• Track Listing

Sam Phillips' legendary Sun Records is famous for guitar-toting stars like Elvis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins, and a wild piano man named Jerry Lee Lewis. But along with those hot guitar licks and piano solos was some solid and often memorable drumming that made Sun records even more special. This is a CD for musicians as well as record collectors. We've saved you the trouble of going through hundreds of original sources to find the best of the best. It's all here, in one place, culled from hundreds of hours of listening. Whether you want to bask in it or learn from it, this truly is the definitive collection of Great Drums at Sun. Great Drums at Sun includes some breath-taking playing: from legends like WS Holland, Billy Weir and Jimmy Van Eaton to one-of-a-kinds like Joey Riesenberg, whose story has never been told before. Other drummers we selected - men like Bobby Crafford, Johnny Bernero and Houston Stokes - worked in near obscurity, but their brilliant playing illuminated recordings by better known vocalists. Try to imagine Whole Lotta Shakin' or Ubangi Stomp without the drums and you'll see what we mean. Sam Phillips, the founder and guiding hand of Sun Records, knew how to listen and he knew how important the musicians were. He went so far as to create a 'house band' during Sun's Golden Era - a group of wonderful instrumentalists he would routinely call upon to play at vocalists' recording sessions. We'll listen to these records like Sam Phillips did, to get a deeper appreciation of the music that came out of the Sun studio. The CD comes with track-by-track listening notes by musicians and Sun historians, Hank Davis and Scott Parker. In two collections of recordings from the legendary Sun label in Memphis (Great Guitars at Sun and Great Drums at Sun) we change the usual focus. Now the spotlight is off the singers and firmly on the guitarists and drummers who provided so much of what was great about our favorite Sun Records