Sam
Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service at
706 Union Avenue, January 1950 in Memphis, Tennessee.
In
1952, he started Sun Records where
he recorded B. B.
King, Howlin'
Wolf, Carl Perkins, Jerry
Lee Lewis, Johnny
Cash, Roy Orbison, Elvis
Presley and many others. Sam Phillips
changed the course of popular music.
Watch
Nellie Lutcher on
This Is Your Life.
Nat King Cole's
records topped the best-seller list.
Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield),
the original Rollin' Stone, from rural
Mississippi played the blues like no other.
Jimmy
Reed, songwriter, singer, guitar and
harmonica player was one of the best known blues
performers in the 1950s.
Willie Dixon
could do
it all.
Before
Patsy
Cline, Loretta Lynn
and Tammy Wynette,
there was Kitty Wells,
the first female to sell a million records. Her 1952
recording of It
Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels
became the first No. 1 Billboard country hit for a
solo female artist.
Professor
Longhair cut Tipitina
in 1953 at Cosimo
Matassa's J&M Recording Studio.
Little Richard from
Macon, Georgia recorded Tutti
Frutti in 1955 at J&M
Recording Studio.
In
1955, Mae Axton 'Queen Mother of
Nashville' and Tommy
Durden wrote Elvis
Presley's first #1 hit, Heartbreak
Hotel.
CORDELL JACKSON -
The first female to write, sing, arrange, accompany,
record, engineer, produce, and distribute her own
music.
Be-Bop-a-Lula
was written by Gene Vincent Donald Graves, Bill "Sheriff Tex" Davis.
Chuck
Berry from St. Louis produced such top 10 hits
as "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Rock And Roll Music,"
and "Johnny B. Goode."
Rufus Thomas started
out performing with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels in the
mid-30s. He recorded "Bear Cat" in the 50s on
Sun Records and "Walking The Dog" on Stax records in
the 60s.
Miles
Davis from East St. Louis recorded Kind of
Blue in1959. Kind of Blue would
become the best-selling jazz album of all time. "I've
changed music five or six times." - Miles
Davis
“I know that there are bad forces, forces that
bring suffering to others and misery to the world. I
want to be the opposite force. I want to be the
force which is truly for good.” - John Coltrane
Hank Cochran has had
over a thousand songs recorded by such artists as
Ella Fitzgerald, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, and
Elvis Presley.
From
1956 until 1970, Joe Bussard
ran the last 78 rpm record label, Fonotone.
It's
Just a Matter of Time was the first in a
string of hits for Brooke Benton.
1958
- Brenda
Lee was only 13 years old when she recorded
Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree.
On
February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly (22),
Richie Valens (17), The
Big Bopper (28) and Pilot Roger
Peterson, died in a plane crash a few miles
northwest of Mason City, Iowa.
John
Dibert Tuberculosis Hospital: Rex Griffin passed
away.
White Lightning,
a song written by The
Big Bopper was
the first number one on the Billboard
country chart for George
Jones.
