When Sam Phillips started Sun Records out of an old auto parts store in Memphis in early 1952, there was no such thing as rock ’n’ roll. Blues, yes. R&B, yes. Country, yes. But nothing that synthesized the sounds into a coherent whole. Not that Phillips had such lofty ambitions: When the label’s studio opened a couple of years earlier (then as the Memphis Recording Service), it operated under the motto “We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime,” a capitalistic, come-all approach whose secondary effect—bringing people of different cultural and racial backgrounds together under the shared auspices of getting a thing or two off their chest—came on like an afterthought. Enter Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, and Rufus Thomas. Enter Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash. Stir, let sit for a couple of years, and voila: a vibrant new sound that allowed Phillips to introduce black culture to a primarily white audience—a notion by turns canny, groundbreaking, and controversial, striking the nerves of America’s anxiety about race in a way that still resonates today. All that, and you could boogie to it. Leaning on the label’s landmark early years, here’s a playlist of the best of Sun Records.