03]: I could make this money and so he starts his on record label and then near the latter part of the 50s You see people like Johnny Cash referring to coming here. 6:28 [SPEAKER_03]: We'll go down to Sun. 6:29 [SPEAKER_02]: So it became kind of a slaying for the studio That housed the record label, but it was actually a Memphis recording service The studio is full of rock and roll memorabilia dating back to when it first opened in 1950 6:42 [SPEAKER_02]: When they first created this space, can you walk me through what it looked like? 6:47 [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, our listeners are just listening to this. 6:49 [SPEAKER_02]: They're not seeing it. 6:51 [SPEAKER_02]: Tell me as you walk in the door while you're seeing and progress to the back. 6:55 [SPEAKER_03]: Basically, when you first walk into the studio, you're in the office where the secretaries that worked here of whom Marion was one of them, as well as Sally and Becky Sam's wife would also do some work here as well. 7:06 [SPEAKER_03]: You first walk in, you see their office, you see Marion's desk, a filing cabinet, there's an old television, 7:12 [SPEAKER_03]: that his rumored to have been sold to Marion by Johnny Cash, it was his only successful appliance sale he always said. 7:20 [SPEAKER_03]: It was selling that TV to Marion. 7:22 [SPEAKER_03]: And then you walk through that office and you come into a fairly by some account small, fairly large by others' room that with a very high angled ceiling, this was an old garage is what it was in the 50s union, which is the street that 7:38 [SPEAKER_03]: There's always been one of the busiest streets dating back to old Native American trails here in Memphis. 7:44 [SPEAKER_03]: Union, Madison, Poplar all went deep into Memphis and then all the way to the river. 7:49 [SPEAKER_03]: So it's always been a fairly busy street. 7:50 [SPEAKER_03]: It was a garage before it was a recording studio, which I always thought was a little funny when you think about all the different garage bands that would have gotten started from music, made in what was an old converted garage. 8:02 [SPEAKER_03]: You see there's the angled tiles, and then you go further back into the room, pass the tracking floor, which is where we were currently sitting, and you get into the elevated control room, which was a common theme amongst all of the studios that Sam built. 8:17 [SPEAKER_03]: He liked an elevated control room, so he could see down into the tracking floor. 8:21 [SPEAKER_03]: But you go back into the control room, you see an RCA 76D console, it's got six channels with one master output, so he is cutting single track mono and he's having to mix it at the exact same time that the band is performing it because there is no post-production that can be done to those recordings beyond. 8:39 [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe some slight equalization and mastering, but if he doesn't nail the mix and get that set in right or bring the solo up when he wants to Then the band's got to do that take again, so you see an RCA 76D which is the same model he would have been working with two MPEX tape machines again single track two is important because some one of the things that it became known for was something called slap back tape delay Which he Sam discovered you could send an audio signal to one tape machine 9:07 [SPEAKER_03]: and the delay and time it took to travel through one piece of the tape to the master tape created an echo effect. 9:13 [SPEAKER_03]: And there's no echo chamber here in this building. 9:16 [SPEAKER_03]: So it was a way for him to add a little sparkle and magic to the voices or the guitars that he was recording here in this room. 9:24 [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of things around here in this room and the room back there. 9:29 [SPEAKER_02]: Would any of it be original to the space? 9:31 [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, so the structure itself of the ceiling is original. 9:34 [SPEAKER_03]: I've actually looked when we've had tiles every now and then the fall and we have to put back up in fact. 9:40 [SPEAKER_03]: That happened to Zoe on her very first tour here, and you tell that story in a minute. 9:45 [SPEAKER_01]: As soon as I was kind of saying like my last thing I say to close out my tour, I start to walk out that way to open the door to let the tour out, and this guy kind of makes a noise in our turn back around, he comes up to me and he's like a ceiling tile just hit me in the head. 9:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the tiles right above us here actually like filling, Bob doesn't strain the head. 10:04 [SPEAKER_01]: He was okay. 10:05 [SPEAKER_01]: They don't weigh mud. 10:06 [SPEAKER_03]: This didn't know lawsuit yet. 10:09 [SPEAKER_03]: probably been content to go home with it, right? 10:12 [SPEAKER_03]: I would certainly think so. 10:13 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's... 10:15 [SPEAKER_03]: There's some you can find on eBay that are rumored to be the tiles from here that I've seen go for like, well, the asking price is like 10 grand, which is crazy. 