SALUTE TO SAM
Exhibit chronicles the world-altering life of a Memphis maverick
Iconoclast, visionary, original — these are the terms most commonly used to describe the very uncommon Samuel Cornelius Phillips. A dozen years after his passing, the maverick Memphis producer, Sun Records founder and American music pioneer is subject of a new exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. Titled “Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll: The Cosmic Genius of Sam Phillips,” it explores Phillips’ life and his pivotal role in shaping the culture and history of the 20th century.
“We wanted to show Sam as an American original. To see him as someone in the tradition of Walt Whitman or Mark Twain,” says exhibit co-curator Peter Guralnick, whose long-anticipated biography, “Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll — How One Man Discovered Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley, and How His Tiny Label, Sun Records of Memphis, Revolutionized the World!” will be published Nov. 10 by Little, Brown & Co. (Guralnick will be making an appearance at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art on Nov. 11.)
“How did Sam Phillips come out of an economically deprived background in Florence, Ala. and conceive the kind of vision that drove the studio and that drove Sun?” asks Guralnick. “That’s the key question — because there was a vision behind it. It wasn’t just a happenstantial thing. That was the idea that drove the exhibit.”
Even for those who knew Phillips best, such as his sons and legacy bearers Knox and Jerry Phillips, the exhibit offers the clearest answer to that question. “Sam was all about creating something that had to do with special expression,” says Knox Phillips. “Sam was one of those guys who had an aesthetic vision, and a musical vision. Even as his children, seeing the exhibit gave us a better sense of why and how he did what he did.”
The Phillips exhibit follows a series of broader roots-music efforts from the Hall of Fame and Museum, including exhibits focusing on the Nashville R&B scene, the career of Ray Charles, and the current “Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats.”
“Though our focus is country, the museum has always thought it interesting to see how country music interacts and interfaces with other genres,” says exhibit co-curator and museum editor Michael Gray. “And with Sam Phillips, it’s so beautiful, because the same guy who discovered Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins also worked with Howlin’ Wolf and Ike Turner and Rufus Thomas. That’s where it really gets interesting: in those intersections of different artists and different musics.”
Although deeply identified with Memphis, Phillips has strong ties to the Hall of Fame. He was enshrined as a member in 2001.
What makes the Hall’s effort unique is its focus. While other exhibits or retrospectives have tended to view Phillips strictly through the prism of the Sun Records years, or through specific artists he worked with, “Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll” traces his life from birth and reveals the formative influences that helped shape his drive.
“The exhibit takes an instructive look at one man’s life, which was full of personal challenges,” says Gray. “It starts with him living on a rented farm in Alabama, picking cotton alongside black and white sharecroppers. It shows him playing music in the high school band, leading to a radio gig and his fascination with broadcasting and ultimately opening a studio — and this is all before he even started Sun. Also, his later work with the Phillips studio, his radio stations, his involvement as an investor in the Holiday Inn chain, that’s all there too. It’s not a story just about a few years in the ’50s, it’s much bigger than that.”
To help fully represent that journey, researchers for the Hall and the Phillips family began investigating various archives.
Poring over material saved by Phillips’ wife, Becky, his longtime companion Sally Wilbourn, and in the Phillips Recording Service vaults, they were able to unearth a trove of unseen material, finding scores of letters, business documents, acetates and other ephemera.
‘“The exhibit proved a tremendous incentive for Knox and Jerry and Sally with the help of archivist Jim Jaworowicz to dig into the deepest darkest corners,” says Guralnick. “All kinds of documents turned up at the very last minute that no one dreamed had survived. There was an astonishing degree of things that hadn’t seen the light of day in many years.”
While the bulk of exhibit features material from the Phillips family, other museums and private collectors offered up pieces as well: Memphis’ Rock and Soul Museum passed along one of Phillips’ early tape machines; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame delivered a Howlin’ Wolf owned Sun-era guitar; Jack White and Third Man Records contributed Elvis Presley’s Memphis Recording Service-cut acetate of “My Happiness”; and musician/collector Marty Stuart loaned Johnny Cash’s first all-black stage costume.
In addition to the physical pieces, the exhibit includes six different video stations.
Taken in total, “Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll” maps out the DNA of Phillips life — from examining the influence of William Danforth, whose motivational book “I Dare You!” was a seminal touchstone for Phillips, to looking at his time in the Coffee High School marching band, an experience which refined his ideas about both musical dynamics and leadership.
But even more, it seeks to explain Phillips’ burning passion to find the gifts and talents of those who’d largely been consigned to the margins of society.
The exhibit opened on Aug. 27, with a VIP reception and concert. Since then “Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll” has been drawing strong, steady crowds and celebrity interest.
“The times when I go in to the gallery, it’s been packed. People seem to be enjoying it and learning a lot,” says Gray. “I’ve gotten to give folks like T Bone Burnett, Chris Isaak, and Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth tours. Overall, it’s been very well received and I think that’s because almost everyone — no matter their musical taste — has been touched by Sam’s influence and work.”
As the exhibit carries on through June 2016, the museum will stage a series of tie-in events. Guralnick will appear at the Hall on Nov. 14 doing a Q&A with Gray.
Also, the “Music City Routes” radio show will do a Phillips-dedicated concert broadcast sometime early next year. Other events are expected to be added in the coming months.
For Guralnick, after years of contemplating the exhibit, finally seeing it come to fruition has been particularly gratifying. “Of all the things I’ve ever done, all the collaborations, I can’t think of anything that’s more perfectly, or imperfectly, realized than this,” he says. “It was a thrill to go to the opening, it was like a whole new world seeing it all put together and displayed. Maybe I’m prejudiced, but Sam’s life plays out like an action drama. Which is fitting, because it was filled with action and drama.”