Kid Rock will take a “pay cut” this summer, or at least risk one, by structuring a deal that allows for a $20 ticket price across the board at amphitheaters, and working with promoter Live Nation to lower prices on everything from beer to parking to merchandise for every show in every city. Kid Rock and his Twisted Brown Trucker Band will tour with a combination of ZZ Top, Uncle Kracker and Kool & the Gang on various dates, beginning June 28 in Bristow, Va., through Sept. 15 in Tampa. The tour, promoted by Live Nation, includes three shows at the DTE Energy Music Theatre in Kid Rock’s hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Tickets go on sale to the public in select markets beginning April 12th on LiveNation.com. Click here for dates.

This is a model Rock says he has been working on for a long time. “It’s always going to come down to price, but I think [from the fan’s perspective] it’s more the service charges, the fees, getting in there and not knowing what beers will cost, what they’ll hit you for parking,” he says. “Every little thing they nickel and dime you, and it’s not just music, it’s sports, it’s going to the movies. Artists demand so much money, and you have to set ticket prices at [a certain level]. Everyone’s fighting the system, and it’s really been all of our faults. We’re all fortunate to make as much money as we do, and I can surely take a pay cut and help out in these hard times.” Beyond just a deal structured based on volume, in effect, Rock says he is becoming a partner with Live Nation on the tour. “If people show up, I’ll get paid on that, and we’ll become partners: partners on beer, partners on parking, partners on my T-shirts, partners on everything, and we’ll take the money and split it at the end of the night,” he says. “And we pass those savings on to our fans, which is what we really need to be thinking about. Even if the volume comes out, we’re going to make less money, but I’ve got enough money to where it’s not going to kill my lifestyle. And who doesn’t want to play to a packed house every night?”

The shows will offer $4 12-oz. beers, value food packages, cheaper parking, and special $20 merchandise will be available. In a move geared toward fighting secondary market reselling, or “scalping,” Kid Rock will be releasing 1,000 tickets from each show directly to Platinum Tickets via Ticketmaster. “Rather than fight Ticketmaster, fight Live Nation, it’s about how do we get together, and be transparent with everything,” Rock says. “The scalpers have been a nightmare, as everybody knows, so we’re gonna scalp our own tickets. We’re gonna scalp 1,000 a night, and be transparent about it, let people know there’s a market that demands this, and when we see tickets out there being scalped, we’re going to under-cut their prices and send [fans] to a spot you can buy them and know you’re getting a real ticket and the money’s gonna go in our pocket.”

Rock says (where possible) the show will go paperless for the first 20 rows, and the first two rows won’t be sold prior to the event.  “We’re gonna upgrade people we see around the venue, based on whatever we want to do,” he says. “You can pick out the hard core fans, I’m gonna send a few people around the venue to have conversations with people, get a feel for ‘em, and say, ‘hey, these people deserve to be up front.’” That’s not a bad job for the guys that are humpin’ amps every night or doing something like that, either.” Rock would like to see other artists structure similar deals. “I know managers and booking agents are gonna hate me,” he laughs. “[Live Nation CEO] Michael Rapino said, ‘you’re one of the only artists I have conversations with, none of the managers or booking agencies want me to talk to their artists.’”

There will still be a $5 service fee on tickets purchased at ticketmaster.com. “I’m not happy about that, that’s 25% of my ticket price, that’s ridiculous,” he says. “I think they should go to 10% a ticket across the board. But we were able to work out something with Walmart, where you can go in there and $20, buy a ticket, parking and everything. If you go to Walmart, try to go early and get tickets for $20, take a friend with you. Have your shopping list, have someone go shop, you wait in line and get tickets, kill two birds with one stone.” In the venue, $4 for 12 oz. at every stand, “if you look at what ballparks are selling beers for, that’s fair,” says Rock, adding that he also tries to keep his merchandise reasonably priced. “A few tours back, we were selling shirts for $35-$40—which everybody is—and I’m like, ‘this is highway robbery,’ especially after owning a t-shirt business here in Michigan, Made In Detroit and really knowing what the prices are for us to buy ‘em,” he says. “Understandably, you’ve got to pay somebody to hump ‘em around, and there are costs involved, but not to justify that. So I slashed our t-shirt prices to $20 and $25 and we made the same amount of per cap selling more shirts every night. I said, ‘why can’t we do this with beer in select markets?’ and Rapino tried it, and, lo and behold it worked. So that was the spark for saying, ‘let’s go all the way.’”

