Happy to hear that John Mellencamp, aka—John Cougar, came to Memphis and took advantage of Sun studios; hallowed ground for Rock and Roll. His new CD named, No better than this, features a tune cut at the old shrine where Elvis made his first record more than 50 years ago.
It was not planned that way. In July 2009, Mellencamp and producer T-Bone Burnett, a team of technicians and musicians, and a documentary film crew packed into Memphis' tiny Sun Studio, where, when it was called Memphis Recording Service, Presley all but invented rock and roll in 1954.
"Did we go down there to create the Memphis sound? No. We just went there to record in a historic place. The fact that the minute you hit an upright bass where Sam Phillips says put the upright bass and it sounds the same shouldn't have been any surprise. But we were surprised."Mellencamp and Burnett are recording this CD the old way... Mono. In the age of 5.1 or 7.1, there are probably many of you who don't know what mono means. Getting old...
Anyway, they're recording on location at several of the most musically historic places in America.
Mellencamp eventually settled on three locations for the sessions: the historic First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga., near where Mellencamp has homes on the resort islands of Tybee, Ga., and Daufuskie, S.C.; room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, where bluesman Robert Johnson cut his first recordings; and Sun, launching pad for a long list of legends, including Howlin' Wolf and Johnny Cash.It's a good article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Enjoy —
(And they say Nashville is Music City, meh...)
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