A revealing '56 session with young lions of pop
The first rock 'n' roll summit meeting occurred 50 years ago this month when Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins got together in Memphis' famed Sun Records studio -- and we finally can hear the whole thing.
Various versions of the session have been circulating for years in bootleg and authorized forms, some of them even titled "The Complete Million Dollar Quartet Session." But RCA/Sony's new "The Complete Million Dollar Quartet" claims it is the first truly complete one.
The new CD adds 12 minutes of previously unreleased music to RCA's original 67-minute version, which was released on CD in 1990, and finally puts the music in the original sequence. The biggest treat -- and surprise -- in the additional music: Elvis and the others jamming on instrumental versions of "Jingle Bells" and "White Christmas."
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Various Artists
"The Complete Million Dollar Quartet"
(RCA/Sony)
The back story: Presley started with Sun Records in 1954, but didn't become a national sensation until releasing "Heartbreak Hotel" on RCA two years later. Perkins, whose "Blue Suede Shoes" had been a Top 10 hit, was in the Sun studio on Dec. 4, 1956, when Presley happened by. Cash, who had already released "Folsom Prison Blues" and "I Walk the Line" on Sun, also was on hand, along with Lewis, who was playing piano on the Perkins session.
Eager for publicity, Sun founder Sam Phillips phoned the Memphis Press-Scimitar newspaper, asking it to send a photographer to get a photo of Presley with his new stars. The photo appeared the next day, but it would be years before any of the music ever surfaced for rock fans to hear.
The first thing we learned from the bootlegs was that the "Million Dollar Quartet" was really a $750,000 trio. The newspaper article accompanying the photo noted that Cash sang "Blueberry Hill" with the others, but neither Cash's voice nor "Blueberry Hill" has ever surfaced on albums drawn from the session. So it's generally assumed that Cash left before the session really got going and Phillips turned on a tape recorder.
Still, "Million Dollar Quartet" offers a wonderfully revealing glimpse into the musical instincts of these extraordinary rock figures. Taking turns on lead vocal, Presley, Perkins and Lewis went through some country tunes, some Chuck Berry numbers, even some Presley hits. But the focus was on gospel, including "Just a Little Talk With Jesus."
