Cliff Acred began playing music in junior high school and later majored in music in college. He played in the 3rd Army Band out of Atlanta while in the service and once out returned home...
Mike Battle invented the Echoplex, the pioneering electric effects device, which played a vital role in the early development of the rock and roll sound. The Echoplex was famously used by...
Sonny Burgess was known as the wild man of rock and roll who brought a driving guitar style to early Sun recordings (the label that launched Elvis Presley). Among those recordings were “W...
Ace Cannon grew up in Mississippi singing with his father on street corners and in church, and he knew even as a small child that he wanted to have a life in music. When he was ten his f...
Bobby Crafford still has his first snare drum, the one he played when he recorded early Rockabilly songs for Sun Records in Memphis, TN. In 1957 he joined the Pacers, the band behind Sonn...
Fred Douglas recalled picking up his first Fender Precision Bass when he was hired to record as a member of the Pacers. The Pacers were the band behind the “wild man of rock and roll” Son...
Vernon Drane played several musical instruments growing up in Tennessee including the trumpet and saxophone. He later studied instrument repair and spent 68 years (!) working with the Amr...
DJ Fontana drove down to Houston in a pink Cadillac with Elvis Presley after being hired as the then unknown singer’s first drummer. They pulled up to Herbie Brodstein’s Drum Shop (Herb w...
WS Holland played drums behind Johnny Cash for over 40 years! The man put the beat to most of Johnny’s greatest recordings and his innovations in drumming inspired countless musicians aro...
Roland Janes! There were musicians/engineers/producers and then there was Roland Janes! The man nearly single-handedly invented many of the engineering methods used in modern recordings...
Kern Kennedy tickled the ivories on a number of early rock and roll and rockabilly recordings back in the 1950s. It was the heyday for Sun Studios in Memphis right after the success of El...
Carl Mann sang in church as a child and grew up just a few years behind Elvis Presley, who, like Carl, brought the style of church musical expression to popular music when he began record...
Scotty Moore set a date and time on July 4, 1954, to get together with a young singer who wanted to record with Sam Philips at Sun Records in Memphis. Sam asked Scotty, who had recorded w...
Matt Ross-Spang is a Grammy award winning engineer, mixer, and producer. His first brush with greatness began at only 14 years old, when he received 2 hours studio time at Sun Studios in ...
Smoochy Smith was hired by Sam Philips at Sun Studios in Memphis to play piano on a few sessions in the late 1950s. Smoochy was being requested for record dates from both local performer...
Jimmy (J.M.) Van Eaton was the house drummer for a little recording company in Memphis that began one of the centers of the birth of rock’n’ roll. Sun Records was formed by Sam Philips in...
