Local Treasures: Jerry Phillips

The son of Sun pours a lifetime of music into a new album cut in his father’s world-famous studio.

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“I really was the prodigal son, you know?”

This fall, news broke that was significant to a hopeful Memphis artist who released his debut album over the summer. As reported by the Independent Blues Broadcasters Association (IBBA), the album, For the Universe, had been the 20th most-played record on its members’ playlists in September. Not bad for the first release by a singer-songwriter who, up to that point, only played occasional gigs. But though he may be a newcomer in certain ways, he’s been making a name for himself since before he was born.

If that sounds like a fanciful line lifted from a Charlie Rich song, all the better. Because the name this artist inherited — Phillips — was deeply connected with musical legends like Charlie Rich, Ike Turner, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Howlin’ Wolf, and Elvis Presley. This debut artist is Jerry Phillips, son of Sam Phillips and his wife, Becky, and inheritor of his father’s grand legacy in radio, music, and the recorded arts.

Just a toddler in 1950 when his father first opened the Memphis Recording Service that would later evolve into Sun Records, Jerry grew up amid the huge pool of talent that Sun helped propel to stardom throughout the 1950s and beyond. All of which might make his debut album seem like a foregone conclusion.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Part of the beauty of Jerry’s album, as both an artifact of his life and a contemporary work of art, is that it evokes qualities of character and craft embodied by his father and those he recorded, who, while ushering in the celebrity culture that now surrounds us, did not arise from that culture. The mother wit and earthy grit of those first-generation rock-and-rollers lives on in Jerry’s music, as does the sheer feel: His album rocks, it cries, it sighs, it slinks, and it winks. Above it all sails Jerry’s expressive voice, the record’s greatest revelation, sounding reminiscent of — you guessed it — Charlie Rich, yet unmistakably unique. “Someone else said I sounded like him!” Jerry tells me, rightfully proud of the comparison. “Him and Johnny Rivers.”

“People that are true-to-the-core musicians when it comes to creating something that’s going to last longer than you do, they’re … coming to places like Memphis. Because they can shift into a different space when they come into a recording studio like ours, or walk into Royal Studios. It’s almost like a time warp.” — Jerry Phillips

Clearly Jerry absorbed enough of those musical forerunners to evoke their blend of the country and the city, the big beats and the ballads, the blues and the crooners, in his own natural, unhurried way. It all comes out in these songs. But so too does a lifetime of perspective and the hard-won wisdom that Jerry alone can claim.

And that may be why, while he’s not necessarily dwelling on his family’s storied past as he promotes his new record, he’s not hiding from it, either. If that history is thoroughly documented elsewhere, most compellingly in Peter Guralnick’s masterful 2014 biography of Jerry’s father, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’N’ Roll, it so imbues his current work in more subtle ways that he can’t help but celebrate it whenever he straps on a guitar.

Case in point: the sound of the record. How can you avoid your father while recording in a building — Sam Phillips Recording Service — that bears his name? Phillips Recording is inescapably distinctive, still emblazoned with pop-art go-go dancer imagery on its mint-green and rose walls. But if the basic design of the studio, built on Madison in 1960, just around the corner from Sun Studio, and cosmetically unchanged since, was the work of Phillips the Elder, it took two Phillips the Youngers — Jerry and his late older brother, Knox — to maintain the place as Sam mostly drifted away from recording by the ’70s. The brothers kept what was most valuable (like the natural reverb chamber) while updating other gear enough to make the business attractive to today’s artists. Recently, with vintage studios more in demand, that’s meant complementing the vintage vibe at Phillips with other vintage gear, like the newly refurbished Spectra Sonics mixing console once used at Stax Records, installed at Phillips under Jerry’s watch in 2022.

Recording through such equipment, in such a space, lent For the Universe a sound that’s hard to place in time. As studio manager, engineer, and album co-producer Scott Bomar told The Commercial Appeal, “I can’t think of any other studio where you can record in such an iconic room on such an iconic recording console. It’s got a little bit of a vintage sound, but it’s also modern at the same time. That’s the beauty of it. It could be from 1968, or it could be from 2068. It’s just totally timeless.”

Given the studio itself, the band’s tasteful accompaniment (Danny Banks on drums, Matthew Wilson on bass, TJ Bonta on piano, Rick Steff and the acclaimed Spooner Oldham on keyboards), and Jerry’s classic approach to songwriting, this album could have been made any time in the last half-century. (That’s a compliment.)

