Memphis has been mythologized, and so has Sam Phillips. The rough edges have been smoothed, the multitudinous stories have been blended into one, creating a macerated, noncontroversial, and all-American narrative. I think Sam hated that. If the conflicts were erased, if the controversies were diminished, the achievement could not be properly understood. The devil is in the details, and Sam welcomed the demons.
So I was fully gripped when I saw a VHS tape of Sam’s 1986 appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. This was pre-Internet, when the mode of sharing was more arbitrary, when touring musicians were cultural pollinators, carrying tapes, tunes, and ideas from city to city. My friend Jim Spake was a busy bee. (Jim’s Memphis sax has backed Mavis Staples, Rufus Thomas, Lucero, My Morning Jacket, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.) After touring with rock and soul bands, he’d return to Memphis with new sounds and also VHS tapes—mostly freaky local cable shows from far-flung places. This was a time when cable was the domain of balloon artists, fetish talk shows, and rather unphotogenic hobbyists. In those analog days, someone who caught a great TV broadcast would duplicate it for a friend, the visual deterioration increasing exponentially with each copy. So if the image was really bad you’d know you’d tapped into a national cabal, were in on what was hip.
Sam Phillips: The man who sired rock and roll. (Courtesy of Ted Barron)
Jim’s dub of Sam on Dave was worth fighting through the visual degradation. Letterman was just enjoying his stride, comfortably offbeat in the late-night world, cozily antiestablishment from his major network hub. Only four years on the air, Letterman’s show was a late-night hipster paradise; showcasing the eccentrics and mocking their oddities, he augured reality TV. Irony was as comfy and unthreatening as the couch from which the viewer lounged and laughed. My guess is that Sam was unfamiliar with Letterman and had been warned about David’s potential to ridicule. Sam was wary, and he was accustomed to being in charge. What we get is a battle of the producers—who’s going to get what from whom. Because Sam was giving nothing, and certainly not going to help prepare a bland TV dinner version of his achievements—dismissive, simplistic, generic. This appearance is a beautiful window into how Sam Phillips worked, how he got that something different, those gleaming gems from musicians whom others would have paid no mind.
Oxford American, Spring 1997
More than thirty years after Sam Phillips first recorded Elvis Presley, he’s tired of telling the tale. But it’s 1986, and David Letterman has reinvigorated the talk show format with a rock and roll attitude. Letterman invites Sam Phillips to come on national television, figuring they’ll spin the yarn one more time: How Sam was recording black blues artists when hardly anyone else paid them any mind or any money. How he thought a white kid playing that sound could make a marketing breakthrough. How he never suspected Elvis Aaron Presley would be that kid. And “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” how they became beacons for Sam’s label, bringing Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. And Roy Orbison. And Charlie Feathers. And Billy Lee Riley, remember how he got mad that night and poured whiskey on the console …
But Sam must have figured otherwise, must have decided not to rehash the grand old tales. For his appearance looks like nothing less than a surprise emergence from retirement to produce David Letterman.
Samuel Cornelius Phillips, Florence, Alabama, born (1923), Memphis matured, had done it all by the time he was thirty-one, and when he sold his Sun Records label fifteen years later in 1969, he retired from the recording studio. However loud Led Zeppelin would play or however long Eric Clapton might solo, their contributions would not add to the sum of Sam’s life experience thus far: He’d recorded Howlin’ Wolf, dusty from the fields; Harmonica Frank Floyd imitating a barnyard with his instrument stuck longways in his mouth; B. B. King with a backing band that included jazz greats Calvin and Phineas Newborn. Before retiring from the studio to work in radio, Sam had even done his part for the British Invasion, recording the Yardbirds’ primal “The Train Kept A-Rollin’.”
“This man was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—you were there that night, Paul,” says David Letterman to his band-leading sidekick, Paul Shaffer. “Folks,” Dave continues, “it’s a pleasure to have on our program tonight, Sam Phillips. Sam, come on out.”
The video shows us the wall around which guests enter, and there’s a good few beats where there should be Sam and there is none. A producer’s best tricks are always the hardest to see.
When he appears, he looks remarkably good. His hair and beard are red and long, he’s dressed casually, and goddamn, a record label with any sense would sign this man. Phillips spots the camera. He claps his hands together. He looks at Paul. He smiles wide, does a little twist, says something that, over the applause, only Paul can hear.
Letterman is up and across the set, his hand extended. “Hi Sam, how are ya?”
“Hello there, Mister David.”
Sam has halted so Dave must invite him further onto the set, over there where the guests’ chairs are, and his desk, and the microphones and the lights and all the equipment that makes these interviews possible. “Nice of you to be with us tonight,” Dave tells Sam, who is walking with a distinct bounce to his step, a swing even. As he’s seating himself, Dave asks once again, “How ya doin’?” and when he glances up he suddenly halts.
Sam has his back to the camera, his back to the national audience. Letterman’s head tilts a bit sideways, like a dog that’s heard an unusual sound.
“This is a beautiful set, David,” says Sam’s back, his arms spread wide.
