Sam Phillips an impromptu session featuring the four musicians. Phillips challenged the four to achieve gold record sales, offering a free Cadillac to the first, which Carl Perkins won. The contest is commemorated in a song by the Drive-By Truckers. By the mid-1960s, Phillips rarely recorded. He built a satellite studio and opened radio stations, but the studio declined, and he sold Sun Records to Shelby Singleton in 1969. In 1977 Sam's sons, Knox and Jerry, were working with John Prine at the Phillips Recording Studio when Sam Phillips joined them to oversee recordings that were eventually included on the album "Pink
Phillips' Sound Recording Services and microphone linked to the studio above. The recordings would normally be on tape, and then transferred to disc, although the tape was recorded over again during the next session. Because of trams, trucks, and horses going up and down Kensington, Phillips had to hang heavy blankets over the studio door and a rear window to minimise the noise. Phillips' first recording was of himself singing "Bonnie Marie of Argyle", (unaccompanied) and a few days later he recorded "Unchained Melody", with local dance band singer Betty Roy. The first disc he cut in the studio was on 7 August 1955,