10:23 [SPEAKER_03]: But I've looked inside of the angles from one of these tiles we were working on, and you can literally see the joys that were put up dating all the way back to when they first started the studio in 1950. 10:35 [SPEAKER_03]: The angles that are here in the room are to help with the audio recording that helps make the sound bounce around in a much more desirable way so you get less microphone phasing. 10:45 [SPEAKER_03]: So the lighting fixtures, the ceiling, the structure itself, the flooring, is original to the studio. 10:51 [SPEAKER_03]: I've spent a lot of time researching and trying to determine because there's a quote and girl next book where Mary and talks about painting the floor red with Sam, which is unusual, because you can see the floor itself is not red. 11:04 [SPEAKER_03]: It also does not appear to be read in any of the black and white photos that we have from that era. 11:09 [SPEAKER_03]: There's one photo of the day that Elvis's contract was signed where you can see the sunlight is hitting the floor in this room and it appears to be from what you can tell on a black and white photo, the same color as it is now. 11:21 [SPEAKER_03]: There's also a picture of Johnny Cash in the room. 11:23 [SPEAKER_03]: where there's either a carpet underneath him or the floor looks black because of the way the photograph is lit because it's a black and white photo so it's difficult to tell but I think what Maryam was saying when she was talking about painting the floor's red is you'd mentioned is the glue and paste they were using you know those often coming colors so you can make sure you've covered the entirety of whatever it is that you're wanting to adhere I've 11:45 [SPEAKER_03]: seen the bottom of a tile that was as broken up under one of the amps and you can see a red tent to the tile bottom of the tile itself, which I wonder if is the glue, and that's what she's speaking of when she's talking about painting the floor's red and putting those down. 12:00 [SPEAKER_03]: So I believe the floor to be authentic. 12:03 [SPEAKER_03]: It's also made of his best host tile, which was not legal to work with 12:12 [SPEAKER_03]: Making it very difficult for them in 86-87 to get that sort of building material when this place reopened. 12:17 [SPEAKER_03]: So I believe the floor is the original floor. 12:20 [SPEAKER_03]: There's a hole where Bill Black is rumored to have put his base in the floor when he would record. 12:26 [SPEAKER_03]: I've never seen an upright base where a hole into a floor like that, but if anybody could do it, I think it would be Bill Black with the way he played and would jump all over that thing. 12:34 [SPEAKER_02]: What about any of the other items that we're seeing? 12:37 [SPEAKER_03]: The microphones, instruments, guitars, those aren't original to the studio. 12:41 [SPEAKER_03]: Many of those were gifts from like the Gibson Guitar Factory. 12:44 [SPEAKER_03]: Marty Stewart gave us this Martin D28. 12:48 [SPEAKER_03]: There's an old Gretchen New Yorker that's a guitar from the 30s, 1940s era, a bright K-base with cat-cut strings. 12:56 [SPEAKER_03]: It's the best sounding upright base I have ever heard in my life. 12:59 [SPEAKER_03]: But these have all been acquisitions that were made over the course of the studio being reopened so that we can continue to record bands in here and then Zoe and myself and another engineer named Lydia. 13:10 [SPEAKER_03]: We all help make sure we keep all these things up and running. 13:14 [SPEAKER_03]: There's a drum set that you two gifted the studio in 86 when they came in here and recorded 13:19 [SPEAKER_03]: a few of their songs from rattle and hum that's still the same drum kit we use to this day if a band comes in to record That's the one that we're miking up over there and then there's a warlets or 88 piano as well that Jerry Lee played and I believe The 90s and he put his cigar out on the low e-key because he always wanted people to know that he'd actually played this piano I also think it's kind of funny that he put it out on the e-key just because of their rivalry between him and 13:49 [SPEAKER_03]: any meaning behind that beyond just wanting to put his cigar out on the piano. 13:54 [SPEAKER_03]: What about the Mike Bahanger? 13:55 [SPEAKER_03]: Oh yes, the, of course, the 1955 sure. 13:59 [SPEAKER_03]: So Sam liked recording with sure 55s. 14:02 [SPEAKER_03]: They're used on a variety, a number of the artists that would come in here and record two would usually report their vocals into a sure 55. 14:10 [SPEAKER_03]: When the studio reopened as a tourist attraction, he came through, there's a video you can see if him walking around and just kind of taking people through the space, and I believe that 80s or 90s, and he gifted us that microphone at that time so that when people come in, they can get their photographs taken with it. 14:28 [SPEAKER_03]: He had one stipulation when he gave it to the studio, he didn't want us to keep it behind glass. 