With ZZ Top, Kool & the Gang and Uncle Kracker joining Rock and band, the artist believes he’s offering great value. “I’ve been doing the math, if you buy ticket with service charge, that’s $25, you have three beers, you buy a t-shirt, you’re under $70 for a t-shirt, having a some beers, seeing a concert and parking,” he says. “I don’t think you can beat that. I think people will be pleasantly surprised. Who knows they may spend the same amount of money, but they’ll feel good about doing it.”

Read More At: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1556609/kid-rock-takes-pay-cut-with-20-tickets-on-summer-tour

Ok, we’ve all heard about this “poor man’s copyright” technique, right?

We’ll explain it once again, for those who have been living in caves, but before we do, you should know right off, IT DOES NOT WORK!

NO COURT HAS EVER ACCEPTED THIS METHOD AS LEGAL PROOF OF COPYRIGHT, so don’t waste your time. But here’s what it’s supposed to do (and why it doesn’t work).

The poor man’s copyright (not copywrite) is when you mail either a CD, or sheet music, or some other physical form of your music, to yourself (or a friend) by regular, or certified mail.

The concept sounds reasonable:   A few days later, when you get your songs or music back in the mail, you DON’T open the envelope. You just hide it away somewhere, in a drawer, a safety deposit box, with your underwear, and just wait until someday when someone tries stealing your songs or music.

Then you whip out your sealed envelope, bring it to Court during your copyright infringement lawsuit, and let the Judge open it.

Then the Judge is supposed to think that the postmark on the envelope “proves” that the songs or music inside were in existence as of that date! So, assuming the bad guy who has stolen your music started playing your music after your postmarked date, the Judge is supposed to stand up and cheer, tell the jury you win your copyright case, award you millions in damages and you go home, record your song and win American Idol!

Only problem is… as we’ve already said, there are NO courts that have ever used a postmark from an envelope as proof in a copyright case!

Why doesn’t it work you ask?   Plenty of reasons:

In fact, there are SO many ways to tamper or manipulate the postmarked envelope, or the supposed “copyrighted” music inside, that we couldn’t fit them all on just this one page. But here’s a few quick examples:

The most obvious way to “game” this method is to just mail yourself an empty envelope and just barely seal it (or don’t seal it at all). Then when you get it back with its postmark, you just store it until you want to steal someone’s song maybe years later.

Then you stick the words and music to someone else’s song into your empty envelope with the old postmark and seal it up REAL GOOD. And, presto, now you’ve got “proof” that you created that song way back when it was postmarked — since it’s “obviously” been in that “sealed” envelope all that time!

[And if you’re really clever, you could also save some old newspaper article, with a date the same as the postmark, and stick it in with your newly-sealed song years later…]

Or even if you didn’t try to cheat, how do you plan on verifying the security of the sealed envelope? Bringing in scientific experts to verify you haven’t played with the envelope seals?  NO expert could testify to that (or when exactly the envelope was sealed or resealed)!

Or, how are you going to prove the postmark, or certified mail notice, is genuine?  Find the post office person who stamped it?  Yeh, right.

And then, of course, there’s the problem of BIAS.  Who will testify in court about preparing the envelope, sealing it, mailing it, getting it delivered back to your address, who handled it, how it was never opened, etc. etc.?   YOU? Your friends? Your relatives?   Do you see the problem with that?

YOU (and your friends and relatives) are NOT independent, unbiased witnesses. You (and people connected with you) have an obvious stake in the outcome of any copyright case which involves YOU!   Having someone who wants to win in court (or a friend) also be a witness in the same case is about the WORST thing you can do! Ask any lawyer… NO ONE WILL BELIEVE SUCH BIASED WITNESSES. When it comes to copyright issues, you always want unbiased, independent witnesses testifying!

As you can see, there are endless ways to cheat using this “poor man’s copyright” routine. So don’t waste your time since it won’t protect you or your songs.

For most composers, their songs are just too important to take such stupid chances leaving them unprotected with the farce known as the “poor man’s copyright.” Especially when you can get real protection so inexpensively, using an INDEPENDENT, UNBIASED, RELIABLE service, such as SongRegistration.com

Written By: Wray Herbert

I had the good fortune to come of age during the richest musical epoch — well, ever. The Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Dylan, Janis Joplin, Zappa. I could go on and on. The ’60s witnessed an unparalleled burst of musical creativity, ranging from Cream to CCR to Hendrix and to Neil Young and Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell. There is simply no match — not before nor since — for this outpouring of enduring song. And what’s more, nobody really disputes this.

