Awesome foursome

Actors rehearse for the musical. Pics\Ashish Raje

It was a seminal day in the history of music. The year was 1956. There is a lack of clarity about how exactly the sequence of events unfolded. But fact remains that on December 4 that year, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins - who were all up and coming musicians at the time and not the rock 'n' roll legends they would eventually turn into - found themselves together at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, and ended up recording a bunch of Gospel tunes. There is a YouTube link to the song Jesus walked that lonesome valley that reflects the sort of unabashed fun they were having while performing with each other. And there is also a Broadway musical called The Million Dollar Quartet that's based on the incident, which will be performed at a Nariman Point venue all through this weekend.

The plot has been embellished to a certain extent, admits Avinash Shankar, the musical's producer in India. But the salient features of the narrative largely remain true to the actual event. The character of Sam Phillips, the Sun Studio owner who's widely regarded as having invented the rock 'n' roll sound, takes the audience through the story. What had happened is that Perkins was scheduled to record a song called Matchbox that had Lewis playing the piano. The two of them thus met for the first time on that day. Meanwhile, Presley was also in town. Phillips had launched the megastar's career and the latter had dropped in to the studio to pay him a visit. And realising that he could grab a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Phillips then called Cash and asked him to come over and jam with the other three artistes (though this is the ambiguous part, since Perkins claims that Cash had dropped by later to settle some monetary matters, while Cash himself says in his autobiography that he had been there throughout, before the others arrived).

Either way, the quartet ended up recording the Gospel tunes that they had all grown up on, which was somewhat of an irony considering that they were all practitioners of rock 'n' roll, a form of music that some people considered Satanic in that era. But it's not that everything was hunky-dory. Shankar tells us, "There was a certain amount of tension in the room, because Perkins had earlier launched Blue suede shoes and was supposed to perform it on live television at the Perry Como Show. But he met with an injury and was hospitalised. And lying on his bed, he saw Elvis perform the track on the Ed Sullivan Show, which made many people think that it was his song, and not Perkin's. Cash had also tried avoiding Phillips since he had decided to move on to RCA Records because Phillips hadn't warmed up to the gospel tracks he was keen to record. And Perkins, too, had decided to shift to Columbia Records since he wasn't happy with the direction his career was taking. But he didn't have the guts to tell Phillips that."

(From left) Peter Duncan, Matthew Wycliffe, Ross William Wild, Katie Ray, Phillip Murray Warson and Robbie Durham from the cast and crew

Regardless of all that, the musicians kept their differences aside and sang together, with some of those tracks making their way to the musical. There are also other hits that will be performed on stage, including Great balls of fire, Walk the line and Long tall Sally. These are some of the greatest rock 'n' roll tracks of all time, and Shankar tells us that the musical helps people reconnect with that type of music in an age when electronic sounds have seeped into the popular consciousness. He says, "When we first brought this show to India in 2017, we had a whole bunch of kids in the audience who had never even heard of Elvis, forget about Johnny Cash or Jerry Lee Lewis. But even they had so much fun that some of them returned for the musical with their parents. Then there are people who grew up listening to these songs, and others who were born in that era, but didn't listen to the music much. So there is a lot of emotional connect with the tracks since this really is true music, and not just some DJ spinning some tracks."

ON March 6, 7 and 8, 3 pm and 7 pm
AT Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point.
Log on to bookmyshow.com
Cost Rs 1,180

Catch up on all the latest Mumbai news, crime news, current affairs, and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates