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It's impossible to overstate this man's importance in the development of popular culture, including current rock music.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Musi....ap/index.html

[dencamp]

Damn, how did this slide down the page so fast. Sad. He was a huckster, liar, genius, marketing guru, right-place-right-time man. It's hard to imagine the world without Sun Records.

I will be watching Mystery Train tonight in his honor.

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Originally posted by dencamp:
Damn, how did this slide down the page so fast. Sad. He was a huckster, liar, genius, marketing guru, right-place-right-time man. It's hard to imagine the world without Sun Records.

I will be watching Mystery Train tonight in his honor.

I never thought of him as a huckster/liar or marketing guru but there may be things I don't know about him.

For those who aren't familiar, he was the central figure in the most important city at the most important time. He's best known for Elvis/Jerry Lee/Johnny Cash/Carl Perkins/etc., but he also recorded "Rocket 88" with Ike Turner, which many consider to be the first bona fide rock and roll record. He recorded important black musicians, including Howlin' Wolf, long before Elvis came along. If it hadn't been for his studio and his open-ness to developing both black and white idioms, it's hard to imagine where we would be. Everyone from Beatles fans to Clash fans to Nirvana fans and so forth owes him.

[daimoni]

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Originally posted by daimoni:
And that's an understatement, if I've ever read one.

R.I.P.

I dunno, I might be overstating the case because he died and I feel like giving him props. He wasn't a performer, and I suppose that even if he hadn't been around, the music would still have evolved, just in a different way. But if you look at things as they actually happened, he's a rather important link in the chain.