‘Million Dollar’: More Licks From a Tasty ’56 Jam Session

Carl Perkins, best known for writing the rockabilly classic “Blue Suede Shoes,” was right after all.

When high quality bootleg copies of “The Million Dollar Quartet” jam session--one of the most celebrated moments in rock history--surfaced seven years ago, Perkins remembered the spontaneous 1956 session at the Sun Records studio in Memphis as running much longer than the 30 minutes found on the tapes.

The album, eventually released commercially by Charly Records in England, featured three future Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members--Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Perkins--singing (mostly) gospel songs in a relaxed atmosphere that was as revealing as it was entertaining. The session was never intended to be released as an album. Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, however, turned on the tape machine simply so he could have a record of the session for his own enjoyment. The tape was subsequently misplaced.

Now Charly is back with “The Complete Million Dollar Session,” a two-record set that includes the original 30-minute tape and an additional, apparently newly discovered half-hour.

This “new” material isn’t just leftovers, but another frequently fascinating musical exchange that reflects the innocence and exuberance of the fledgling rock ‘n’ roll world of the ‘50s. Listening to Presley and Perkins, especially, you get the sense of young musicians confident enough in their own abilities to be able to talk enthusiastically about budding rival artists, including Chuck Berry.

After they try to piece together the words of Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” from memory (making some funny mistakes), Perkins tells Presley that he has just returned from a five-week tour with Berry and is marveling over Berry’s great songs. Presley also goes through snippets of the Five Keys’ “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” and Little Richard’s “Rip It Up.”

The centerpiece of the album, however, is Presley--who, though just 21 at the time, was already a national pop sensation--telling Perkins and Lewis about this great new singer he had just seen in Las Vegas.

Though Presley only identifies the singer as a member of Billy Ward and the Dominoes, he is apparently talking about Jackie Wilson, who was a member of the Dominoes in 1956, but would eventually begin a solo career that would earn him, too, a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

“(There was) this guy in Las Vegas,” Presley says enthusiastically. “(He) . . . was doing . . . ‘Don’t Be Cruel.’ ”

Describing the Dominoes’ slower arrangement as “much better than that record of mine,” Presley then demonstrates how Wilson sang the song.

“He was hittin’ it, boy,” Presley says admiringly. “He grabbed that microphone and on the last note, he went all the way down to the floor. . . . He had his feet turned in like this . . . and all the time, he was singing, (his) feet was going in and out. . . .

“He had already done ‘Hound Dog’ and another (song or two of mine) . . . and he didn’t do too well, you know. He was trying too hard. . . . But man, he sung (‘Don’t Be Cruel’). . . . I went back four nights and heard that guy.”

Lanny Lee, vice president of Street Level, the Gardena firm that has exclusive distribution rights for Charly product in the United States, said he understands bootleg copies of the “complete” session surfaced about six months ago in Europe. He said he has seen reports of those bootlegs popping up in some U.S. stores for as much as $40 to $50 a copy.

Charly Records, which has the rights to all the Sun Records catalogue, has released commercial copies of the album, which retail for $13.98 on vinyl and cassette and $15.98 on CD.

The question, however, is whether this album closes the books on the “Million Dollar Quartet” sessions. The session historically has been called the “Million Dollar Quartet” because Johnny Cash was also in the photo taken at the session, but he apparently left before the music began. In the liner notes to this album, there is a reference to a 1956 newspaper article about the session that mentions a couple of songs (including Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill”) that don’t appear on the album. The suspicion is those songs were sung before the tape machine was turned on. If not, there may be a “The Complete Million Dollar Session--Part II.”

LIVE ACTION: Sting will be at the Forum on March 20. Tickets go on sale Monday. . . . Linda Ronstadt will feature music from her all-Spanish album, “Canciones de mi Padre,” in appearances Feb. 17 and 18 at the Universal Amphitheatre. Tickets for those shows and Willie Nelson’s March 10 to 13 return to the Amphitheatre go on sale Sunday.