A Tuesday night shortly before Christmas 1956. Four legends — Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley — gathered at the Sun Records studio in Memphis, Tennessee, where they’d launched their careers. Word soon leaked out of an impromptu jam session. A newspaper man who was there wrote, “This quartet could sell a million.” Soon, they were dubbed the Million Dollar Quartet. This was their only performance, a cultural flashpoint that caught rock ‘n’ roll at the moment of creation. Sun Records owner Sam Phillips discovered and produced the Million Dollar Quartet. That’s why he, together with Presley and Lewis, were among the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame’s charter inductees. Perkins and Cash soon joined them. Unlike other producers at that time, Phillips took an active role in recording, encouraging and coaxing his young, untested artists to reach deep within themselves. He began by recording blues singers like B.B. King and Ike Turner. Later on, he was the first to sign Roy Orbison and Charlie Rich. In his rudimentary, one-room studio, Phillips looked for innovation, not imitation. The music he recorded transformed the cultural landscape of the twentieth century, and its reverberations are still felt today.
MUSICAL NUMBERS
ACT I
“Blue Suede Shoes” - COMPANY
“Wild One (Real Wild Child)” - JERRY LEE LEWIS
“Matchbox” - CARL PERKINS
“Who Do You Love?” - CARL PERKINS
“Folsom Prison Blues” - JOHNNY CASH
“Fever” - DYANNE
“Memories Are Made of This” - ELVIS PRESLEY
“That’s All Right” - ELVIS PRESLEY
“Brown Eyed Handsome Man” - COMPANY
“Down By the Riverside” - COMPANY

INTERMISSION

ACT II
“Sixteen Tons” - JOHNNY CASH
“My Babe” - CARL PERKINS
“Long Tall Sally” - ELVIS PRESLEY
“Peace in the Valley” - ELVIS PRESLEY
“I Walk The Line” - JOHNNY CASH
“I Hear You Knocking” - DYANNE
“Party” - CARL PERKINS & COMPANY
“Great Balls of Fire” - JERRY LEE LEWIS
“Hound Dog” - ELVIS PRESLEY
“(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” - JOHNNY CASH
“See You Later Alligator” - CARL PERKINS
“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” - JERRY LEE LEWIS