Okay, okay. I wrote all those superlatives in part to provoke a reaction. There are people who dispute this claim, and indeed some are among my own friends and family. They say that ’60s music just seems incomparable to me because I was a young man when I encountered it. If I keep going back to Leonard Cohen and The Doors even today, they say, it’s only because those melodies were seared into my neurons when I was youthful and impressionable.

It’s hard to prove, one way or the other. But my critics do have some psychological science on their side. My musical preferences could be part of what scientists call the “reminiscence bump” — a peak in personal memories, of all kinds, that consistently comes in late adolescence and early adulthood. That is, we all remember more detail, more clearly, from this stage of our development. Since music is so emotional and personal and memorable, doesn’t it make sense that it would peak the same way?

That’s the question that Cornell University psychological scientist Carol Lynne Krumhansl set out to explore — or one of the questions. She wanted to see just how our early musical memories intersect with, and shape, our other autobiographical memories. She also wanted to see how music is transmitted from generation to generation, and to explore whether this pattern may have changed along with dramatic cultural shifts of the past half century.

Read More At: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/is-the-music-of-the-60s-r_b_3007514.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment&ir=Entertainment

Are you looking to expand your fan base, while keeping your existing fans interested and excited about your music? Could you use an easily-accessible page where you can list your band’s history of gigs, news, song releases, and everything else? Would you like to share more in-depth info with your fans than what you can post in a Facebook update or Tweet?

Many popular artists and bands keep a running, current blog page on their websites, and if you don’t already, you should consider starting up a blog page too! A blog can be an invaluable tool not just for your fans, but for you personally as an artist/band.

Your blog can include anything and everything about you as an artist, from your official updates, news and upcoming releases, to personal thoughts and statements you’d like to share with your fans and site visitors. A blog is also a great archival tool where both your fans and you can look back and check important past information, or just reminisce on your great experiences and history as an artist.

Our friends over at Music Think Tank recently posted a great article about why your band needs to blog. They list 4 great points about how having a blog page for yourself as an artist/band can really benefit you and your fan base.

Read More At: http://jangoairplay.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-you-too-should-have-music-blog.html

Read More At: http://songwriter101.com/articles/entry/Tales_From_the_Top_Van_Halens_Van_Halen_1978/

Which is a bigger surprise? Guns N’Roses doing a Las Vegas residency or Axl Rose conducting interviews to promote it? Glass-half-full: the years have loosened up both Axl and his audience. Glass half empty: desperation.

Tonight was the opening evening of a 12-date residency for the reconstituted Gunners at the Hard Rock Hotel’s Joint, a venue of such financial pulling power that The Who will be there soon. In dubbing the show “Appetite For Democracy”, we were promised a “unique” setlist which brought together the best of the two disparate albums Appetite For Destruction and Chinese Democracy.

In honour of the two records, posters promoting the show around Vegas combined the cover art from each. And although the panties were airbrushed out of Appetite‘s famous ‘robot rapist’ painting, the picture caused controversy with the local council – right on cue for the first show.

Despite the promise of special cocktails and an unprecedented setlist, this three-hour marathon set is actually more like “Use Your Appetite For Democracy.” The highlights were, in my opinion, mostly from the 1991 simultaneous release of Use Your Illusion I and II.

Chinese Democracy, Welcome To The Jungle, It’s So Easy and Mr Brownstone shoot by, centrifugal force pulling fans who had chosen seats towards the GA floor area – where they are stopped smartly by security.

The highlight of the entire show is fifth, the lilting piano refrain of Estranged leaving fans staring into the distance and pondering some epic but doomed love affair Rose had two decades ago.

The best song on Democracy, Better, follows soon afterwards and is almost a tortured sequel, speaking as it does of a troubled heart and “the melody inside of me”. Later, You Could Be Mine is fearsome, while Rose isn’t giving up best live rendering of Civil War to the soaring Myles Kennedy without a fight.

This reviewer saw Guns on New Year’s at the same venue and there are precious few differences in either the set list or the staging – although the catwalks suspended from the ceiling are an eye-catching addition.

But here is where Rose can’t win. If he comes on late and plays a short show, punters feel gyped. If he comes on late and plays a long show, reviewers lampoon the flat spots. Tonight’s show goes for three hours. Guitarist Richard Fortus plays Blacklight Jesus Of Transylvania in the first solo spot of the night. Bassist Tommy Stinson later performs Motivation, guitarist Bumblefoot offers Glad To Be Here, keyboardist Dizzy Reed performs No Quarter and Rose warbles part of Another Brick In The Wall pt II.

