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Part show-business rouser, part romantic soap opera, part period drama, part rock-and-roll creation myth, “Sun Records” begins its first-season eight-episode run at 9 p.m. Thursday on the CMT cable network.
The air date arrives some seven months after the end of close to 70 shooting days in Memphis, the city where a nondescript vacant storefront south of FedExForum was transformed into a facade of Sam Phillips’ “Memphis Recording Service,” circa 1950, and where a two-time Teen Choice Awardwinner, Chad Michael Murray, was transformed into a credible facsimile of Sun founder Sam Phillips, aka “The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
That designation is borrowed from the title of a 2015 biography of Sam Phillips written by Peter Guralnick. But “Sun Records” — produced by Nashville-based CMT (Country Music Television) and Los Angeles-based Thinkfactory Media — owes its existence to the work of another longtime music journalist, Colin Escott, a creator of the Broadway musical “Million Dollar Quartet,” which dramatized the impromptu Dec. 4, 1956, recording session that occurred when Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee met at Sun Studio at 706 Union Avenue.
Originally titled “Million Dollar Quartet” (a title ill-suited to the breadth of years and the number of performers actually covered by the TV series), “Sun Records” is “based on the stageplay,” according to its opening credits, even though the series opens in 1950. Escott and Thinkfactory head Leslie Greif are credited as co-writers of the early episodes, while two-time Oscar nominee Roland Joffé (“The Killing Fields”) is the director.
CMT’s entry in the “New Golden Age of Television” cable-drama sweepstakes, “Sun Records” won’t challenge “Mad Men” or “Game of Thrones” or “The Wire” or “The Americans” for a top spot on anybody’s best-of lists, despite its attractive cast and impeccable production design. But as a rock history primer, a narrative juggling act (the initial episodes jump all over the map, especially after young J.R. Cash travels to Germany with the Air Force) and a promotion for Memphis as both a filmmaking location and tourist destination, “Sun Records” certainly has its pleasures.
Memphians especially will enjoy the various shout-outs to local culture and history. (SPOILER: Only 24 minutes pass in the first episode before we hear the words “Piggly-Wiggly.”) Meanwhile, the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission can tout these statistics: Some $17 million was spent in Memphis and elsewhere in Tennessee during the program’s productions, and close to 200 Memphis and Shelby County residents found work as actors and crew members.
With wavy blondish hair and a dubious line of patter, Sam Phillips is the flawed hero of the show, his musical integrity providing a balance to his marital infidelity. “Way I see it, music ain’t got no color,” says Sam, after coming to Memphis from Alabama to open a recording service with the aid of his loyal assistant, Marion (Margaret Anne Florence), and the somewhat begrudging support of his wife, Becky (Jennifer Holland). “Good music is gonna find good people, now I believe that in my heart and my soul.”
Why Memphis? “Memphis has got everything,” Sam marvels. “Hillbilly, big ol’ orchestras at The Peabody, blues straight from the delta…”
It’s also got pills, which Sam begins popping, courtesy of his unofficial “cousin,” WHBQ deejay “Daddy-O” Dewey Phillips (Keir O’Donnell). And it’s also got “electro-convulsive therapy,” which Sam agrees to undergo as treatment for his disordered mind (“Zappin’ my noggin?” he asks, when he first hears about the therapy). Episode four (the last of the episodes I watched in advance) ends with the cliffhanger sight of the strapped-down Sam going electric, so to speak, more than a decade before Dylan.
Cast as “Colonel” Tom Parker, scenestealing comic actor Billy Gardell shows up in episode one, charging yokels to watch his “dancing ducks” hop about on a hot plate. Before the first four episodes are up, we’ve also been introduced to Jerry Lee and Jimmy Swaggart (real-life twins Christian and Jonah Lees), Johnny Cash (Kevin Fonteyne), B.B. King (Castro Coleman), Hank Snow (Pokey LaFarge), Eddy Arnold (Trevor Donovan), Ike Turner (Kerry Holliday), R&B record-label honcho Joe Bihari (Mike Horton) and Vernon and Gladys Presley (Joe Chrest and Ann Mahoney), among others. We see the 1951 recording of the so-called “first” rock-and-roll record, “Rocket 88” (credited to “Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats”), but so far Elvis has set foot in Sun only in his capacity as a Crown Electric employee.
Sam and Dewey are presented as fellow travelers on a quest for a truthful “raw” sound that is the antithesis of the Perry Como record Dewey smashes on air. “This is life!” Sam enthuses to Becky, playing his wife a recording of his first discovery, the Beale Street “Be-Bop Boy,” Joe Hill Louis (Dom Flemons). “He’s singing about his girlfriend, whoopin’ her ass and going to jail!” Responds Becky, unmoved: “Sam, we need to talk about Bible school for Knox.”
As that exchange indicates, “Sun Records” is at its clumsiest when dealing with race. When B.B. King first records at Sun, Sam takes it upon himself to explain to the seemingly meek “Blues Boy” how best to play the blues; in fact, the young King was shy and insecure, according to Guralnick’s Phillips biography, but in the context of the program the incident feels like an egregious example of “whitesplaining.” Ike Turner represents a different type of stereotype: He’s brash, flashy and comical, like Morris Day in “Purple Rain.” This may be a legitimate representation, but, again, in the environment of the series, in which the black characters (so far) aren’t fully developed, the characterization strikes a bum note.