‘Sam Phillips didn’t record the Million Dollar Quartet. I did. Sam was next door in Taylor’s restaurant.’
Jack Clement
Put Elvis Presley with another superstar and very little happens. The TV Special with Frank Sinatra in 1960 was a damp squib and nothing, absolutely nothing, of importance happened when Elvis met the Beatles in 1965. Bob Dylan had an inconsequential meeting with Elvis which he wrote about in ‘Went to See the Gypsy’. Maybe Elvis didn’t fancy jamming with Bob as he did say on stage in Vegas, ‘My mouth is so dry it feels like Bob Dylan spent the night in it.’
The most frustrating meeting of all has to be when Elvis Presley showed up at the Sun Studios on 4 December 1956 and jammed with Carl Perkins and his session pianist, Jerry Lee Lewis. Johnny Cash was around but apparently Christmas shopping was more exciting than a jam, and maybe it was; after all, Johnny Cash was now earning good money. Nevertheless, the resulting session with Elvis, Carl and Jerry Lee has plenty of fire but they are not always on mic and the overall sound could have been improved.
The Million Dollar Quartet could have been so much more – and now it is. A Broadway, West End and Las Vegas success, Million Dollar Quartet began in Chicago in 2008. It was touring the UK in 2016 and my comments relate to the London production at the Noel Coward Theatre in June 2011.
With scant regard for history, this jukebox musical speculated what might have happened if Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash had had a mammoth jam session. Judging by the audience reaction (mostly pensioners the night I was there), Million Dollar Quartet is here to stay and will be staged and restaged for many years. Indeed, it was in Liverpool in February 2017 with, get this, Jason Donovan as Sam Phillips.
By and large, Million Dollar Quartet ignores what the musicians put down that day and substitutes a mammoth session where the four artists perform 50s hits, whether or not they had even been written at the time. There is witty repartee and some drama between the performers and the show, which features 24 songs, runs for 1 hour 45 minutes without an interval. I did wonder if I had been given the right programme, as the first seven pages were about Betty Blue Eyes and there was very little to set the show in context. Quite apart from rock’n’roll, 1956 was a significant year in world history, but there was not a political comment in the show.
Without doubt, the dominant musician in the show was Jerry Lee Lewis, played by Ben Goddard in comic style, more Jerry Lewis than Jerry Lee Lewis. I was wondering how anyone could work with someone like this and which one of Elvis, Johnny and Carl was going to knock him out. I had my money on Carl, but the answer was none of them. Goddard’s one-dimensional performance, though funny at first, became tiresome, and I was unsure about the cast approving of his chasing young girls.
Still, there was a good rant when the very religious Jerry Lee wondered if he was singing the Devil’s music – in reality, a conversation at a later date which was taped by Sam Phillips – and there was a wonderful one-liner to Carl Perkins, ‘88 keys beats six strings any ole time.’ Goddard performed a fine version of ‘Real Wild Child’ but, judging by the applause, it was ‘Great Balls of Fire’ and ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ on’ that the audience wanted.
Similarly, Oliver-Seymour-Marsh as Carl Perkins wasn’t best served by the script. Did Carl Perkins really resent Elvis Presley doing ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ when, after all, he would be collecting songwriting royalties? Maybe he did and that could explain why Elvis didn’t record any more of his songs. If so, Carl was shooting himself in the foot. (Oh, he did that for real in 1966 anyway.)
In any event, Elvis could hardly be blamed for Carl’s rapid decline from stardom in 1956 which was partly attributable to his car accident and his hard drinking. In the show, Carl performed ‘Matchbox’, ‘Who Do You Love’, ‘My Babe’, ‘Honey Don’t’ and ‘See You Later Alligator’, and Seymour-Marsh played excellent guitar solos while the rest of the quartet were singing backing vocals and playing their instruments.
I had my doubts about the portrayal of Johnny Cash in Million Dollar Quartet. Would the country star have wanted to take part in a rock’n’roll jam session? Would he have even known ‘I Hear You Knocking’? Derek Hagen captured Cash’s personality but he was portrayed as a man with a secret. Sam Phillips wouldn’t let him record an album of gospel songs and so he had signed with Columbia rather than re-signing with Sam. In the play’s most dramatic moment, he told Phillips he was leaving. Hagen captured Cash’s voice perfectly as he sang ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, ‘Sixteen Tons’, ‘I Walk the Line’ and ‘Riders in the Sky’.
By all accounts, Elvis Presley was amazingly charismatic. All eyes would be on him when he entered the room. Although Michael Malarkey was very good, he lacked that charisma. Put it this way: he’s no Tim Whitnall, who was so good in Elvis in 1977. He would only look like Elvis Presley with the lights out. Malarkey came over as just another tribute singer as he performed ‘Memories Are Made of This’, ‘That’s All Right’, ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Hound Dog’. He was okay but not Elvis.
On the original tapes, Elvis talked about Jackie Wilson imitating him in Las Vegas and then did his impersonation. I wish that this golden moment had been included and expanded for the stage show.
It is unusual these days to see a show with effectively just one stage set. At the end, Elvis sat at the piano with the others around him and Sam Phillips took a picture. The actors froze as the magic photograph of the four of them on 4 December 1956 was shown. The applause was for the way that they had recreated that moment.
However, if you look at the uncropped version of that photograph, you will see a girl sitting on the piano. Who was she? It was Elvis’ girlfriend, Marilyn Evans, a dancer from the New Frontier in Las Vegas. Here, Elvis’ girlfriend was called Dyanne and, played by Francesca Jackson, she sang ‘Fever’ and ‘I Hear You Knocking’. There were two other musicians in supporting roles: Gez Gerrard as Carl’s brother, Jay, on bass and Alex Yates as W.S. Holland on drums. The songs that the quartet performed together were ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’, ‘Down by the Riverside’ and ‘Peace in the Valley’.
The book by noted researcher Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux (director of American Hot Wax and Urban Cowboy) was written tongue-in-cheek. It does mess with the truth – but they are after a deeper truth in that they are trying to nail the relationship between the four musicians and Sam Phillips at the birth of rock’n’roll.
Sam Phillips, played by Bill Ward, acted as narrator and he maintained that the four performers were never as happy as they had been on that afternoon. Certainly they had their share of misery, much of it self-inflicted, but what of Phillips himself? In the play, he sold Elvis for $40,000 because he wanted to invest in a new hotel chain, Holiday Inn, but if he was such a good businessman, why did all four performers joke about Sun’s poor distribution? I wasn’t sure about RCA negotiating for him to produce Elvis again. Again, I was expecting this to be resolved by Elvis telling him that he didn’t want it.
The show ended with the Million Dollar Quartet performing in Las Vegas. This was a production for coach parties who wanted a rave-up rather than serious music fans.
Life had always been tense and dramatic for Carl Perkins. His father Buck was a poverty-stricken sharecropper in Tiptonville, Tennessee, raising three sons with his wife, Louise: James Buck (Jay or J.B, born 1930), Carl Lee (born 1932) and Lloyd Clayton (born 1935). Even when they were nine or ten years old, they were picking cotton. Jay and Carl would do as they were told but Clayton was regularly beaten by his father for misbehaviour. Carl was not as strong as the other brothers, as the after-effects of pneumonia and scarlet fever had damaged his lungs.
Carl Perkins’ background is revealed in his songs – in ‘Movie Magg’ he takes a girl to the cinema riding together on horseback and ‘Dixie Fried’ is the story of a tough, barroom fight. These are not skilfully-crafted Brill Building songs but songs that resonate with references to his own experiences and lifestyle.
Indeed, he could have had a field day writing about life as he knew it. For example, Clayton had lied about his age and joined the marines when he was only 14. When the truth was discovered, he returned home but his instructor told him, ‘We’ve money invested in you and we’ll be calling you back.’ When Clayton realised that he didn’t want to return, he shot himself in the foot, knowing they would not want an injured serviceman. He threw away the plaster cast and his foot became swollen and infected. He treated it by drinking whiskey and gradually it did, miraculously, get back to normal.
