A look at the Rise of Sun Records

Tonight’s installment in the Emmy-winning “American Masters” series on PBS is a frequently compelling look at the history of Sam Phillips’ Sun Records, the Memphis label that helped define rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘50s through the music of such seminal figures as Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

“Good Rockin’ Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records” (9 p.m.) introduces us to Phillips--the still frisky visionary who saw the future of rock ‘n’ roll long before that phrase became an advertising slogan for Bruce Springsteen.

Phillips grew up in the South, and was fascinated by what he felt was a natural connection between the blues of the region’s black musicians and the country sounds of their white counterparts.

Phillips first recorded such artists as blues greats B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf for established labels in Los Angeles and Chicago. After some success, he got the confidence to open his own label, Sun, and struck gold in 1954 with Presley, who shared Phillips’ love of country and blues. Once Presley hit in the South, hundreds of young hopefuls began lining up outside Phillips’ door--and he signed the best of them, including Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison.

One of the two-hour program’s strengths is meeting some of the other artists from the Sun stable who made appealing records but didn’t follow Elvis and Jerry Lee to the top of the charts. Some are pleased just to have been part of Sun’s history, but one, Billy Lee Riley, still grumbles that Phillips killed his chance for stardom by putting the label’s promotional money behind Lewis rather than him.

Instead of digging deeper into the stories of Phillips and these other artists, “Good Rockin’ Tonight” takes a wrong turn by showing various contemporary artists--from Paul McCartney and Third Eye Blind to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page--recording their versions of Sun classics. None comes close to the magic that Phillips created in the tiny, storefront studio on Union Street.