"The Million Dollar quartet" thread revisted (Cash, Perkins, Lewis, Presley)

Original thread was archived:
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=74971&highlight=MILLION+DOLLAR+QUARTET

More recent news on the release:
http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=SONCD88935&utm_source=email&utm_medium=special

 

Oh I have to get this!

Anything will sound better than my old Charly CD.

 

Only $10.97 on Amazon...

Make sure you get the right version, though - looks like there's a lot of grey-market counterfeit versions (apparently duplicated from the older CD) out there, as well.

 

Looks like Ernst and Peter are going to keep on finding "new" things now that Sony's in charge.

Meet the new boss...


(Maybe I should wait until somebody buys Sony/BMG and they find even more material from the session!)

 

Why don't they tell the truth and call it the $750,000 dollar trio? Johnny Cash (and his 25%) was only around for the photo before anything was recorded. This is an interesting footnote, but why call it a "quartet"?

 

According to several sources, Cash did sing at the session but it wasn't recorded.

 

Maybe they'll have Wayne Stinit, Johnny Sea or Tommy Cash provide overdubs for the next release.

 

Thanks for pointing that out, I was looking for something around $10 to add to the 2 disc U2 Zoo TV DVD set to get free shipping.

 

Did he sing at the Carl Perkins session and left before the jam? Or did Sam run down to Radio Shack to buy some more blank tapes and missed the Cash stuff?

He isn't on the tapes, so it's still a trio that was recorded and being sold. This could turn into a Daltrey & Townshend isn't The Who thread.

 

I've always wondered where the tapes for this turned up at in the first place - who actually had them?

 

I seem to recall that Cash mentioned the session in his "Man In Black" bio, and he mentioned that he did indeed sing on a few songs. I dont recall exactly what he said, but he did mention "the tapes".

Anyone got the book in grabbing distance?

 

If I recall correctly, Johnny Cash does claim to be on the recording in his book, claiming he is singing in a higher register than usual. He is most definitely NOT on the tapes that are known to exist however. I wonder if he even heard the existing CD? The original newspaper article about the session (from which the famous photo comes) mentions Elvis doing "Blueberry Hill" and that is not on the known tapes. And I think the songs Johnny remembers doing are not on the tape, either. So it seems likely that they did some jamming before the tapes started rolling, and Cash left before they started recording.

 

I thought I recalled that Cash showed up after the session, and that the photo of him with the other three were staged in order to give the impression that all four had sung together.

 

Admittedly they do have more material from this session (as Ernst once pointed out in an interview), but mainly consisting of a few Jerry Lee Lewis tracks, recorded after Elvis had left the session. They obviously did not consider this additional material vital enough to stretch out the new release to a double disc affair. Hey, why release the whole thing now if you can re-release it again in a couple of years?

 

Does anyone have this CD?

Does it have a lot of the tape issues that plagued the old CD?

 

Do you have a link, or can you provide a scan of the interview (with appropriate credits for author and source) with Ernst Jorgensen concerning the possibility of additional material? I'm always interested in finding out more about Sun Records, especially the rather mysterious nature of The Million Dollar Quartet session.

 

I have the old CD, but haven't listened to it in years. I don't remember lots of hiss, but it is probably there. IIRC it does use noise reducton. Do you have the one digitally mastered at BMG in '89?

 

Well, on the existing CD Elvis can be heard saying goodbye and leaving the jam session. Presumably he also left the building at that time. And If I recall correctly Carl Perkins and his band were already gone by then, prompting Elvis to say he's "always the last to leave." That would suggest the group photo was taken *before* what we hear on the CD. I would think if Johnny recalled singing together then they probably did, it just didn't make it onto tape.

 

This is what Colin Escott wrote in the liner notes:

". . .two friends, Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins, got together in the Sun Records studio in Memphis, Tennessee just as Perkins session was winding down. . . . In an attempt to get his career back on track, Perkins came back to Sun on December 4, 1956 with some new material. . . . Trying to fatten the sparse rockabilly instrumentalization, Sam Phillips brought in his latest acquisition, pianist Jerry Lee Lewis. . .
"At some point, the Perkins band and then Perkins himself drove back to their hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. Before Perkins left and shortly before the session ended, Sam Phillips called the Memphis Press Scimitar. . . and had entertainment editor. . . Bob Johnson. . . came over. . . . Johnson brought a photographer. With a photo opportunity in the offering, Phillips made a call to Johnny Cash who was in town working up material for his fifth single. Cash appeared in the photo and, according to Johnson, joined Presley, Perkins and Lewis on Blueberry Hill and Isle Of Golden Dreams, which have never been found. It was Johnson who coined the phrase 'Million Dollar Quartet' in his article the following day.
"Another Sun artist, Smokey Joe Baugh, came by. His smokey gravelly voice can be heard after I Shall Not Be Moved, saying "You ought to get up a quartet." Baugh was still on hand for the photo session toward the end. . . . Presley also brought another aspiring singer Cliff Gleaves, who might be participating on some of the ensemble parts."

 

I have the crummy old Charly CD which is apparently what the BMG disc is cloned from (with additional noise reduction).

I was wondering more about whether the tape warble (like in "You're The Only Star In My Blue Heaven") and the various dropouts and tape glitches are on the new 2006 CD. I'll be buying this when I find it anyway though

 

If I recall correctly, the 1987 Charly LP and CD (which was the first time the non-gospel portion of the material had been released) has a couple edits not present in the 1991 BMG version (I don't recall exactly where, but I definitely remember noticing the difference when I first heard the BMG). So how can the BMG be from the same source? Or are you talking about a different Charly release than the 1987 version?

 

No, my Charly CD is from 1997 and has 40 tracks and a 67 minute running time. I'm guessing my CD is a clone of the BMG disc, except that track 20 on the BMG disc ("Too Much Monkey Business") doesn't have it's own track index on my CD (It is instead tacked onto the beginning of "Brown Eyed Handsome Man")

 

There are sound samples up at Cd Universe

Sounds pretty good to me! Most of the tape glitches present on my version are gone

 

I think this new edition is a big improvement over the previous releases. The newly discovered tape and the mastering is much better.
I don't find the unreleased material that interesting but it's nice to have. It's also great to finally hear this session in the correct order.

 

Just got my copy today, this difference is incredible! It sounds like the $750,000 quartet is in the room with you

"Paralysed" isn't a distorted mess anymore! (the dropouts are still there though)

You can hear a lot more of the dialogue under "There's No Place Like Home"!

I can finally toss my Charly CD in the bin (figuratively )