The Perkins brothers formed a country band with Carl and Jay encouraging each other on lead and rhythm guitars respectively, while Clayton played the stand-up bass loudly and aggressively, without much musical skill. He got by as it gave the band some attitude.
Sam Phillips recognised Carl Perkins’ talent but the brothers were ill-suited to the teenage market. Jay was a steadying influence but Clayton was wild and uninhibited, someone who would fight at the merest provocation. Carl wanted to be like Jay but feared that he was turning into Clayton.
In 1953 Carl had married Valda Crider and in March 1956, they were expecting their third child. ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ was shaping up to be a hit: Elvis Presley had covered it and this would lead to much-needed royalties.
So life was tense in the band even before the car accident in March 1956. Carl had a fractured skull and a broken shoulder, Jay a broken neck and Clayton minor injuries. When Jay saw Carl in hospital, he was surprised as he had been told that Carl had been killed. These were strong, tough, resolute people but it was still remarkable that the band was back on the road, with a replacement for Jay, a month later. When Carl opened on the Big D Jamboree tour on April 23, he told the audience, ‘It’s a boy!’ and launched into ‘Honey Don’t’.
When Jay returned to the line-up, he was plagued by recurring headaches and became addicted to painkillers. He was no longer the peacemaker between Carl and Clayton and when they worked with Johnny Cash, they found that Cash encouraged Clayton’s idiocy.
The new recording sessions at Sun had been inconsistent. Carl was back in action in May with the magnificent ‘Boppin’ the Blues’ and the tough ‘Dixie Fried’, both of which made the US Country Top 10; ‘Boppin’ the Blues’ crossed over to the pop charts, stalling at No.70. His ‘Pink Pedal Pushers’ was all too obviously an attempt to rewrite ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ but ‘That Don’t Move Me’ is lame and half-heartedly performed. His version of ‘Lonely Street’ is so bad that it is hard to tell whether he is copying Carl Belew’s song or writing his own and his voice is so rough on Louis Jordan’s ‘Caledonia’ that he must have been drinking. On the session tapes for another dodgy recording, ‘Her Love Rubbed Off’, Carl mutters, ‘Let’s get this son of a bitch finished.’ Carl wants to go home – or to the nearest bar. For all its faults, it’s a wonderfully angry and defiant track, the forerunner of what in the late 70s would be called psychobilly.
Sam Phillips had had a busy year at Sun and he brought in a young producer, Jack Clement, to help him. By now, Sam was mostly recording white artists, but there were sessions with Rufus Thomas and Rosco Gordon. Johnny Cash was becoming a major country music star; his own song, ‘I Walk the Line’, had topped the country charts for six weeks and had been a pop hit, making No.17 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Sam Phillips recognised that Carl Perkins was losing his drive and he thought he had the answer. Jerry Lee Lewis was the same age as Elvis, being born in Ferriday, Louisiana. He was an exceptionally talented but arrogant entertainer, his fiery piano playing full of flourishes and glissandos. He and his father had come to Memphis in November, hoping that Sam Phillips would be impressed. He was and his first single, ‘Crazy Arms’, was released in November 1956. Sam asked Jack Clement to work with him. Jerry Lee stayed in Memphis doing honky tonk dates and, as he wanted some money for Christmas presents, he told Sam and Jack that he would undertake session work.
And so it was on Tuesday afternoon 4 December 1956 that Carl Perkins was cutting new tracks at Sun. Sam Phillips thought that the addition of Jerry Lee might make them sound more commercial and that it would move Carl away from his standard rockabilly sound.
Carl had never met Jerry Lee before and he could sense that the very self-assured Jerry Lee would soon be having a ruckus with Clayton. Carl had a new song, ‘Your True Love’ and Jerry Lee immediately saw how he could enhance it. It was a good lively performance although Carl isn’t always on key. Sam Phillips declared, ‘That’s a hit, Carl’ to which Jerry Lee added, ‘That song ain’t worth a damn.’ Jerry Lee would have to be careful, as not only where the three Perkins brothers there but also Buck Perkins who wanted to see how a record was made.
