Elvis Presley's microphone, Sun Studio

Memphis, Tennessee — The Shure 55 microphone said to have been used by Elvis Presley, and beyond it, the control room window at Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio (originally Memphis Recording Service), the birthplace of rock and roll. The first rock and roll song, “Rocket 88,” was recorded here in 1951.

Rock and roll, country music, and rockabilly artists — including the “Million Dollar Quartet” of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash — recorded here for the Sun Records label throughout the mid to late 1950s until the studio outgrew this Union Avenue location. It is the most important room in the history of rock and roll music. See Elvis/Sun Records guitarist Scotty Moore’s website for more of the history of Sun Studio.

There’s an outstanding song called “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac” written by Mike Cooley for the Drive-By Truckers album The Dirty South. It has these lines in its opening verse:

Dammit Elvis, don’t you know
You made your Mama so proud
Before you ever made that record,
before there ever was a Sun
Before you ever lost that Cadillac that Carl Perkins won