Saw a commercial this morning for the musical "Million Dollar Quartet." The musical commemorates the meeting of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis at Sun Studios on December 4, 1956. The four men loosely jammed around Jerry Lee's piano though Cash's voice is not heard on any of the tracks that the UK Charly label put out on some archival releases. The session is mostly Elvis, Carl and Jerry Lee singing the southern country gospel they grew up on, singing barbershop/gospel harmonies of the type typified by The Jordanaires and JD Sumner and the Stamps, the male gospel singers most known for backing up Elvis. It was the only time that the four men were together in one recording studio.
The "jam session" became legendary until the tapes were tracked down and released and, well, turned out to be something less than the legend. I am not sure from the commercial I observed with the backup dancers and singers that the historical accuracy of the original meeting will be scrupulously observed. But the show is playing the Fisher Theater from January 24, 2012 through February 5, 2012. Tickets are available through BoxOffice.com. Here's a little clip from the 2010 Tony's for a taste of what the show will entail.
By way of contrast, today's song of the day is a tune Elvis performed in the film "GI Blues" which was released as a single in 1960 in the UK were it spent six weeks in the number one slot. It was released here in 1964 as a B-side to "Blue Christmas." A guy named Joe Dowell covered the tune, as often happened in those days to Elvis tunes not released as singles (cd "Suspicion" and "Girl Of My Best Friend") and it went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961. "Wooden Heart" is an example of the kind of novelty tunes that Elvis would record throughout his movie career, a scant four years and a million miles away from "Heartbreak Hotel."
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