Sun Studios

There's Cliff, waiting for me to catch up with him

We gathered with some other folks in a back room to wait until it was time for our group to begin.
I immediately found kindred souls waiting with us.  One gentleman loved Jerry Lee Lewis, as both Cliff and I do, so we visited about our common interests.  There were 45 RPM records on the walls where we waited, all with price tags on them.  Then we traded our vouchers for tickets.

While we were waiting for our turns at the tour, I used the facilities.  As I sat and pondered, I saw this sign:

That's when I realized I might be sitting on a commode once used by Elvis, Jerry Lee, and Carl Perkins!  Imagine my disappointment when I found out later that this portion of the property was next door to Sun Studios in the old days, not part of it.

All the walls in our "waiting room" were hung with memories of the old studio.  I saw a picture of some old guy named Gene Simmons; that's the name of a guy in the band Kiss, but I knew that picture wasn't of him, whether with or without the painted face.  At the end of the tour I asked one of our guides about this; she said the man in the picture, Jumpin' Gene Simmons, was admired by the guy who founded Kiss, so he chose that name for himself.  

This is a re-creation of the room where Disc Jockey Dewey Phillips' made his living.  He was the first DJ to play Elvis on the radio, and so many requests came in that he kept playing "That's All Right" the rest of his show that day.  You can see broken records laying on the floor... when Phillips got a song he hated, he threw them on the floor and smashed them.  

I could go on sharing my inferior photos here, but you can find better ones online, I'm sure.  Not to mention it takes about five minutes per picture to load them to my blog. 

I absolutely loved this tour!  Both guides projected their voices and spoke so plainly, Cliff could hear them with no problem (that's almost a miracle in itself).  

I was a real Elvis fan at the age of 13, but by the time I was 15 I got tired of sharing him with the whole world and chose other favorites.  While I was in Memphis, though, I was once again the 13-year-old who almost swooned at the opening lines of "Love Me Tender".  If you're down there, don't miss it.    

Sun Studio is still a recording studio and still doing business.  

And with that, I think I'll take the dogs for their walk.  

Yours truly.