The studio is like a familiar living room to Jerry, who’s walked its floors for decades now. But Jerry and his daughter, Halley (who co-produced For the Universe and is the studio’s vice president) don’t think of the place as “retro.” It’s still a vital organism, and deeply expressive of the city outside its walls.

As Jerry told me in 2019, “People that are true-to-the-core musicians when it comes to creating something that’s going to last longer than you do, they’re … coming to places like Memphis. Because they can shift into a different space when they come into a recording studio like ours, or walk into Royal Studios. It’s almost like a time warp. You just separate yourself from all the bullshit that’s going on in the world and you can be free.”

The concept of freedom has always been central to the more rebellious of the two Phillips brothers. As Guralnick writes in his Sam Phillips biography, “Jerry was different. Even at four-and-one-half he was more like his father in his bristling independence and determination to speak his own mind. … He was much more inclined to get into trouble than Knox.”

That made him more of the rock-and-roller, and the only member of his family to be a Sun recording artist (something even his father could not claim, being a producer). He was still a teenager when The Jesters, a group in which he played rhythm guitar, recorded the now-classic “Cadillac Man,” featuring one Jim Dickinson on vocals. It was one of Sun’s last releases. Yet ironically, it epitomized Jerry’s rebelliousness. He wasn’t going to run the family business; he would live the music and be the rock he wanted to see in the world.

While brother Knox grew to be more actively involved in Phillips Recording and the music publishing game throughout the ’60s and after, Jerry was reluctant to do the same. “I was a rebel,” he says. “I thought I was living under the shadow of Sam Phillips, you know. So, like, I was in the Army Reserves for a while.”

This was after The Jesters. And from there he forged his own independent path for a time. “I really was the prodigal son, you know? And then I woke up one day and said, ‘Why are you loading trucks, and why are you cleaning swimming pools, and why are you doing all this? Go back to your studio, man!’ And I did, and Knox and Sam and everybody welcomed me with open arms. They didn’t bring up anything about my leaving or any of that. In fact, my dad told me, ‘The reason you and I disagree a lot is because you’re just like me. You don’t want anybody to tell you what to do.’ And I said, ‘Well, you know what? You’re right.’”

By the 1970s, he was more involved at Phillips Recording again, and even co-produced John Prine’s Pink Cadillac album with his brother by that decade’s end. But through all that, he didn’t really pursue his own music. He’d played rhythm guitar as a teen, and would co-write songs here and there as he got back into record production, but it was only recently that he leaned into the role of singer-songwriter. And, in the personable way of life that all the Phillips seem to embrace, it was due to a friend paying a visit.

“Me and a guy named Jim Whitehead, who’s a piano player, were getting together every Wednesday in my home studio,” Jerry says, speaking of his home near Pickwick Lake, where he lives the life of a confirmed bachelor. “We did that for two years, just got together and had a good time. We were both kind of burned out on the music business, so we said, ‘Let’s just write some songs and have fun.’ So we started writing, and I was used to writing just by myself. I mean, I had co-written before, but this was really an eye-opening experience for me. Once we got through, we had a demo.”

Then came Covid, and a worsening of Knox’s longtime health issues. On April 15, 2020, Jerry’s brother passed away, leaving a void in the family’s life and business. Sam had died 17 years earlier, in 2003. As Jerry said at the time, “It’s been a real hard thing for our family, because you know Knox was just as important as Sam in a way. He was the keeper of the history. He was the one that always knew everything about Sun. He was the one that always got things going.” Jerry, having already taken on more of Knox’s duties after years of health complications, came to a crossroads with Knox’s death. It seems to have fueled a new sense of urgency in Jerry, as both a businessman and an artist.

Both roles have caused him to take the past and the future more seriously than ever. Even as he strives to preserve and protect the business and legacy of Phillips Recording (not to mention the two radio stations in Florence, Alabama, still owned by the family), he is looking forward to what may yet come, using that classic studio to propel himself into his own future. Like the boundless vision implied by its title, For the Universe is truly lighting out for the unknown, and that’s just how Jerry likes it.

“I tried to get my dad to sit down with me, once,” he recalls. “I wanted him to play the recordings he made, starting with his first record, play it, and then talk about it. And then go on to the next one. Play it, talk about it. And he just said, ‘You know, Jerry, I don’t care anything about the past. It’s just the future for me.’”

Then he adds, “You know, Knox is gone, Sam’s gone, my mother’s gone. It’s me and my family now. And my daughters have been great. My family’s been great. I wouldn’t say I’m the most confident person in the world, you know what I mean? But making this record has helped me a lot. I feel more qualified to maybe go out there and do some live performances with me being the artist. Not just in the band, but the leader of the band.”