Letterman leads his studio audience in some nervous giggling, and then Dave tries to move things along. “So how’re things?”
We get our first close-up of Sam. “You know,” Sam says, and he sort of licks his lips and cocks his head back, building a few seconds of his beloved silence into Letterman’s preferred rapid and vapid patter, “you know everything is—uhh,” he cocks his head the other way, thinks another second and then drawls, “fihhne.”
While they’ve been situating themselves, the horses have begun moving. Now there are four hands on the reins, and though this is clearly not a hijacking, there’s some confusion about who’s in charge.
Before David can lead, Sam launches into a discussion about Robert Morton, the backstage staffer whose job is to pump the guests for stories so that on the show Dave can pull questions out of the air that, amazingly, draw fascinating responses. “Why don’t you have him as a guest on your show?”
“We should do that, maybe. You know, from time to time we have staff members on and we talk …”
“You do?!” Sam responds, and the enthusiasm in his answer reveals that either Sam has never seen Letterman’s show or that Sam perceives something about that concept as striking, and Letterman might want to pursue that line of discussion.
Alas: “We want to talk about you tonight, Sam.”
“I see.”
“Is that all right?”
What is a producer? It is a person who guides the recording process. But what does that mean, guide? The producer may be the person in the studio who knows the most recording tricks. But the producer can know few tricks and still manipulate the process—with psychology. If artists are trying too hard and have lost their natural feel, the producer can deflect their attention, loosing their innate artistry. A producer might also set an artist on edge, if that discomfort will create great art. Sam and Jerry Lee Lewis once carried on a heated argument: Could the devil’s music save souls? Immediately after Sam withdrew from the room, Jerry Lee cut the master take of “Great Balls of Fire.”
When Dave asks, “Is that all right?” it may be rhetorical—the host tricking the guest into thinking he’s in charge. But Sam has, naturally if not consciously, designated Dave the artist, and he is extracting from him a nervousness and a deference that is very unlike the host’s usual suave and cool performance. One man is at ease, slouched in his seat, an extension of the upholstery; the other man is upright and stiff, his movements sharp and jerky. Sam is producing Dave.
“David,” answers Sam, and the camera moves in for a close-up as he jiggles his eyebrows up and down—for the cameras too are trying to get their footing—then he sits up and inhales, still unhurried and out of step with late-night banter. Sam leans over and, lampooning the southern peckerwood he knows Dave wants, he drawls like a minstrel, “David, we will try to talk about me just chere fo’ a little while …” His statement ends with the high notes of a question, and there’s silence while Dave awaits the answer. The camera leaves the close-up for a two-shot, revealing that Sam has more than leaned toward Dave, he’s actually hypnotized him like a rooster, and during the dead air that follows, they are nose to nose, their eyes locked.
Dave breaks the spell, says, “Okay,” and his hands automatically come up in defense. He turns away and tries to make a crack about his background scenery but Sam does not retreat, and he interrupts with, “Are you going to have your teeth fixed before long?” Letterman, who must be glad he doesn’t hide a toupee, is getting a dose of his own; he is, after all, the one who changed talk show rules when he asked boxing promoter Don King, “What’s the deal with your hair?”
Sam continues, “Now how did you, with buckteeth—” the audience’s laughter halts—“make a million dollars? You know not a lot of people can do that.”
Thunder cracks from the set’s fake skyline as Dave gingerly reaches for the reins with, “Now, Sam,” and Sam covers the hint of a smile with his hand and he looks away from the host, who is addressing him.
“Now tell me about the early days at Sun Records?”
Sam sits stone-faced.
“Now who, who—what kind of a sound were you trying to establish there?”
Sam Phillips stares at David Letterman. He is not incredulous, not shocked nor hurt. This is the question everyone asks, has asked for decades, and will continue to ask as long as Sam lives and, if Elvis is any indication, will ask long after Sam is resting in peace. If Sam Phillips’s work at Sun was a question, the answer is the music and the national and international uproar that followed—or follows—in its wake.
“Let’s see,” says Sam. “Let me think about that.” Now Dave is laughing and starting to relax, to settle in and roll with the punches. But only silence follows, and the audience is left to project their favorite rock and roll moment onto Sam’s blank face.
“What kind of sound …” Sam mulls, as if he’s considering it for the first time or, perhaps, for the first time seeking a different answer.
“Was there a specific—or would you just record anybody who came through?”
“Why certainly, David,” says Sam in a solo shot, and from his movement, we know he’s moving in to hypnotize Letterman again. But Letterman averts his eyes. Sam’s behavior is erratic. If he’s drunk, that’s beside the point. He parks his head halfway across Letterman’s desk and leaves it there, finally saying, “You gotta work for this a little while tonight, son.”
Dave, needing to feel in control again, says to Paul, his lackey, “Yeah, I believe so, yeah, yeah.”
“You know I don’t give away all my secrets, because when this show goes under, you might want to start recording … If I give away all my secrets, what am I going to have to write about in a book and a movie, you know, you could copy me and you’re so young, I might drop off dead.”