Carl asked his dad about a song he used to sing, ‘Matchbox’, originally recorded by Blind Lemon Jefferson in 1927. Buck sang what he knew and Carl repeated the verses while Jerry Lee added a boogie riff. They took a little break so that Carl, aided by Early Times Kentucky whisky, could complete the lyric. They went for a take and Carl took two instrumental breaks on his guitar: he would have given one to Jerry if the bastard hadn’t been so smug. It was a little rough and they would do it again before release but Sam declared, ‘That’s a smash – it sounds like the South is gonna fight the North again!’
They would have done another take that day but there was an unexpected visitor: Elvis Presley. Carl hadn’t seen Elvis for a year and he was now a major star, indeed the biggest star in the US. He looked different, his hair, once sandy, was jet black. He starred in the biggest film at the US box office, Love Me Tender, and he had taken a few days’ holiday in Las Vegas with Colonel Parker. He had come from Vegas with one of the showgirls, the stunning Marilyn Evans, whom he described as his ‘house guest’.
Elvis was in no hurry and he said he would like to hear a playback of what they had been doing. He heard ‘Matchbox’ and called it a killer track and he praised Jay and Clayton for their backing vocals on ‘Your True Love’. The downside of the Million Dollar Quartet is that they had interrupted a very good session.
Sam Phillips saw a photo-op. He called Johnny Cash and asked him to come to the studio double-quick. Then he rang the local newspaper, Memphis Press-Schmitar, and asked them to send a photographer, who happened to be George Pierce. A reporter, Bob Johnson came along as well as his friend, Leo Soroca from United Press International.
Elvis sat at the piano and doodled a few notes. Jerry Lee said, ‘I didn’t know you could play’ but wisely refrained from passing comment on his ability. When Johnny Cash arrived, a press photograph was taken of Elvis at the piano, with Carl on guitar and Jerry Lee and Johnny Cash behind him. Marilyn was sitting on the piano but the photo is usually cropped. When it appeared the following day, Bob Johnson wrote, ‘If Sam Phillips had been on his toes, he’d have turned the recorder on when that very unrehearsed but talented bunch got to cutting up ‘Blueberry Hill’ and a lot of other songs. That quartet could sell a million.’ Hence, the phrase, the Million Dollar Quartet.
What Johnson didn’t know is that the tapes were turned on, and the musicians must have known that as, by and large, they are singing into the microphones. Of course what they were doing was only for fun as Elvis was on a different label now and RCA would never have permitted this, had they known. Indeed, they could have confiscated the tapes.
After the photo session, Elvis asked if there was an acoustic guitar around. Charles Underwood, who wrote ‘Ubangi Stomp’ for Warren Storm, said he had one in his car.
Johnny Cash had to pick up his wife Vivian when she finished work and they were going shopping. There are no known tapes of him singing with the Million Dollar Quartet, but he recalled singing ‘Blueberry Hill’ and ‘Isle of Golden Dreams’ with them. They must have been singing this when the photograph was taken. We know that he wasn’t around later as Elvis says, ‘Takes Johnny Cash to do this’, as he gets to grips with ‘On the Jericho Road’.
In a WHSmith music magazine interview in 1993, Johnny Cash told Max Bell, ‘The story goes that I wasn’t there except for the photo call. It isn’t true. The truth is that I was present throughout the session which started with me and Elvis singing a lot of gospel tunes. Since Jerry played the hottest piano, obviously we had to let him sit down. The liner notes say that my voice isn’t heard because I’d left the studio. In fact, they had lost the tapes. I wish they would set the record straight.’
So the famed Million Dollar Quartet is really the Million Dollar Trio. They are backed by the Perkins band on occasion and another Sun artist, Smokey Joe Baugh, adds his bass voice to ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’. Baugh had recorded a novelty song for Sun in 1955, ‘The Signifying Monkey’, a cleaned-up version of something bawdy.