Neil Young’s Don’t Bring Me Down is covered, with AC/DC’s Riff Raff an unfortunate omission before it’s restored for subsequent shows.

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Lady Gaga’s canceled Born This Way Ball – which was set to run 22 more nights at arenas through March 20th – will lead to nearly $30 million in refunds, according to estimates based on Pollstar data. And that’s not counting the huge potential income losses from merchandise, food, beer and parking sales. “It was definitely a blow,” says Bernie Punt, sales and marketing director for the Bryce Jordan Center at Pennsylvania State University, which had nearly sold out its 12,500 capacity for Gaga’s March 2nd gig. “Trust me, I’ve been hearing nothing for the past 48 hours of so many saddened fans that were looking forward to this. Everybody bought those tickets for Christmas or Hanukkah gifts.”

Gaga announced on Tuesday that she was forced to cancel all remaining dates on the tour due to a labral tear to her right hip, requiring surgery. Her world tour in 2012 had grossed $161.4 million, according to Pollstar, behind only Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Roger Waters and Coldplay; her early dates this year had consistently sold out between roughly 9,000 and 15,000 tickets at each U.S. arena. As pop-star injuries go, this wasn’t as devastating as Bono’s back surgery before a U2 tour in 2010 – but Gaga’s tour, at least so far, was completely canceled rather than postponed, so the revenue is gone.

“It’s such a huge disappointment,” says Alipa Patel, marketing and communications manager for Copps Coliseum, where Gaga canceled this weekend’s show in Hamilton, Ontario. “It’s pretty marquee for a city like Hamilton to get a Lady Gaga. We’ve had a lot of big names come through, like Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, but with Lady Gaga being so current, it was really something that was going to put us on the map.

Read More At http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/cost-of-lady-gagas-tour-cancellation-could-exceed-30-million-20130215

Increasingly, the music we listen to is stored on our computers or streamed from distantservers. As a result it’s now jumbled in with news, talk radio, and podcasts. Fortunately, a new generation of media hardware is bringing this sonic bounty to us. Here is a look at three very different networked audio players geared toward different needs, at different price levels and with varying degrees of complexity. If you’re looking for something simple, Logitech’s UE Smart Radio (US $180) is designed to be a stand-alone replacement for the traditional kitchen or desk radio. Its old-school front panel features a single speaker on the left and controls—including what looks like a large tuning knob—on the right. If not for the sharp 2.4-inch color screen and a few extra buttons, it could pass for a standard AM/FM radio.

Read Article At: http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/tools-toys/review-networked-audio-players

On a twisted highway of chord progressions and music theory, the blues scale is an express lane for beginning jazz soloists.

Sheet music is like a home cooked meal. You grew up with it, you know all the ingredients, it makes sense to you—it’s familiar. But then one day, a hulking beast barges in, gobbles up your sheet music, and demands you to play anyway. His name is jazz, and he’s got no time for notes on a page. If you’re new to jazz improvisation, learning the blues scale will save you hours of pain and discomfort. You can apply the blues scale to pretty much any solo, in any song, and at least sound like you have a clue.

The blues scale for each key consists of the minor seventh chord (in this case, Cm7), plus the fourth and flat fifth (F and Gb). While it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the blues scale for each key, you can usually fall back on the root blues scale at just about any point in a jazz solo. In other words, you can rely on the C blues scale throughout a C blues jam, even though the key may also change to F and G.

Beginners often fall into the trap of only playing the notes in the chords. The result is about as exciting as a bedtime story from Ben Stein. In jazz, dissonance is a virtue. It gives a solo texture and color. The flat third and flat seventh (both contained in the blues scale) are especially sexy target tones to play over a major chord, where those notes are otherwise natural. Even the blues scale fatigues with overuse. A musician should have a toolbox of other scales and chord tones to draw on during his solo, says Bill DiCosimo, a jazz pianist and chair of music and entertainment industries at Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music. DiCosimo suggests using the relative minor blues scale over the dominant chord. So, in the key of C, the relative minor is A, or the sixth, and the notes of the A blues scale are A-C-D-Eb-E-G-A. Chord extensions, especially the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth, also help spice up a solo.

