SUN

1957 was a very good year; I graduated from high school, turned 18 and Sun Records released Jerry Lee Lewis’, ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ My diploma is still good, I’ll be another year older this summer and radio stations still play ‘Great Balls of Fire'. I recognized the yellow, SUN label on 45-rpm records but all I cared about was the music coming from the dashboard of my 1946 Ford coupe: oh my, miles and miles of water under that bridge. 

A couple of summers ago, I visited the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, the SUN Records Museum and the Gibson Guitar factory in Memphis, Tennessee and later, Martin Guitars in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. I don’t know when I started the turn away from being a sports guy, going to concerts rather than ball games but it was a good turn. If I had my pick between Super Bowl and a James Taylor or Bonnie Raitt concert; no contest. I bought a guitar in 2004 and started making noise, then a discovery. When the noise you’re making suggests a familiar song, it comes naturally to frame the words and follow the sound. I have a friend who has made a career of both vocal and instrumental music. When I began, he told me, "You don't need a good voice to sing. All you need is courage." I  know exactly, exactly the range of my skills and they are both thin and few. I can’t play guitar, but I can play with it. I can’t sing either but I scraped up some courage, framed the words and followed the noise.

I have perfect recall when it comes to the pleasure of throwing a baseball up on the barn roof, moving left or right, tracking its trajectory and catching it, again and again. The joy of making contact, tossing green apples up and batting them into imaginary doubles and triples; it’s very much like making a smooth transition from the D chord to the B minor on my guitar. Nobody need hear it, I don’t do it for someone else. When I put the words, the chords and the notes together, and it works; it’s like the juggler, 7 hoops on a moving bicycle. He’s in the spot light, in front of a crowd and he’s gets the applause but the bottom line is, it's about him, he's the one doing it. In comparison, I would be sitting on a stool, juggling 3 tennis ball in an empty room. But it would still be me, doing it. If you can keep 7 hoops in the air while riding a bike, you are awesome. If you can sing while playing an instrument, there's a place for you in heaven. Being focoused and competent in the same breath on two different skills is quite a trick.

Sun Records on Union Avenue in Memphis is in the same building it occupied when Sam Phillips ran the business in the 1950’s. The studio where Elvis and Johnny Cash made their first recordings is still there, still functional. After hours, you can rent it by the hour and record your own music, just like they did back when. An audio engineer/producer will do the set up, guide the process and give timely tips on how you are doing. At the end of the session you get your music on a CD and a zip file. That’s what we did two days ago, my guitar amigo Adam and I drove to Memphis. It took 2 hours for me to get 3 songs in the can. Adam did one. You can’t escape for a moment where you are; hallowed ground, beneath the photo of the Million Dollar Quartet - Presley, Cash, Lewis & Perkins. Acoustic tiles on the ceiling were new when Jerry Lee cut, ‘Whole Lot Of Shaking Going On’ and they still show up for work every day. Smoke from Johnny Cash’s cigarettes still yellows the paint. I sat on a stool and sang into a 60-year old microphone. Who knows who else has occupied that space? We did 11 takes on ‘Sweet Baby James’ but we got it and it works. I love listening to music and I love making my noise. I’d like to come back and do it again someday but if I don’t or can’t, I’ll dream it again; like hitting green apples and catching baseballs off the barn roof.