{"id":1186,"date":"2011-09-13T06:53:47","date_gmt":"2011-09-13T10:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/?p=1186"},"modified":"2016-09-15T21:53:41","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T01:53:41","slug":"the-million-dollar-quartet-four-rock-heroes-fifty-five-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/2011\/09\/13\/the-million-dollar-quartet-four-rock-heroes-fifty-five-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"The Million Dollar Quartet: Four Rock Heroes, Sixty Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the past several years, the musical Million Dollar Quartet<\/em> has been playing in major cities around the United States.\u00a0 It’s a fabulous show, featuring singer\/actor\/musicians portraying four 1950s rock’n roll heroes from Sun Records in Memphis Tennessee.\u00a0 The four are Johnny Cash<\/a>, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The play’s performances are sensational.\u00a0 But the leading man is not one of the musicians, rather the actor playing the role of Sam Phillips, founder and owner of Sun Records.\u00a0 We have mentioned Sam Phillips before.\u00a0 His Sun Records studio on 706 Union Avenue is now a lovingly preserved national landmark in Memphis.\u00a0 Artists such as Bono and Ringo Starr still go there, either to record or just to see and touch the microphone used by the great singers of the golden “rockabilly” age of The Fifties.<\/p>\n

The facts of the Million Dollar Quartet are fascinating in themselves.\u00a0\u00a0 The play takes some liberty with actual events, making the story even more compelling than it was in actuality.\u00a0 But our need to make our heroes even more heroic than they really were easily accounts for those embellishments.\u00a0 In the theatre version, Sam Phillips is dealing with Johnny Cash leaving to sign with another record company, Carl Perkins is trying to find another hit after his early defining single smash, Blue Suede Shoes<\/em>, and Jerry Lee Lewis is emerging as perhaps the most musically talented of all them all.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>Phillips is the glue that holds them together. That part does fit the historical record.\u00a0 For that Phillips is a genuine hero to rockers of all ages.<\/p>\n

As best we can figure out, and supposedly authoritative versions conflict, here’s what happened.\u00a0 It was a Tuesday afternoon, December 4, 1956.\u00a0 Elvis was at his peak.\u00a0 That year he had had five number one singles and two top albums, his first movie, Love Me Tender, <\/em>was a monstrous success, and his appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show <\/em>drew 83% of the television audience.\u00a0 In contrast, after Blue Suede Shoes<\/em> Perkins career hadn’t gone anywhere.\u00a0 He just didn’t have the charisma that blessed Elvis.\u00a0 Jerry Lee Lewis was only a studio piano player brought in to round out Perkins’ combo.<\/p>\n

Johnny Cash had recorded I Walk the Line<\/em> and Folsom Prison Blues<\/em> with Phillips at Sun.\u00a0 But he was about to leave for another label.\u00a0 In this context, Elvis and his current girlfriend dropped by the studio.\u00a0 It was likely a relief to him to return to a familiar, nurturing place where he could just be himself.\u00a0 As the famous “quartet” and others in the studio chatted, Elvis sat at a piano and started playing and singing.\u00a0 The others joined in.\u00a0 Someone in the studio had the good sense to turn on the tape recorder.<\/p>\n

What is so interesting are the songs they all knew and could work on together.\u00a0 At first, they are almost entirely gospel songs, reflecting their common Southern heritage.\u00a0\u00a0 Later, they started doing more traditional rock’n roll.\u00a0 Elvis takes the lead on most numbers, and the others harmonize.\u00a0 They are clearly just having fun.\u00a0 Many historians of the era feel that by the end of 1956, Elvis’ best days were behind him.\u00a0 He was being homogenized into a bland, antiseptic round of recordings and films.<\/p>\n

The Million Dollar Quartet was one of the last instances where Elvis was recorded in a setting where he was simply relaxing with his friends and his music, not trying to impress anyone.\u00a0 Still, the recordings, which were rediscovered many years later, impress us all.<\/p>\n

Below is a clip of the Million Dollar Quartet singing Farther Along<\/em> on that historic day in December of 1956.<\/p>\n