When
Sam Phillips welded country, R&B, and blues together in the mid-'50s in his Memphis-based Sun Studios, releasing the explosive result on his legendary Sun Records imprint, he changed the face of pop music forever, largely because of
Elvis Presley's first recordings, but also because of the early work of
Jerry Lee Lewis,
Carl Perkins,
Charlie Rich,
Johnny Cash, and
Roy Orbison, along with dozens of other lesser-known artists who never quite became household names, like
Charlie Feathers and
Billy Lee Riley. It was a noisy revolution, full of fun and bravado, and it worked more often than it didn't. This extremely generous three-disc, 107-track box set of Sun offerings kicks off with
Presley's seminal "Mystery Train" and keeps on rolling from there, with the tracks running right through the heart of the Sun Records catalog, a fun and raucous trip through the historic backlist of one of the coolest and most influential labels ever to hawk a record.