You can learn jazz theory on any instrument, but you can master it on piano. If you are serious about learning music theory or composing, it’s helpful to have a keyboard or piano on hand, regardless of your main instrument. Since the keyboard clearly lays out every note, studying theory with a piano is like traveling in a foreign land with a roadmap.

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Zip files allow users to compress, or archive, a number of other files (including MP3 music) to a smaller format for storage purposes. Since zip files are smaller in size, they are more easily transmittable through email and take less time to transfer between computers or devices. Windows offers the option of creating a zip file in a pre-existing folder, or to create and store it directly to their desktop.

1) Launch a new Windows Explorer window. Navigate to a folder where you want to create a new zipped file. Navigate to your desktop if you want your zipped folder saved to your desktop.

2) Right-click the location where you want your zipped file stored (either a folder or on your desktop) and hold your cursor over the “New” sub-menu. Select the “Compressed (zipped) Folder” option.

3) Enter the desired name for your zipped folder and press “ENTER” on your keyboard.

4) Open a new Windows Explorer window and navigate to the MP3 files you want zipped. Drag and drop your MP3 files directly into the zipped folder icon.

Software for writing music has to be fast, intuitive to work with and should keep you focused on your work

There are as many different ways to write music as there are composers out there. Some write their ideas with musical notes on paper, some prefer to record them on tape (or HD these days…) while others use Software to get them down in reality.

In the Computer world it mainly depends on what kind of producer you are. If you are already working with a fully fledged recording package like Logic Pro or Cubase with built in notation, you might not need an extra Notation Software for writing music.

If you want to write a musical score for an orchestra as a movie score maker. you may need an extra software that is easier to write scores with. Let’s start with…

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The Akai XR20 looks much like any other drum machine. It has all the standard bits—pad grid, various function buttons and transport controls, and a data-entry wheel, and at the back of the unit, a pair of unbalanced main audio outputs, a stereo aux output, a headphone port, a couple of footswitch inputs, and MIDI In and Out.

It also includes a quarter inch mic input, in case you wish to perform using only drums and a voice, but the manual says very little about microphone, besides, “the input signal will be mixed with the audio,” and I couldn’t find a way to change the input from the audio. The feet on my unit didn’t sit quite flat on the floor, giving the whole machine an undesirable wobble, but aside from that, the unit looked typical and robust. When the unit is turned on, however, it reveals itself to be way ahead of other drum machines. The lighting system of the pads, which is a bright blue, is set up to be both useful and cool looking.

During pattern playback the lights go out, turning back on as the pad is triggered by hand or by the programmed pattern. It also has a distinctively large display screen, which aspect it shares with the Alesis SR18. The XR20 can accommodate 200 patterns—100 preset and 100 programmed by the user.

The type of drum line this machine is built for is easily determined by listening to the preset patterns. The first two patterns feature vocal hits, and the first four are called, respectively, Addidaz, Brooklyn, Killa and Blunt. The BPMS center around 90. There are one hundred preset kits provided, their audio drawn from the 720 samples which are on-board. 414 of these samples are categorized as typical drums, and the rest are called “One Shots,” which are composed of a mixture of percussion sounds and other effects.

The effects can be anything from scratches and needle drops to vocal phrases, Rhodes chords and string stabs. Using the indicated button, you move the pads between two banks of twelve sounds, which represent drum and one shot layers provided for each kit.

The sounds show up across different MIDI notes on channel 10 when the XR20 is used as an external sound module. Synth, which is a completely different, third layer, allows one of the synth sounds to be chromatically played by using the pads, or via MIDI channel 1 from an external source.

You can choose from any of 64 synth sounds, mostly synth leads and basses, but with the occasional piano or string included for completeness. Such sounds will probably not feature heavily in popular songs, but they are sometimes helpful when laying out ideas, or they can add a little kick to your sound.

Since the XR20 is a closed system, you better be certain you like the preprogrammed sounds, because you won’t be able to add new ones. The chosen sounds, however, are for the most part good, solid sounds, and creating your own kits is quick and easy. Just initiate drum set mode, choose a pad, then work your way through the edit pages to choose a sample, tune and pan it, set filter and envelope parameters, and et cetera. The stored pattern will then be saved with a specific kit.

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It’s official: Justin Bieber was “snubbed” by the Grammy Awards. I think Bieber’s shut-out has gotten more attention than the fact that fun. swept the nominations in the top four categories. There’s a good reason for that. Everybody knows Justin Bieber; fun. is just now becoming known outside of the slice of the population that’s plugged into pop music.