By now, you must be thinking that the world and his wife were at Sun Records that day – with no security either, just Marion Keisker by the door. We don’t know for sure but the complete rundown is likely to have been Sam Phillips, Jack Clement, Carl Perkins, Jay Perkins, Clayton Perkins, Buck Perkins, W.S. Holland, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Charles Underwood, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Evans, Bob Johnson, George Pierce, Leo Soroca and Smokey Joe Baugh. There are 10 known photographs from the afternoon.
W.S. Holland says, ‘Many times I have thought, ‘Boy, I would have given anything if whoever took those pictures had just angled the camera round three or four feet and myself and Clayton and J.B. would have been in the picture. Jack Clement just turned on the recording machine and that’s the reason that you don’t have a good sound, we were just playing whatever we thought and didn’t have any idea that someday it would be billed as the Million Dollar Quartet. We didn’t even know that the recording machine was even on. If we had, we might have tried a little bit better. If you listen to the CD, it starts and stops just like a jam session.’
Sam Phillips and Jack Clement watched what would happen. For the next 50 minutes, the musicians performed over 35 songs, rarely doing complete takes and often only singing snatches. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable smorgasbord of southern music – country, gospel, blues and rock’n’roll.
The star of the tape is unquestionably Elvis. He talks about being in Vegas and how he had seen Billy Ward and his Dominoes. Their lead vocalist was Jackie Wilson who did a hilarious impression of Elvis singing ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, which amused Elvis so much that he saw it four times. He talks about him doing a big ending: ‘All he needs is a building to jump off’.
Elvis impersonates Jackie Wilson impersonating Elvis Presley and he also has a stab at impersonating Bill Monroe (‘Little Cabin Home on the Hill’) and Ernest Tubb (‘I’m With a Crowd but so Alone’). Marilyn Evans has her moment as she requests ‘Farther Along’.
Carl takes the lead on Wynn Stewart’s ‘Keeper of the Key’ with Carl and Jerry adding harmonies and he comments, ‘I’m gonna cut that record’, which he did. Among the gospel songs is ‘Peace in the Valley’ which Elvis was soon to record, but he wasn’t sure about Faron Young’s ‘Is It So Strange’. He says, ‘Ol’ Faron Young sent me this song to record. He wouldn’t give me none of it, he wanted it all.’ (Laughs) It’s a revealing comment as it shows Elvis knew exactly what Colonel Parker was doing with music publishing.
Elvis starts the blues track ‘Reconsider Baby’ but no one knows it well enough for it to take shape. Come 1960, this would be one of his best-ever records.
They show their love of Chuck Berry by singing ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’ three times and ‘Too Much Monkey Business’. Elvis reveals that Pat Boone’s latest hit, ‘Don’t Forbid Me’, had been offered to him first. He performs a full version of his own ‘Paralysed’. Jerry Lee performs his single, ‘Crazy Arms’ and he finishes the session on his own with short versions of four songs as Elvis and Carl are saying goodbye.
Copyright restrictions prevented these tapes from being heard for 30 years and inevitably, bootlegs surfaced. Indeed, the first bootleg I heard must have been from a sixth generation copy as they sounded so bad. In the official 1990 CD issued, marketed as an Elvis Presley album by BMG, it sounded much better.
I do think that the Million Dollar Quartet show would have worked if they had stuck to the original tapes and shown what had happened, but I accept that it would have been less of a jukebox musical. It would however give a truer picture of rock’n’roll history. Elvis Presley called the day ‘a barrelhouse of fun’. He was right.
One of the interesting aspects of the tapes is that Jerry Lee, who was unknown at the time, saw himself on a par with Elvis, while Carl was happy to take a back seat, preferring to play guitar licks than sing.
A couple of years ago in a TV documentary, Rich Hall showed the photograph of the Million Dollar Quartet and said that it showed ‘Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad and Carl Perkins.’ That was a cruel, cruel joke, but it was much funnier and much sharper than anything in the play.