10. He was one fourth of the Million Dollar Quartet in December 1956
On December 4, 1956, Carl Perkins, fresh off his hit song Blue Suede Shoes, went into Sun Studios in Memphis to record a follow up record. Sam Phillips wanted to broaden the sound, and for the session brought in a relatively unknown piano player named Jerry Lee Lewis. While the session was underway Elvis Presley dropped in to say hello to Sam, bringing with him his then girlfriend, Marilyn Evans. Johnny Cash was at the studio as well, both to listen to Perkins record Matchbox and to discuss possible work with Perkins’s drummer at the time, W. S. Holland. Both Cash and Elvis had an affinity for gospel music, and before long both were in the studio, singing brief passages of gospel tunes.
Unknown to any of the musicians at the time, Phillips had his engineer record the impromptu sessions, which did not last long as the flamboyant Jerry Lee Lewis was soon dominating the sound with his playing on a Wurlitzer spinet piano. Presley, the biggest star at the time of the four, was the first to withdraw, but not before Bob Johnson, an editor with the Memphis Press-Scimitar, arrived with a UPI reporter and a photographer, having been shrewdly summoned by Sam Phillips. A story and photograph appeared in the Memphis newspaper the following day, headlined Million Dollar Quartet. The recordings have been released several times with different track listings, and in 1982 Cash reunited with Perkins and Lewis for more recordings, releasing an album they called The Survivors Live.
