When the Beatles and Bob Dylan hit America did you write them off as lightweight longhairs or did you recognise they'd been directed influenced by Sun Records?
There's no question about it. Of course anything that Dylan does is alright with me. I'm a fan of Bob Dylan.
The sounds we came up that the Beatles later on made very good use of, and certainly they'd be the first ones to admit it, is something that had a free spirit about it and I knew that young people had to have a free spirit about their music and the things that they did and felt. And that's what I felt about the black music that I cut and then the white music that I cut. That it had to be something that was real and not contrived. We did our best to do perfect imperfect music.

What, for you, is the best record that Sun ever released?
Gosh, Chris I just couldn't say and I'm not trying to dodge the answer but just about everything I cut - here again I'm not being modest about it I'm telling the truth. We wouldn't have lived 50 years as a small label and influenced the world like we did if it all wasn't very, very interesting and very different.

You came in contact with some very wild characters during your time - the bug eyed Ike Turner, the brooding Johnny Cash, unhinged rockabilly cats like Sonny Burgess and Billy Lee Riley to the mad as a cut snake Jerry Lee Lewis. Who was the wildest?
Wildest character? That's a good question young man. Everybody's wildness is manifest in a different way. Dealing with these young people, of course, they were hungry to do something they'd never been able the opportunity to do before. All kinds of great manifestations came out of them and I made it very easy for them to be themselves. Usually got acquainted with them by having a cup of coffee with them at the little restaurant next door - Miss Taylor's. We let them know we weren't going to do a lot of preparation. I thought it was very important for them to feel they were a part of it and it wasn't just recording for a big, white master behind the glass so to speak. I didn't consider them wild people but I wanted this to be a very free spirited affair. I thought this was necessary because if you try to put on your Sunday clothes all the time then I wasn't going to get the thing that came naturally. I didn't want them to change their personalities or the things that felt good to them. As wild as they were, and there's no question about it they were all wild, I kind of wanted their personalities to be exactly as they were and intuitively felt rather than impose some kind of standard of how you live in and out of the studio. To me that usually represented energy. It doesn't matter about the type or tempo of a song - if a record doesn't give off energy, and I'm not talking about if it's real fast or real loud because I never used many instruments on my records. I think one of the things I'm proudest of is - if you picked up a Sun record and you might not have liked the particular artist but you felt an energy from it because it was so natural.

We all know of the success of Presley, Jerry Lee etc. But who, for you, was the most underrated artist you recorded?
I think my percentage of people who were hits were better than any record company because we tried to stay with each release until it had a fair chance to be exposed to the people. I knew I had to be a national label even though I was independent and didn't have a lot of money. You've got to go back half a century I'm talking about. And the black and white situation and you had distributors from Maine to California. I not only had to make all the records and get all the processing and pressings going then we had to move our records by truck and you can't wait on things because a record that doesn't get served well can be deader than yesterday's newspapers. We worked our butts off to set up a great pressing plant on contract - we didn't actually own it - in L.A., California that took care of all the distributors we had west of El Paso, Texas. Then we had a Paramount Records manufactures in Philadelphia that took care of the eastern seaboard and then we had Plastic Parch??? In Memphis take care of the central part of the nation. We had to service our distributors and disc jockeys and we had to do a lot of contacting. It was not just one of those things of cutting a good record. It was also making sure you got exposed not just to a disc jockey but I went to see distributors and I went to see jukebox operators, the retail buyers. Most of these people were very honest because they didn't want anything on their jukebox that wasn't going to bring in those coins. Also they didn't have machines that played 500 selections or 300 selections. Usually it would be 25 then 50 and Wurlitzer who made a 200 version. So they were very selective. They didn't want to have a slot that was in there not pulling the coins in. These are the types of things that made it so interesting - all the way from the recording studio right on through the entire distribution effort and getting the plays on radio for people to make the decision that's what they wanted.

Is there an artist that leaps out at you that should have been a superstar just on mere talents that never really made it?
Oh yeah, I think I missed on Sonny Burgess. Sonny just had a dynamite feel about him and a great feel with his band too. I think Billy Lee Riley. He complained about me giving more time to Jerry Lee Lewis - they both came about the same time and he blamed me for not having a super big record. But I reminded him he's still hot today and people still go to see Billy Lee Riley. Gosh I wish I could say I didn't miss on some of them but certainly I did but I'm definitely one person who did the best I could.

Because of his later excesses Elvis is easily written off as a fat caricature in a gaudy Las Vegas jumpsuit but if you ever want to understand the genius of Presley then look no further than his Sun Sessions. Out front of the bare minimum of instruments (guitar, bass and sometimes drums) they're lean, vibrant and inspired…
The stuff that Elvis did on Sun is everlasting. I mean Elvis had to do some things in the movies that he really did not want to do. Of course after I sold his contract in order to stay in business and I came right along with Carl Perkins and 'Blue Suede Shoes'. Elvis released 'Heartbreak Hotel' and that thing was a flop until much, much later. Steve Sholes called me from RCA and said, 'Sam, I want to cover 'Blue Suede Shoes' by Carl Perkins. Man, did we buy the wrong person?' I said, 'No, Steve you didn't buy the wrong person but please don't cover me'. Finally I said to him you can do anything you want to once it's been released because all you have to do is file a form with the copyright office but he was a nice enough man to put it on an EP that had two sides on each side of the record. We were different and that doesn't always mean you're always going to have success. A lot of times it would've been much easier to go down the beaten path that has been proven by other artists and other record labels but that wasn't what I had in mind and I certainly did not know for sure if it was going to work. But I wanted to able to hang on long enough to see whether I was right in my beliefs from childhood until I got into the record business. And it proved, thank God and fortunately, that we were right.

On the tribute album Good Rockin' Tonight most of the artists have been quite reverential to the Sun sound and spirit. Your trademark 'slapback' sound is a common thread as it was on the original recordings.
True but I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I wanted to see what manifestation the Sun catalogue had on these people and let them do it the way they wanted to. As a matter of fact I told the producer Phil Carson and Ahmet Ertegun let them do it the way they feel it and let's see what happens. And I can tell you, and I'm not trying to sell the record, but this is an outstanding piece of material done by these people with their own feel without anybody telling them what to do. It's not just a tribute album to great songs and great artists this is a 'feel' record. The whole thing is and it's so diverse in the sounds that we hear. One of the things that surprised me was the cut that Carl Perkins did with Van Morrison - 'Sittin' on Top of the world' and I was blown away with it. It's such a great record and shows the ease of Carl. Elton John really tore up 'A Whole Lotta Shakin'. I didn't think anybody with fingers that short could do what Jerry Lee did. I'm not making fun of people with short fingers 'cos I've got them but he really tore into that song. Jerry Lee would be one of the harder people to cover - number one because he plays piano and number two he sings in a different way with gusto that's hard to match and I can tell you right now that Elton John pulled it off.

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©2002 Christopher Hollow