Life is a mystery for those of faith or no faith. Ye gods with Scott Carter is the podcast that makes

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to unearth what on earth we believe and what we don't. Listen to ye gods with Scott Carter,

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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we continue our archive series, R&B, Rockabilly,

and Early Rock and Roll. We start today's show with Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records.

That's the Memphis-based label that launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash. We'll hear an interview with Cash in the second half of the show. Before Phillips started his own record label, he produced the first records of bluesman BB King and Howland Wolf. As Peter Goralnik, the author of a

biography of Sam Phillips and a two-volume biography of Elvis has said, quote, Phillips has left a remarkable

legacy, both of black blues and the white adaptation of it, which became rock and roll. He has written

one of the most astonishing chapters in the history of American

popular music, and for this, we can only be grateful. Sam Phillips sold Sun Records in 1969. He died in 2003.

I spoke with him in 1997. We started with one of the first records he produced in his Memphis studio.

It's one of the very early rock and roll records, recorded in 1951.

This is Rocket 88, featuring singer Jackie Brentston with Ike Turner at the piano.

Music You women have heard of jalap if you heard the noise they make, but let me introduce my new rocket 88.

Yes, it's great, just one way.

Everybody likes my rocket 88.

Baby we'll ride in style, moving all along.

Part of your genius has been finding musicians who brought together black music and country music, creating rock and roll and rockabilly.

I'm wondering how you were exposed to black music as a white man growing up in the segregated South.

My interest in black music as a white man growing up in the segregated south my interest in black music started at a very early age i worked with black people in the fields my daddy was a farmer and he drew cotton and

of course cotton had to be picked and hoed.

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