The eMusic Dozen: Sun Records

Like several other key Sun artists, Johnny Cash came to the label with his signature sound already intact. Over that boom-chicka beat created by bassist Marshall Grant and guitarist Luther Perkins, Cash's stark baritone carried the songs; even when he soloed, Perkins' rudimentary boogie lines did little more than restate the rhythm. Johnny's extraordinary voice was the key, but it didn't hurt that he had such evocative material, from the giddy Southern pride of "Hey, Porter!" to the doominess of "Folsom Prison Blues," from the eloquent hillbilly poetry of "Big River" to the unwavering devotion of "I Walk the Line." With its weird-sounding chords and ever-shifting keys, that song's extension of the Cash sound resonated like nothing before or since. Cash's earliest Sun singles were country music for people with raw nerve endings, very much in the emotional vein of the Carter Family's fabled line, "It takes a worried man/ To sing a worried song."

These represent Howlin' Wolf's earliest recordings, and he was already more than 40 years old at the time. He had his sound down cold, and there was little Sun's Sam Phillips could do except turn on the tape recorder and marvel at the force of nature being unleashed. Before coming to West Memphis, Wolf fronted one of the Delta's first electric bands, and songs like "Oh Red" and "Everybody's in the Mood" jump with ferocious backwoods intensity. Elsewhere, his all-stops-out vocals and fat, firm harp work play off each other to great effect, while Willie Johnson's jazzy, single-string runs make it sound like his guitar is made out of sheet metal and its strings out of barbed wire. The Wolf's Memphis sides unveil a strikingly original (but tradition-based) sound and unsurpassed conviction, and provide the foundation for the more familiar hits he was soon cutting in Chicago.

Herein resides some of the most explosive rock & roll of the '50s. Jerry Lee's piano style betrays no one major influence, but derives from the black boogie blues traditions of the rural Southern juke joint; there were a handful of country pianists like Moon Mullican playing boogie piano before Lewis, but they sounded genteel compared to the ominously rumbling left hand and hell-bent-for-leather right hand of the black piano pounders that the Killer synthesized. But his country credentials were also unimpeachable; his very first single paired one of his only original tunes ("End of the Road") with a rocked-up ride on Ray Price's dancehall shuffle "Crazy Arms." The next two singles are immortal: "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" is a roadhouse grinder, complete with leering recitation, that stops just short of being too suggestive, and "Great Balls of Fire" calls for apocalypse now as it batters Jerry Lee's spiritual and carnal desires into one, er, great ball of fire.

Carl Perkins was one of the few Sun rockabilly artists to offer the complete package: He wrote and sang his own songs and (along with Scotty Moore) pretty much defined rockabilly guitar. But he arrived at Sun as a hard-edged honky-tonk man, echoing Hank Williams on early sides like "Turn Around" and "Let the Jukebox Keep on Playing." The breakthrough came with his bopcat anthem "Blue Suede Shoes," which quickly came to symbolize the entire rock & roll era. Yet many will argue, with no small justification, that "Dixie Fried," a harrowing celebration of the Saturday night juke-joint life, is the stronger (if less universal) song. An auto accident derailed Perkins' career just as it was taking off -- at the time, he rivaled Elvis, who nonetheless wound up with more of the "Blue Suede Shoes" glory than Carl -- and there's no telling where he might have gone otherwise. Perkins' Sun singles represent the whole '50s Tennessee roadhouse world where country and rock came together.

Roy Orbison always spoke poorly of his Sun sides and his whole experience with the label, but in truth he had little reason to be ashamed of the music he made there. True, Sam Phillips was trying to make a rockabilly out of him when he wanted to be the world's greatest balladeer. But while there, he was certainly no slouch as a rockabilly cat. His first single, "Ooby Dooby" b/w "Go! Go! Go!," was a certifiable bopper, irresistibly raw and manic, and tracks like "Domino" came close to maintaining the pace. The medium-tempo ballad "Devil Doll," meanwhile, was a harbinger of the Orbison to come, both in sound and temperament. And his longing reading of "Tryin' to Get to You" was in a league with Elvis' own version no matter how much Roy claimed he was uncomfortable with rhythm and blues. All things considered, these 23 sides offer some auspicious insights into the future of a bona fide original, and provide just plain good-rocking listening as well.

Just as he is an unsung father of rock & roll, Ike Turner was the secret weapon of Sam Phillips' Sun Records blues roster. Bonnie Turner, Ike's girlfriend and then his wife, is featured on several tracks here, the most curious being her duet on the tempo-shifting "Way Down in the Congo" with Raymond Hill, Ike's tenor sax fiend. Hill absolutely burns on his instrumental "The Snuggle," alternating between late-night swooning and relentless pounding. Ike's darting, stinging guitar drives home two diametrically opposed Johnny O'Neal tracks. Before he struck out on his own with "Red Hot," Billy Emerson took a brief turn in the piano chair of Ike's band. His "No Teasing Around" is one of those tracks on which Ike demonstrates his pioneering mastery of the tremolo bar -- his vicious whammy-bar work on "How Long Will It Last" hurts so good, and Turner's compact, rhythm-rocking intro to "I'm Gonna Forget About You Baby" evolved into one of his signature licks.

