Phillips Recording Knox Phillips has overseen the studio's operations in recent years. Phillips Recording Phillips Recording is the short name widely used to refer to the Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio opened at 639 Madison Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, by Sam Phillips in 1960. Internationally regarded at that time as a state-of-the-art facility, it was built to fill the needs of the Sun Records recording label that the older, smaller Sun Records Studio was no longer able to handle. This Memphis studio was originally a division of a larger corporation, Sam Phillips Recording Service, Inc., which also briefly included under its umbrella
Sun Studio Rosco Gordon recorded there in the early 1950s. Rock and roll, country music, and rockabilly artists, including Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Charlie Feathers, Ray Harris, Warren Smith, Charlie Rich, and Jerry Lee Lewis, recorded there throughout the mid-to-late 1950s until the studio outgrew its Union Avenue location. Sam Phillips opened the larger Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio, better known as Phillips Recording, in 1959 to replace the older facility. Since Phillips had invested in the Holiday Inn Hotel chain earlier, he also recorded artists starting in 1963 on the label Holiday Inn Records for Kemmons Wilson.