History
Cash and Presley at Sun
How the Man in Black and the King of Rock and Roll both started at one small Memphis label, and what really happened on 4 December 1956.
Check tribute dates ↗Quick answer
Both men began their recording careers at Sun Records in Memphis: Presley in 1954, Cash in 1955. On 4 December 1956 they were photographed together at Sun's studio during the jam session later known as the Million Dollar Quartet, with Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. Whether Cash sang on the tape is disputed: Presley's biography says he left before recording began, and Cash wrote that he stayed and sang.
A studio before a label
Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service in January 1950, and the studio later took the name of the label he founded there in February 1952: Sun Records. Studio and label shared one building. Before the rockabilly years, Phillips recorded mainly African American blues and rhythm and blues musicians; Rocket 88, cut there in 1951, is reputedly the first rock and roll single, which is why the studio claims to be the birthplace of rock and roll.
Presley walks in
Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1935, and his family moved to Memphis when he was 13. He began his music career in 1954 at Sun with Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African American music to a wider audience. With Scotty Moore on lead guitar and Bill Black on bass, he became a pioneer of rockabilly. In 1955 RCA Victor acquired his contract, and Sun's sale of it helped relieve the label's money troubles. His first RCA single, released in January 1956, reached number one in the US.
Cash makes his name
Cash was born J. R. Cash in Kingsland, Arkansas, in 1932, and grew up in Dyess, a New Deal farming colony, working the cotton fields with his family. After four years in the Air Force he came back to the United States and worked up the courage to visit Sun. He auditioned mostly with gospel songs and learned that Phillips no longer recorded them. In 1955 he made his first Sun recordings and took the name Johnny Cash; his next singles reached the country top five and then number one.
The afternoon of 4 December 1956
Carl Perkins was at Sun that day to record new material, and Phillips had brought in a newcomer, Jerry Lee Lewis, to play piano on the session. Presley, a former Sun artist now with RCA Victor, dropped by, listened to the playback, and an impromptu jam began. The engineer, Jack Clement, decided to record it. Phillips called the Memphis Press-Scimitar, and the next day's story, with a photograph of Presley at the piano surrounded by Lewis, Perkins and Cash, ran under the headline Million Dollar Quartet.
Was Cash on the tape?
This is where the accounts part. Presley's Wikipedia biography says Cash was there briefly, posed for photos and left before anything was recorded. Cash's own autobiography says he was the first to arrive and the last to leave, and that his voice is on the tape, hard to pick out because he stood farthest from the microphone and sang higher than usual to stay in key with Presley. Other accounts have him arriving late or leaving early. His voice is not obvious on the released recordings, and nobody has settled the question.
What the session sounded like
The released recordings contain dozens of tracks, most of them incomplete and broken up by chatter. Country music and country gospel loom large, with songs by the likes of Bill Monroe and Gene Autry. Presley takes nearly all the lead vocals and Lewis most of the piano. Critics have heard it less as a record than as a snapshot of friends playing old favourites, a world away from the tight rock and roll Sun was releasing at the time.
Two halls of fame
Both careers went far beyond Memphis. Other than Presley, Cash was the only artist inducted as a performer into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A tribute show that puts their songs side by side is following a line that runs back to one small studio in Memphis.
Frequently asked questions
When did Cash and Presley meet at Sun?
They were photographed together at Sun's Memphis studio on 4 December 1956, at the session known as the Million Dollar Quartet.
Who was in the Million Dollar Quartet?
Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, the four men in the newspaper photograph published the next day.
Sources