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   3 C h ap t e r 1 Sun Days and Hi Times In 1960 the Memphis music scene, for all intents and purposes, looked dead. By decade’s end, with the Stax and Hi record labels, independent studios including Ardent, the PepperTanner jingle company, and the remarkable comeback of Elvis Presley, the recording scene had come roaring back—only to finally and spectacularly fall in the middle seventies. “Memphis was primarily a pop market,” observed Bobby Wood, one of the young musicians playing clubs in town. Many of the artists who had made Memphis that way in the first place—Elvis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, and even lesser-known Sun discoveries like Conway Twitty and Ed Bruce—were no longer recording in town by 1960. Charlie Rich had just broken through, and he would be the last great Sun discovery. Elvis, of course, maintained his mansion, Graceland, in the Whitehaven suburb outside Memphis, but many of the others had moved to Nashville, near where they were recording. Even the great blues players like Ike Turner and Howlin’ Wolf weren’t Memphis-based anymore. B. B. King was still around, and that was about it (and he spent much of his time touring). Small wonder it looked as if Memphis had had its time in the national spotlight. There were still some optimists around who seemed to think Memphis had a future. Sam Phillips had just completed a new recording studio complex, named for himself. His old associates and former Elvis accompanists, Scotty Moore and Bill Black, each had set up studios and record labels of their own (Fernwood and Lyn-Lou, respectively) which gave them incomes now that Elvis was in the army. Another former Sun musician, the steel guitarist Stan Kesler, was doing small-scale recording at his Echo Studio. Jerry Lee Lewis was blacklisted by radio, but his concerts were still packing them in. And Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, with help from a young Georgia guitarist, Chips Moman, were just beginning Stax Records. There were others out there too, younger players whom nobody had bothered to inform that Memphis music was officially dead. Some ofthemwerealreadythere—nativeMemphians like Gene Chrisman and Mike Leech. “Gene is a brilliant drummer,” said MonumentRecordspresidentFredFoster ,whowould hire Chrisman many times over the years for sessions. “He plays just behind the beat enough to make it soulful.” Gene was more modest. “I was just self-taught. Never took any lessons, just tried my best to do what I could, and went from there. I first liked music when I was in the ninth grade and going to sock hops and so forth at Whitehaven School in Memphis. I enjoyed Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry. I would listen to their records and play along with them on cardboard boxes and pots and pans. My mother later got me a set of old used drums at a pawn shop. I began to play along with the records on the drums, and later found a few guys that did about the same thing I did.” He formed a band in high school that featured another future Memphis music legend, the Johnny Cash soundalike Tommy Tucker, on vocals; Tucker later recorded a few singles for Hi. Mike Leech had a similar story to tell. He grew up in the same neighborhood as Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn (both of whom became members of the racially integrated Stax house band Booker T. and the MG’s), and first picked up a guitar in their presence when he was fourteen. Shortly thereafter he joined a high school rock and roll band, switching from guitar to bass. The highlight of his career at that point, he recalled, was his group’s audition for Sam Phillips’s right-hand man, Jack Clement. “He was dating someone who lived a block or two from where I grew up. Anyhow, the audition was a total disaster. We could never get in tune. Not just ‘out of tuneness,’ I mean we 4    s u n d ay s a n d h i t i m e s didn’t know what we were supposed to tune with, so we were like, at least, a whole step out. Our sax player got embarrassed and began packing up.” Undaunted, Mike continued with music, playing trumpet in his high school marching band. “That trumpet paid my way through college ,” he observed, for on the advice of a friend he applied, following his graduation...

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