Maryland Farms in Brentwood, TN is a classic late 20th century office park - all glass, right angles, and acres of pavement. That is to say it’s the last place I thought I’d ever go searching for the legacy and catalog of the mighty Sun Records.
Established more than 70 years ago by the eccentric genius Sam Phillips, Sun embodied revolutionary thinking and an uncompromising faith in music with soul. What’s left of that ethos, now that Sun Records is under corporate ownership in a Nashville suburb? More than a cynic might think. I made my way to its offices last month to meet its leadership team and take stock of a brand and legacy that’s getting a badly needed refresh.
Starting about 2022, a flurry of digital and vinyl reissues hit the marketplace from the Sun vaults in celebration of the brand’s 70th anniversary. Chris Isaak, one of the modern era’s most Sun-like artists, joined the roster as an artist and curator of a special anthology. Then last year, Sun put out new material by respected veterans Amy Helm and Ruthie Foster. They’re planning new releases in 2025 by LA blues rocker ZZ Ward, UK rock band The Waterboys, and Nashville’s power bluegrass band The Steeldrivers.

“It's important to us that we maintain the legacy that Sam Phillips started over 70 years ago,” said Meghann Wright, Sun’s director of marketing and release strategy. “I would consider this label (now) to be almost like a boutique, independent label, but we have the power of major label distribution behind us. So we have that great global reach, but we have a small, tight team that absolutely loves this music and loves the legacy of the Sun Records brand.”
I also met Wright’s boss, Paul Sizelove, who last May was named president of a newly organized Sun Label Group. He said that a lot has changed since five years ago, when Sun wasn’t even operating as an active record company. “It's now an outward facing label signing new acts,” he told me. “So I say we go back and forth. We go backwards. We work the legacy of the catalog. But we also look forward, signing new artists to look for the next evolution of Sun, and (its) fans, and the brand.”
It’s been a long road to here. Sam Phillips debuted his Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Ave. in January of 1950, opening his doors and heart to black artists in the segregated south, recording blues and soul greats such as Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas and Bobby Blue Bland. But Sam’s operation became world-changing with Sun Records, launched in 1952. After Elvis Presley broke out in the summer of ’54 with “That’s All Right,” the rock and roll solar system revolved around Sun for a time. Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, and Roy Orbison all blew up out of 706 Union.
More than a decade later, after business slowed, Phillips sold Sun Records to Nashville mover/shaker Shelby Singleton, who’d just made his name producing and releasing Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley PTA” (now in the Sun catalog). That was 1969, and for the next fifty years, Sun made do as a licensing company, making its historic recordings available to outside reissue labels or for film and TV placements. One could see Sun’s famous yellow rooster logo on a building next to Sound Emporium recording studio on Belmont Ave where they did business. The company attempted a revival as a label, releasing an album by country artist Julie Roberts in 2013. But it seemed a shadow of its former self.
Four years ago, Sun’s historic tapes and trademark were acquired by Primary Wave, a New York-based music and media company that’s rolled up or partnered with a dizzying array of hit song and recording catalogs, including Prince, Bob Marley, Whitney Houston, and James Brown. In Nashville, Primary Wave has been on a bit of a spree, acquiring gospel music leader Gaither Music, the soft jazz label Green Hill Music, bluegrass record company Rural Rhythm and emeraldwave by Green Hill, a new age/spiritual outlet. They’ve bundled those disparate properties together under a new Sun Label Group. When announcing this union last year, they put Sizelove, a lifer employee and longtime president of Gaither Music, in charge of the group, and his focus is making it all work in harmony.

“We pull synergies from back-end resources, whether it be production, marketing, you name it,” he said. “Each (label) has their own unique staff that work the new releases and the catalog, of course. But we also come together as one team to make sure we are working on best practices moving forward to make sure that we're maximizing everything that we do at each label.”
That all sounds pretty corporate, but newly signed Americana artists Amy Helm and Ruthie Foster sound delighted by their experience so far and about being associated with the Sun legacy.
“For me, it was about Memphis,” said Foster, who released her 2024 album Mileage on Sun after years with an Austin indie label, landing her a sixth Grammy Award nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Foster loves Memphis and its blues scene, and all that crystalizes for her in the Sun Records story. “Here's this man (Phillips) who took this music straight out of cotton fields, front porch singing, blues singing, and he put it on the map. And I think what I would love to see added to that is not only being a black woman (and) part of the LGBTQ community, is just to kind of add a little more to that mix, to make my own footprint with this label. I think it's really time. It’s important.”
While the golden age of Sun was over by the time Amy Helm was a teenager in New York, her awareness of American roots music (amplified by the influence of her father Levon Helm) certainly included the aura of the yellow label. “Sun always seemed kind of rebel and gritty, you know?,” she told me by phone. “Sun and Stax were coming out of Memphis, doing things that weren't overly refined and that were kind of coming from the heart.”

So when she was shopping around for a home for her independently made album Silver City, she was pleased that the label group’s chief strategy officer Dominic Pandiscia reached out to her and visited her family studio in Woodstock, NY. Helm said, “I think that he is a deep music fan and has a deep respect for all artists, and has also an understanding of all of us navigating this modern world of the music industry, which is kind of always shifting sands, you know? And that's how that happened. I was thrilled.”
“I thought it was cool to connect to something that had a brand that was rooted in such history and also possibilities,” Helm continued. “And I liked that I would be one of the newer artists, along with Ruthie and some of these other cool records, they did. I liked the idea of being part of the new crew that was (working in) this iconic framework.”
On the reissue side, Sun’s vaults of important and obscure recordings is vast. Alas, all the Elvis material was sold by Phillips long ago, but the “legacy artists” on Sun’s website include Ma Rainey, The Dixie Cups (of “Iko Iko” fame), Dave Dudley, Johnny Adams, T-Bone Walker, Webb Pierce, and a young Conway Twitty, just to name a few. In the Primary Wave years, Sun has reissued the spectacular early 70s album All American Music by Jimmie Dale (Gilmore) and the Flatlanders, Linda Martell’s historic Color Me Country album of 1972, and a remastered vinyl of the Harper Valley PTA album from 1968. Since my visit, I’ve been enjoying vinyl releases from soul artist Mickey Murray (1967’s Shout Bamalama And Other Super Soul Songs), Bettye Lavette (an early career compilation called Let Me Down Easy), and Rhythm Blues Party by Frank Ballard, an incredible document of Nashville’s local R&B scene from 1962.
“We love vinyl at Sun,” said its marketing manager Laura Pochodylo. “It's big for us, and I think our fans want it, expect it. We partner with people like Record Store Day. We work with them closely to make sure that we're producing what vinyl fans want.” She’s seen that shift a bit in recent years from emphasis on audiophile-grade pressings to more commemorative designs and visually unique products.
Pochodylo and Wright also spoke about the broader opportunities for marketing the new crop of Sun artists through video, song placements in TV/film, strategic partnerships, and festivals. It is likely songwriters like Foster and Helm will have never had such a large organization behind their releases before. The artists on the label and under the Sun group are pretty all over the map, but the people I spoke with seemed determined to give each their own plan and ample resources, backed by an implicit promise. As Pochodylo put it: “If you've got the Sun label, if you've got the yellow label on it, it's got to be good.”
Watch Ruthie Foster sing 'That's All Right' at Sun Studio in Memphis. Sun Studio is privately owned and not part of the Primary Wave acquisition.