The first record that Sun mastermind Sam Phillips ever released was the good-timing "Boogie in the Park" by one-man-band Joe Hill Louis. The first record released on the Sun label itself was 16-year-old alto saxman Johnny London's intoxicating instrumental "Drivin' Slow." Initially, Sun was a blues label, turning out gems like Junior Parker's "Feelin' Good," an utterly primitive sound by Junior's standards but an original one by Sam's. Once Elvis hit, though, Sun concentrated on rockabilly like Sonny Burgess' manic "We Wanna Boogie," while Warren Smith, despite his hard-country voice, snuck into the Hot 100 once with Roy Orbison's rocking "So Long I'm Gone." Surprisingly, Sun's straight-up country artists didn't fare so well, though Charlie Feathers' "I've Been Deceived" surely should have hit. Through it all, Sam retained a taste for feel-good one-man-bands both black (Dr. Ross) and white (Harmonica Frank).

"Red Headed Woman" b/w "We Wanna Boogie," Sonny Burgess' debut single, fulfilled every promise Sun ever made; it was primordial, crazy-ass Saturday-night music that tried to prevent Sunday from ever arriving. Burgess, a shouter whose virile style was often likened to a tenor sax solo, was perhaps the greatest Sun rockabilly who didn't get his due in his day -- raw and virtually unintelligible on "Woman," which featured a most sleazy trumpet solo, of all things, by Jack Nance, and equally fast and floozy on "Boogie." But if he showed a willingness to make himself slightly more accessible on his follow-up single "Ain't Got a Thing" and "Restless" (on which he whistles), he still rocked true and hard. And throughout his stay at the label, he continued to throw out casual, off-handed nuggets like "All Night Long," "Don't Be That Way" and "Life's Too Short" that went unreleased at the time though lesser singers would have been happy for such a record.

As even the demo to "Bottle to the Baby" shows, the mercurial Charlie Feathers was an exciting rockabilly stylist. But he came to Sun originally as a country singer, and "I've Been Deceived" and "Honky Tonk Kind" are nothing short of extraordinary, combining the soaring phrasing of mountain singers like Bill Monroe with the hard edges of roadhouse rhythm men like Hank Williams. Had Charlie kept chasing the ghost of Williams, as he did on "Runnin' Around" and "So Ashamed," he might have become one of those mid-'50s guys who helped country hold off the challenge of rockabilly. Instead, he became one of the challengers, writing little gems like "Bottle to the Baby" and putting his singular stamp on massive overhauls of old blues like "Corrina, Corrina" and "Frankie and Johnny." Either way, though, he wound up seeing only modest success, and had to settle, beginning in the '70s, for being one of the more colorful and enduring cult artists of American music.

Warren Smith was likely the finest pure country singer at Sun -- but he was no slouch with rockabilly, either. That was evident from his very first single, which had a slightly restrained (for rockabilly) reading of Johnny Cash's "Rock 'N' Roll Ruby," with some snappy guitar work from Buddy Holobaugh, on the A-side and the first version of the lovely country ballad "I'd Rather Be Safe Than Sorry" on the flip. That single sold better than the first efforts of Elvis, Cash, Perkins and everyone else on Sun. Somehow, though, Smith never recaptured the momentum of his debut single, despite rockin' country efforts like "Who Took My Baby," which holds its own against similar Jerry Lee sides. Indeed, though he wasn't nearly as relentless or flamboyant -- who was? -- Smith had a country/rock/pop sensibility quite a bit like the Killer's; one wonders if Smith's standing at Sun wouldn't have been better if the two men hadn't come along at the same time.

If you know Charlie Rich only as the countrypolitan crooner of the '70s ("Behind Closed Doors," "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"), you're in for a big surprise. With his jazz background, Charlie was a sophisticated pianist who didn't let that keep him from rocking, and his country-soul voice was one of a kind; he was also a peerless arranger and a knowing songwriter. Even Sam Phillips himself said that Rich was the most complete musician he had at Sun, and though Charlie only scored one hit single (the teen-swing cry "Lonely Weekends"), there's nothing here to suggest Sam's evaluation was off-base. It's hard to believe that a brooding barroom ballad like "Sittin' and Thinkin'" came from the same man who wrote and sang teen fodder like "Philadelphia Baby" or "School Days," but it's a measure of Rich's gifts that he reconciled such extremes. He was just too talented -- and too complicated -- to squeeze into a marketable niche.

The funeral train was a standing motif in southern blues and country before there was even a recording industry to document it -- but Little Junior Parker's "Mystery Train," a song in which the title phrase never appeared, certainly upped the ante. The rhythm was somehow propulsive and easy-going simultaneously, the sax made a train whistle sound ominous, and Junior's high tenor conveyed equal amounts of sorrow and acceptance. Ironically, while Parker considered himself a smooth, big-city crooner in the Roy Brown vein, his two best records for Sun -- two of the best in the label's whole blues catalogue, in fact -- were as country and earthy as the Delta itself. The swinging "Sittin' at My Window," based on B.B. King's "Woke Up This Morning," doubtless better represents the way Junior saw himself, yet he was nothing if not resourceful and versatile; "Love My Baby," with its twangy guitar lines, verges on rockabilly.