Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Flying Saucers Rock & Roll: The Cosmic Genius of Sam Philips (CMF Publishing)


Sam and Elvis (Elvis Info Network)
Virtually everyone knows the name of Sam Philips, the guy who discovered Elvis Presley and made people like Johnny Cash famous.  He was the owner and producer of Sun Records and his own Philips Record label as well.  This is a pretty short pictorial book telling the man’s story by his son Knox Philips and the curator of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Peter Guralnick. It was released in conjunction with an ongoing exhibition on Sam Philips in Nashville. Lots of cool pictures and short stories about how he got into music (via radio). Great high quality pictures of family, the artists he helped break out. Tells a nice story of how he really tried to help black artists and he felt a bit bad about only recording white artists when things started to get big with Elvis, Johnny, Jerry Lee, and others.  He comes across as quite a cool and amazing person. He had a very unique approach as a producer at this time as he was not interested in the perfection but capturing the moment, the passion of the artist, that artist’s unique personality and he was good at it. If you are curious about the history of Sam and Sun records this is a very good and short book (65 pages).. Check it out. Not sure where it is available in Europe.


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