Principios del rock and roll Hillbilly4/22/2024 ![]() Nonetheless, Phillips was most happy when artists came straight off Beale Street to record. ![]() Phillips welcomed all genres-from bluegrass, to western, to his personal love, the blues-but it was hard to maintain a steady stream of clients. Things were slow that first year at Memphis Recording Service. He assembled a collection of tech that included a Presto lathe recorder, a number of "coke-bottle" Altecs, several RCA-77 D broadcast mics, a few Shure 55s and a late 1930s converted RCA radio console. As a former radio engineer, Phillips was familiar with it all, but wasn't planning to use the equipment for its initial intention. In addition, most of the technology available at the time was designed for recording raucous live performances, not the subtle art of capturing studio sessions. To this day, Weber says the room remains a mystery, "The sound changes depending where you place instruments… even if you are moving them just a few feet." According to Guralnick, Phillips would pace the room one inch at a time, clapping to try to figure out the exact reverb and echo of every single spot in his studio. Phillips tore out the tin roof and put up acoustic tiles, but still had trouble making the sound consistent. This converted car garage was not, at least initially, an ideal setting for a recording studio. Several months later, on January 3rd, 1950, the doors were open to Memphis Recording Service.Įxterior of Memphis Recording Service, 706 Union Avenue, fall 1954. ![]() ![]() In 1949, while still working at the radio station, Phillips signed a lease for an old automobile glass repair shop next to a diner with odd dimensions and a tin ceiling. As Guralnick's book puts it, Phillips knew "there was great art to be discovered in the experiences of those who had been marginalized and written off because of their race, their class, or their lack of formal education." Still, a lack of recording studios open to Memphis' African-American musicians limited their opportunity to make money and kept predominant African-American genres of music like blues and jazz isolated. In 1948, WDIA-WREC's competitor-became the first radio station in the country programmed entirely by African-Americans for African-Americans. "If you are not doing something different, you are not doing anything at all." The Old Repair Shopįrom his early childhood, Phillips believed there was a vital kind of music that just wasn't being heard by the average American ear. ![]()
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