14:32 [SPEAKER_03]: So now it's something that everybody's able to come in and take their photographs with. 14:36 [SPEAKER_02]: And what about the equipment that would be 14:38 [SPEAKER_03]: No, those are, it's all come from different studios. 14:41 [SPEAKER_03]: Like this Playback speakers here on the floor came from capital records. 14:45 [SPEAKER_03]: Brian Wilson would have worked on those with Beach Boys, the Ron Nets, I'd rest Ronnie, and she would have played, had her music play through those, Phil Spectre, Frank Sinatra. 14:53 [SPEAKER_03]: Those were acquired when the studio reopened. 14:56 [SPEAKER_03]: I believe through muscle shell, shells who had acquired them through capital records. 15:00 [SPEAKER_03]: and then a lot of the old Ampex tape machines and equipment were also acquired through Muscle Shull Studio when there was an acquisition in the 90s. 15:10 [SPEAKER_02]: In 1959, Sam Phillips opened a bigger, more updated facility. 15:16 [SPEAKER_02]: The original Sun Studio, on Union Street, went by the wayside. 15:20 [SPEAKER_02]: But in 1987, a man's named Gary Hardy, himself a musician, reopened the original building. 15:27 [SPEAKER_02]: Now it is both a tourist destination and working studio. 15:31 [SPEAKER_02]: Since then, bands and artists such as YouTube, Deaf Lepard and Ringo Starr have recorded here, but even amateurs are welcomed into this hellowed space. 15:43 [SPEAKER_02]: This often transforms crocket and sewies job from engineers into therapists. 15:49 [SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes the job is almost like logical. 15:52 [SPEAKER_03]: It's this person is struggling in what way are they struggling? 15:57 [SPEAKER_03]: Will I help or hurt if I involve myself? 16:00 [SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes, too, they're struggling, and you got to let them struggle, because that struggle is where they're going to get to take. 16:07 [SPEAKER_03]: And if I'm poking my head in and intervening, 16:09 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm getting in the way of them drawing it out of themselves. 16:14 [SPEAKER_03]: So, you really kind of have to know when to step in, when to stay out. 16:19 [SPEAKER_03]: And it's a fun experience to see, to get to see how people respond to being in here and recording. 16:26 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, so many people, but basically everyone that's come through, it's been a dream of theirs. 16:31 [SPEAKER_03]: And some capacity to have done some work here. 16:34 [SPEAKER_02]: This mix of professional and amateur, famous, and obscure is part of the studio's allure. 16:41 [SPEAKER_03]: It was important that the studio would be accessible. 16:43 [SPEAKER_03]: The night after the million dollar quartet photo is taken, a band called The Heathens, which were a high school garage rock band here in Memphis. 16:52 [SPEAKER_03]: Basically, they didn't even continue to be a band after this recording session, beyond maybe just playing in their garage. 17:00 [SPEAKER_03]: That very next night, they're the band that's in here recording, and this is always kind of been a space where one night we could have an artist like Mono Nihon who lives here in Memphis and is a base player that used to play with Prince. 17:10 [SPEAKER_03]: who now plays with DaRoo Jones, who's a Jack White Strummer, we could have them in here. 17:15 [SPEAKER_03]: And in the next night, we could have somebody who very first time they've ever set foot in a studio. 17:19 [SPEAKER_03]: They don't know process procedure. 17:21 [SPEAKER_03]: They don't necessarily know what to expect. 17:24 [SPEAKER_03]: It's really interesting to get to see the interplay. 17:26 [SPEAKER_03]: And I think it's important, too, that this space continue to be this way, and that this isn't just a walled garden. 17:32 [SPEAKER_03]: where you have to be somebody that we know of, or it's got a, it's got a, it's the life and breath of this place, what sticks in the holes of these acoustic tiles, are all these kids that are now on the walls here that were coming in one day trying to make their start. 17:48 [SPEAKER_03]: And even if somebody comes in here and ultimately goes on to greatness in other places, I always think it's important that this kind of be a space where they get the best experience they can, so that you can see, 18:01 [SPEAKER_03]: And realize your dreams, we're just canvases for the artists that are in here working, and it's important to kind of be as out of the way as possible so they can communicate what they're here to do. 18:15 [SPEAKER_02]: Join me next time to hear about the dispute over who recorded Elvis's first ever record in this studio. 18:22 [SPEAKER_02]: And more about other legendary acts who have played here. 18:29 [SPEAKER_00]: You went when the herd of tilapid, you heard the noise, they make, but let me rid of those my new rocket ain't yet, dance it straight, just want me, everybody likes my rocket ain't yet, baby we'll ride and style, pull it all along.
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