With all the talk about Bieber’s snub, you would think that that every other working musician received a Grammy nomination. (With 81 categories on the Grammy ballot, it sometimes seems that way.) In fact, many other artists went unrecognized, including Nicki Minaj, Mary J. Blige, Train, the Beach Boys, Cee Lo Green, R. Kelly, Monica, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, The Band Perry and Lionel Richie. Still other artists received one or more noms, but were skipped over for high-profile “genre album” awards. Among them: Rihanna, Trey Songz, Little Big Town and Bieber’s early mentor, Usher.

Yet I haven’t seen one reference to how Bob Dylan was “snubbed” because Tempest wasn’t nominated for Best Americana Album or how Neil Young & Crazy Horse were “snubbed” because Americana wasn’t nominated for Best Rock Album. But then, Dylan, Young and most of these other artists aren’t as buzz-worthy as Bieber. You can point out that Dylan or Blige or Richie didn’t get any Grammy nominations and it won’t create a stir. Point out that Bieber was shut out and it’s big news.

Bieber had better luck at the Grammys two years ago. He was nominated for Best New Artist (though he famously lost to Esperanza Spalding). And his first full-length album, My World 2.0, was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album. Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, tweeted his displeasure with the outcome. “I just plain DISAGREE,” he wrote on Twitter. “The kid deserved it. Grammy board, u blew it on this one.” Braun also tweeted: “The hardest thing to do is transition, keep the train moving. The kid delivered. Huge successful album, sold out tour, and won people over…this time he deserved to be recognized and I dont really have any kind nice positive things to say about a decision I dont agree with.”

I sympathize. All three of the singles from Believe were well-designed to take Bieber from his early bubblegum image into the slinky, R&B-accented pop that made Justin Timberlake a superstar. And all three have been successful. “Boyfriend” reached #2 on the Hot 100, “As Long As You Love Me,” featuring Big Sean, hit #6 and “Beauty And A Beat,” featuring Nicki Minaj, is currently in the top 15.

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Sam Phillips is not just one of the most important producers in rock history. There’s a good argument to be made that he is also one of the most important figures in 20th-century American culture. As owner of Sun Records and frequent producer of discs at his Sun Studios he was vital to launching the careers of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Rufus Thomas and numerous other significant artists. Although he first made his mark (and a very deep one) with electric blues by Black performers, he will be most remembered for his rockabilly stars, particularly Elvis Presley.

Sam Phillips was born January 5, 1923, the youngest of eight children and was raised on a farm just outside Florence, Alabama. In high school Phillips conducted the school band. His onstage presence impressed the manager of local WLAY radio that he was hired as a part-time announcer. The Phillips were a typical middle class family until the Great Crash of 1929. Sam’s father died in 1941 just after Pearl Harbor. He then dropped out of high school to help support his mother and deaf mute aunt. He worked first at a grocery and later a funeral home. It was while at the funeral home that Phillips learn how to handle people tactfully in emotional situations, a skill that later would serve him well.

Originally Phillips wanted to study law, but because of circumstances decided to go into radio. He went to Alabama Polytechnical Institute in Auburn, Alabama where he majored in engineering, including audio engineering for radio. In broke into radio in 1940 when he conducted and emceed the band for a college concert. This impressed Jim Connally the station manager at WLAY enough that he hired Phillips.

In 1942 he married Rebecca Burns. Phillips next radio job was for three years at WMSL in Decatur, Alabama and then to WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee and finally in June, 1945 to WREC. At WREC he hosted the “Songs of the West” show daily at 4 PM. There he was able to put his engineering skills into use. In those days many programs were prerecorded on 16 inch acetate discs which were often duplicated and passed to other stations. Thus the radio engineers were also recording engineers and thus Phillips was able to develop his recording skills. He also took care of the station’s sound effects and found records for its library.

While at WREC he hosted “Saturday Afternoon Tea Dance” where he played jazz, blues and pop from the Skyway Room of the Peabody Hotel. The shows were broadcast nationally over the CBS radio network In October 1949 Phillips signed a lease on a small storefront located at 706 Union Avenue near downtown Memphis. The rent was $150 a month. With the help of two year loan from Buck Turner a regular performer at WREC he installed recording equipment. The Memphis recording studio opened in January 1950 with the slogan “We Record Anything-Anywhere- Anytime.” With a Presto five-input mixer board and Presto PT900 portable tape recorder in the Trunk of his car, Phillips would whatever weddings, funerals or religious gatherings he could book.

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