Sam Phillips dials in David Letterman, preparing to hypnotize him like a rooster. (Courtesy of Trey Harrison)
“Well then,” David says, the breakthrough of truth drawing great laughter, “let’s just talk about anything you want to talk about, which I have a feeling we’re gonna do anyway.”
The new stagecoach driver leans back. “I’m old and retired—”
“Hey, Sam—” Shouldna leaned back, dude! Dave grabs the reins because he’s got a show to run and no one wants the road of the old man’s ailments. “Look at this, we’ve got some photos.” When in doubt, pull out the props. “Take a look at some of these pictures, Sam. You just tell ’em your first impression and we’ll talk about those for a little bit.”
We see a shot of a young Sam sharing a guitar with a young Elvis Presley, a sort of student-mentor shot. “Here we have a picture of, that’s Elvis Presley and, is that you there in the checkered jacket?”
Duh.
“What year was that, do you suppose?”
Sam will have none of this drivel, and he simply ignores Letterman. “Well I missed my calling. You know, Gregory Peck hadn’t got a damn thing on me in that photo, has he?”
“No,” Dave says, sounding dejected. “And he still doesn’t and …” Dave trails off and then tosses that photo aside to reveal another one.
Sam’s attention is now over the audience’s heads—on the back wall—and he murmurs, “Well, thank you David.”
“Now let’s see who we have here.” But Sam looks further from the photos. Dave continues, “Who’s next in the big gala photo book of … that’s you and—” Dave verbalizes a blank for Sam to fill in, their conversation as stimulating as a standardized test.
“Jerruh,” says Sam, entertaining himself with sounds.
“Jerry Lee Lewis,” translates Dave in the tone teachers use to lead students through hoops.
“The Killuh,” says Sam, making it rhyme with “Jerruh.”
“Now this guy,” Dave begins enthusiastically before quickly petering out, “was one of the most talented musicians ever to uh, put anything on record, wasn’t he?”
“No question about that,” says Sam. “I think Mr. Paul will tell us all that.” You don’t need me here to talk about what we already know.
“Paul, you want to come over and get in on this?” The audience applauds as the ride loses more control. Sam is gleeful. As Paul leaves his banks of keyboards, Sam brays to the ceiling, “Mr. Paul-al.” Then he says, “This is my baby,” and Sam stands and hugs Paul Shaffer, who looks like a small turnip.
“Okay now,” says Letterman, “We have other photos here. Paul, tell us what you know about these pictures.”
And Paul Shaffer reaches across Sam Phillips—as if he weren’t there, as Sam wants it—and points to a piece of cardboard that we can’t see and says, “This would be Jerry Lee Lewis here. Probably Carl Perkins here. This would be, who would that be? Johnny Cash?”
“J. C.” says Sam off camera, and it could be an answer or an exclamation.
The photo is of the Million Dollar Quartet. “And Elvis on piano,” says Paul.
It’s as if a tuxedoed stage manager has strolled out and announced, “The role of the legendary Sam Phillips is being played tonight by Paul Shaffer and David Letterman.” Sam the Man is busy producing, drawing out the best, the most unsettled performance, which for Dave and Paul means hosting a vacant center. “The guests on talk shows don’t matter,” they seem to say, “their role is to fill the time between commercials.” Sam’s work is about people, while Letterman—and television, and the wretched pop music made in the name of Sam Phillips: Their work is about selling soap.
“And what were you recording there?” Dave asks Sam, “Was that an actual recording session?”
“Well Carl Perkins was doing a session,” Sam begins with earnest interest, but then he too peters out. “And it just so happened … that all of a sudden there at 706 Union—” Sam pauses, opens his arms and drops his voice, “—our great big studio, it’s almost as pretty as this studio, good God this …” and while Sam mutters something and makes a funny face with his eyes and eyebrows, Dave abandons the photograph idea and puts them all away. Paul has been listening somewhat intently, but now he begins to fidget and plays his discomfort for laughs. Sam leans forward into the hypnotizing position and says, “But they all dropped by, and it just so happened that they all dropped by, and they all dropped by. And so we got together. We all got—well …”
Dave drums his desk with his palms, and he says, “Yeah.” Then he reaches for some index cards and says, “Well, you’re certainly, you’re certainly [“an interesting guest,” interjects Sam] you’re certainly a legend.” Compliment though it may be, “legend” hearkens to the mythic and the dead. “You’re responsible for the very formation of rock and roll.” The rock and roll that caused riots? The one that sells sneakers? “Don’t you think you had a hand in helping the sound of rock and roll evolve from bits and pieces of other influences?”
Sam’s had enough. “David, you’re getting awful serious for this show. What’re you setting me up for?” Sam’s work here is done.
Dave’s had enough too. “I’m just trying to think of a real nice way to say good-bye, Sam.”
Paul Shaffer laughs into his hand. Lightning cracks across the fake skyline. They’ll cut to a commercial, and when they return, Sam will be gone and Dave will resume. Five minutes is too long for a pop song anyway.
Sam and Dave shake hands, laughing. Letterman, somewhat bewildered and clearly relieved, sums it up for a TV finish: “The legendary Sam Phillips.”