Both Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash were iconic figures in the world of music, each with their own unique style and impact on the industry.
In this photo, if one is a little intuitive, is quite revealing. Cash kept the distances and could not stand the warmth of the king. It was taken at the called session of the million dollars, a recording of the four great Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins in the studio of Sun Records .
Elvis Presley sing Johnny Cash Walk the Line
It was not intentional, on a certain day is spent the four musicians for the study at different time intervals. At the beginning Elvis aporreaba the piano, then came Jerry, and started to improvise topics, soon Carl is joined by guitar, and a late Cash just by incorporating at the end. Someone with a vision of the future within the study decided to record what there was going on. A record with a large number of themes with Country and Blues, with a priceless version of “Brown eyed handsome man” from Chuck Berry. The session starts so shy tanteándose each other and at low revs, with the ballad “You belong to my heart” where Elvis says the Spanish phrase “Only once”. After it is dropping and the intensity goes up song after song with a sound and a performance nothing conventional for the recordings estiladas at the time.
After signing his contract with Sun Records, Cash became a colleague, nothing more and nothing less than Elvis Presley, who, at that time, it was beginning to be very well known. She quickly began sharing concerts with the new superstar and with the rest of the label mates, in addition to some other date with the second generation of The Carter Family. His future wife, the youngest of the sisters, Carter, June, ascribed later to own Elvis, the first encounter with Johnny Cash. This friendship would also be part responsible for the recognized by many as the first supergroup of the story: Million Dollar Quartet. This training, the result of the union under the roof of Sun Records – hold onto your male – Elvis Presley (that he had just signed with RCA), Jerry Lee Hooker, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, would come out a photo for the story and a session quite amateurish. However, years after, the Cash would gather the survivors of the group in the famous The Survivors Live, as well as in the disc study (with Roy Orbison in the place of Elvis) Class of ’55. Less evil that the one who was neighbor for twenty years, Cash was the latter and not Presley, imagine Johnny Cash trying these things more often:
Elvis Sings Johnny Cash in Vegas
The first time I saw Elvis, singing from a flatbed truck at a Katz drugstore opening on Lamar Avenue, two or three hundred people, mostly teenage girls, had come out to see him. With just one single to his credit, he sang those two songs over and over. That’s the first time I met him. Vivian and I went up to him after the show, and he invited us to his next date at the Eagle’s Nest, a club promoted by Sleepy-Eyed John, the disc jockey who’d taken his name from the Merle Travis song and was just as important as Dewey Phillips in getting Sun music out to the world.
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash & Friends – A Song for Elvis Presley
I remember Elvis’ show at the Eagle’s Nest as if were yesterday. The date was a blunder, because the place was an adult club where teenagers weren’t welcome, and so Vivian and I were two of only a dozen or so patrons, fifteen at the most. All the same, I thought Elvis was great. He sang That’s All Right, Mama and Blue Moon of Kentucky once again (and again) plus some black blues songs and a few numbers like Long Tall Sally, and he didn’t say much. He didn’t have to, of course; his charisma alone kept everyone’s attention. The thing I really noticed that night, though, was his guitar playing. Elvis was a fabulous rhythm player. He’d start into That’s All Right, Mama with his own guitar alone, and you didn’t want to hear anything else. I didn’t anyway. I was disappointed when Scotty Mooreand Bill Black jumped in and covered him up. Not that Scotty and Bill weren’t perfect for him – the way he sounded with them that night was what I think of as seminal Presley, the sound I missed through all the years after he became so popular and made records full of orchestration and overproduction. I loved that clean, simple combination of Scotty, Bill, and Elvis with his acoustic guitar. You know, I’ve never heard or read anyone else praising Elvis as a rhythm guitar player, and after the Sun days I never heard his own guitar on his records.
JOHNNY CASH TALKS ABOUT ELVIS PRESLEY