By Day, Sun Studio Draws Tourists. At Night, Musicians Lay Down Tracks.

“I knew the physical separation of the races — but I knew the integration of their souls,” he told the author Peter Guralnick for the 2015 biography “Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll.”

Through walk-ins and studio-for-hire work with record labels, Phillips made early recordings of future stars there, including B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf and Ike Turner. To keep the lights on, he also recorded audio of weddings, funerals and anyone who wanted to cut a record for themselves. Sun Records was launched in the space in 1952 and remained there until he opened a bigger recording studio in 1960, just blocks away. In 1969, he sold the label, which is now based in Nashville.

The original building, in the ensuing years, survived intact and in relative obscurity as a barbershop, an auto-parts store, a scuba shop and an empty husk until the 1980s. It was reopened in 1987 as a tourist destination and nighttime recording studio by the local musician Gary Hardy, who eventually incorporated the two-story building next door, which now serves as a souvenir shop and exhibition space.

Mike Schorr, who now owns and operates the business and the buildings with his brothers, John and Chris, said visitors usually ask whether the site is still functional. “We think, frankly, it’s essential to remain an active studio,” he said. “That’s the heart and soul of this business, this place.”

The recording studio is typically booked four nights per week, with enough demand to fill seven, said Lydia Fletcher, Sun Studio’s recording engineer and booker. Rates, which reflect having to set up the studio and then make it tourist-ready again, run $200 an hour with a three-hour minimum for an individual, and five hours for a band. Those musicians are occasionally well-known names — including, in recent years, Wynonna Judd and the Grammy winners Dom Flemons and Steve Cropper — but the majority are more likely regulars on hometown stages rather than the Billboard charts.