Sun Studio

Sun Studio is easy to underestimate.

It's a small brick building on Union Avenue, surrounded by the modern city. But step inside, and you’re standing in one of the rooms where American music changed direction.

Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service here in 1950, recording artists whose music rarely made it to mainstream radio. B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and other blues musicians passed through before a young Elvis Presley walked in looking for a chance to record.

In 1954, Elvis stood in this room with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black and recorded “That's All Right." Blues, country, and R&B collided in a way that sounded new. Soon Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison were recording for Sun too.

The mythology only grew. In December 1956, Presley, Cash, Perkins, and Lewis met at the studio for an informal jam session. The photograph from that day became famous, and the group became known as the Million Dollar Quartet.

But the best part of Sun Studio isn't behind glass.

You can still walk into the recording room. You can see the acoustic tiles on the walls, look through the control-room window, and stand on the same floor where those records were made.

That's what makes Sun a Soundmark. The history didn't happen somewhere nearby.

It happened in this room.