~ The Old Sachem ~ The Million Dollar Quartet was worth it

By Bill Stewart

Before I get to this week’s column, I want to commend the Saugus High School athletes who were selected as Northeast Conference ALL-STARS for the Fall Season. In football Cody Munafo was the rushing leader for this season. Madison Botta was selected for Girls Soccer, amassing over 100 points during her years and scoring 38 goals and 16 assists this season. Congratulations to the stars.

Last month Polly and I went to North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly to see “Million Dollar Quartet.” This was exceptional with musical artists. The group demonstrated the original gathering of Elvis Presley (Noah Barns), Jerry Lee Lewis (Brandon Fillette), Johnny Cash (Hailie Lucille) and Carl Perkins (Sam Sherwood). Among the hit songs played: “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Fever,” “Walk the Line,” “Sixteen Tons,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Who Do You Love?” and “Hound Dog.”

They played the original meeting of the artists on December 4, 1956, at the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The scheduled performance was to be Carl Perkins, who brought his brothers Clayton and Jay. Perkins had already achieved success with “Blue Suede Shoes.” He also brought a drummer, W.S. Holland. Sam Phillips was the owner of Sun Records, and he brought in a youngster, Jerry Lee Lewis, to handle the piano. Sun Records would release Lee’s first record a few days later. A 21-year-old, Elvis Presley, arrived along with his girlfriend, Marilyn Evans, casually dropping by to see what was happening. Johnny Cash said that he arrived earlier to listen in on Perkins, but didn’t appear to the gang until later. Perkins finished his recordings, which Presley said were very good.

Then a jam session started up and Cash joined the group. They sang a series of gospel songs that each of the group had released earlier. Elvis was the most well known internationally and proceeded to lead the group. While the artists were in session, Phillips called a local newspaper, the Memphis Press-Scimitar, and the editor, Bob Johnson, came by to witness the event. Johnson wrote an article about the session and published it in his paper. His headline was Million Dollar Quartet.

In 1969, Phillips sold Sun to Shelby Singleton, who searched through the tapes, browsing at over 10,000 tapes, and he licensed much of the recordings to the British Charly label to release in Europe. Charly recognized the group of Presley, Cash, Perkins and Lee and their made-up session and issued it in Europe as “Charly Sun” LP #1006 as the Million Dollar Quartet that focused on gospel/spiritual music.

Later in 1987 they released “Charly/Sun” a two LP set #CDX 20 and named it The Complete Million Dollar Quartet Session, in Europe. In 1990, RCA acquired the American issue for release as a CD, Cassette and LP set and labeled it Elvis Presley; The Million Dollar Quartet, RCA CD #2023-2-R. In 2006, RCA used a copy of the original session to create the 50th anniversary of the issue, which contained about 12 minutes of previously unavailable material that included 46 musical tracks, most of which were incomplete and included comments from the artists. The friends had gathered to pleasure in singing music. Bob Johnson described it as “an old-fashioned barrel-house session with barber shop harmonies resulting.”

And so, the session settled into history.

Polly and I loved the show. We enjoyed hearing a resemblance to the originators singing the songs they recorded many years ago.

  (Editor’s Note: Bill Stewart, who is better known to Saugus Advocate readers as “The Old Sachem,” writes a weekly column – sometimes about sports. He also opines on current or historical events or famous people.)