The Cauldron Where Rock was Created

Memphis, TN map

MEMPHIS – It is easy to remember that this vibrant river city was the cauldron in which the art form known as rock and roll was created in the early 1950s.

There are reminders all over town: the Rock and Soul Museum, Sun Studio, Stax Museum of American Soul Music and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame are a few. Bringing the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to Memphis, as the city fathers had hoped some 30 years ago, only would have been icing on the cake.

There were three basic ingredients in the rock recipe, and two were nearby in abundance. They were delta blues and country & western music. With the addition of mainstream pop that came down from the northern cities, the concoction was completed.

Considered the first rock and roll song, “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston & his Delta Cats was recorded in 1951 at Memphis Recording Service. The Delta Cats actually were Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm, and Sam Phillips was the producer.

Phillips would turn his all-purpose recording service into Sun Records in 1952. He nurtured many seminal rock performers in that studio on the corner of Union Ave. and Marshall over the course of several years.

Of course, Memphis resident Elvis Presley was the mega-star that wound up in Phillips’ stable. In August 1953, 18-year-old Presley walked into Sun Records with $4 that had taken about a year to save, hoping to record “My Happiness” and “That’s Where Your Heartaches Begin” on acetate. Phillips was away on a four-week golfing vacation, but his assistant, Marion Keisker, had watched the recording process and decided that she could run the session. As she prepared the tape reel, she asked Presley who he sounded like. Presley replied, “I don’t sound like nobody.”

After the two tracks had been recorded, with accompaniment by only a six-string acoustic guitar, Keisker took Presley’s name and noted for Phillips that Presley was a “good ballad singer.”

Nonetheless, Phillips was unimpressed when he heard the tape. He was looking for a white singer who could bring the sound of black artists to a broader audience.

Presley cut a second acetate in January 1954, which failed to interest Phillips. Later that year on July 5, Presley was back in the Sun Studio with guitarist Scotty Moore and Bill Black on acoustic bass. Their session went late into the night with little productivity. Finally, as the players gave up and prepared to go home, Presley launched into the song “That’s All Right,” jumping around and singing with great animation. Black then began an accompaniment, and Moore soon joined in.

“Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open,” Moore said, “and he stuck his head out and said, ‘What are you doing?’ We said, ‘We don’t know.’”

Phillips had the trio back up and start again, and he began recording. It was just the sound he had been seeking. Three days later disc jockey Dewey Phillips had the song on radio station WHBQ, and requests flooded in. Before long, Presley had a contract with Sun.

It was an era of minimal production in recording studios, with predominant use of acoustic instruments.

A magical event in the history of Sun Records occurred on Dec. 4, 1956, when an impromptu jam session broke out in the studio. Four musicians who would become music industry legends were the participants.

According to Sun Studio tour guide Graham Winchester, Carl Perkins was there to record new material with his brothers, Jay and Clayton, and drummer W.S. Holland. Perkins had a big hit earlier that year with “Blue Suede Shoes.” Sam Phillips had brought in Jerry Lee Lewis, then an unknown performer who was playing piano on other artists’ tracks for $8 a day. 

At some point in the afternoon, Presley dropped by unannounced with girlfriend Marilyn Evans to see what was happening at the studio. After Presley listened to a playback of the Perkins session in the control booth, he voiced approval and then entered the studio to sing some songs with the others. 

Phillips picked up a telephone and called Johnny Cash, who already had some country hits as well as a successful pop song in “I Walk The Line.” When he arrived he was the fourth star to join the jam. 

The quartet ran through many gospel songs and also visited such numbers as “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” “Paralyzed,” “Blueberry Hill” and “Reconsider Baby.” Since it was December, a few Christmas songs were thrown in. Most of the instrumentation was acoustic.

During the jam Phillips called the Memphis Press-Scimitar, and the newspaper sent over entertainment editor Robert Johnson along with a United Press International representative and a photographer. An article appeared in the newspaper the next day beneath the headline “Million Dollar Quartet.” Presley was seated at the piano surrounded by the others when a famous photo was snapped.

Winchester said that Phillips was in debt due to legal problems. In order to ease some of that debt, he had sold Presley’s contract to RCA Records for $35,000. He wouldn’t dare to illegally record this once-in-a-lifetime jam session – would he? 

The Million Dollar Quartet: Elvis Presley (seated), Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis

Phillips considered the ramifications of the situation and then secretly pressed the “record” button. The result was about four and a half hours of taping.

Seven months later Lewis had his first hit on the charts, “Whole Lot Of Shakin’ Going On.” Johnson quoted Presley as saying, “That boy (Lewis) can go. I think he has a great future ahead of him. He has a different style, and the way he plays the piano just gets inside me.”

Phillips kept the jam session tapes to himself. In 1969 he sold Sun Records to Shelby Singleton, after which Singleton began browsing through 10,000 hours of tape that he’d inherited in the purchase. A portion of the “Million Dollar” session was discovered at this time, and additional tracks were found a few years later. Since 1981, several albums have been released to share the event with the public.

While the impact of the “Million Dollar Quartet” session was not felt immediately, the influence of its contributors has been endless. Perkins and Cash were big country & western stars who also crossed over to pop. Lewis became a dynamic rock star. And Presley, whose songs held down the No. 1 spot on the pop chart for 25 weeks in both 1956 and ’57, became the biggest male singing star ever. All four are in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Artists who used the Presley influence to create big careers for themselves have offered these accolades:

John Lennon: “Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn’t been an Elvis, there wouldn’t have been the Beatles.”

Paul McCartney: “When we were kids growing up in Liverpool, all we ever wanted to be was Elvis Presley.”

Roger Daltrey: “I had always wanted to be like Elvis, to be a rock ‘n’ roll star, but I couldn’t sing, so I joined a band instead.”

Jim Morrison: “Elvis is the best ever, the most original. He started the ball rolling for us all. He deserves the recognition.”

Elton John: “Ask anyone. If it hadn’t been for Elvis, I don’t know where popular music would be. He was the one that started it all off, and he was definitely the start of it for me.”

Phillips died at the age of 80 in 2003, 44 days before Cash passed. Phillips is in the pantheon of music immortals, gaining induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame. He also received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement.

A few miles away, the Stax label began using the Sun business model in the early 1960s to showcase rock music that had a heavy rhythm & blues influence and utilized Southern musicians. It started as a garage-based business in 1959 before taking over a movie theater property on East McLemore Ave. Jim Stewart and his sister, Estelle Axton, were the co-owners, and their subsidiary label was Volt.

Prominent members of the Stax recording stable were Booker T & the MGs, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, Wilson Pickett, the Staples Singers, Sam & Dave and Isaac Hayes.

Stax was a small, racially integrated business that had a distribution deal with East Coast label Atlantic Records. Its website declares, “Stax Records is critical in American music history as it’s one of the most popular soul music record labels of all time – second only to Motown in sales and influence, but first in gritty, raw, stripped-down soul music.”

A series of contractual and economic misfortunes forced Stax into bankruptcy in 1977. But the world will long remember the high quality music that was created under its auspices in Memphis, the birthplace of rock and roll and the city where nothing ever happens, except the impossible.