In an industry where solo performers are also session players, any number of household names can be hiding in plain sight on records with a different billing, and Elvis Presley’s rendition of “Blue Moon of Kentucky” is no exception. The bluegrass staple was one of Presley’s earliest Sun Records cuts and featured what the press dubbed the “million dollar quartet.” This esteemed group included Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and, contrary to what has been recorded, Johnny Cash.
It doesn’t sound like Johnny Cash. But it is.
Elvis Presley Recorded “Blue Moon of Kentucky” in July 1954
On a hot Memphis day in July 1954, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley were improvising their way through the Bill Monroe classic, “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” That Presley and Perkins were there has been accepted as common knowledge. But Cash was there, too, despite what the records might say. “People don’t think I am, but I am,” Cash insisted in a 1988 interview with Creem. “See, it was a Carl Perkins session. Carl asked me to come, and I was the first of the four to show up.”
“Elvis came in, and Carl stopped the session, and Elvis sat down at the piano. I started challenging him to sing Bill Monroe songs and Louvin Brothers songs. When I was a kid, before my voice dropped, I’d sing the real high part. I’d sing tenor. And I was singing those high parts on the Bill Monroe songs and Louvin Brothers songs on the quartet. You don’t hear my voice. I hear it myself when I’ve listened to it a couple times, but I don’t sound like Johnny Cash, ‘cause I’m not singing the low part. Elvis was singing the bass. I was singing really high, but I was so far away from the mic that you hardly ever hear me. But I was there.”
Presley released his rock version of “Blue Moon of Kentucky” as the B-side to “That’s All Right,” the song that would spark a wave of Elvis Presley mania later that month. The single was a commercial success and a subtle milestone marking the burgeoning professional and personal relationship between Cash and Presley.
The King and the Man In Black Stayed Close
Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash had more in common than their mutual record label. They also came from similar backgrounds: poor, rural, and fervently Christian families in the South. The musicians bonded over their mutual love of gospel (and a shared frustration that industry executives kept pushing them away from their desire to sing sacred music). Cash credits himself for coming up with the idea for Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes,” which, of course, turned into a massive Presley hit. And that wasn’t the only song Cash gifted Presley—or tried to, anyway.
“Elvis had “Blue Suede Shoes,” and he knew I had something to do with writing it,” Cash said in his Creem interview. “He asked me to write him a song, so I wrote “Get Rhythm,” and I went down and told Sam [Phillips, Sun Records founder] I had this song for Elvis, and I’d like to put it down. Then, Sam said, ‘Well, I have some news for you. Elvis is now with RCA-Victor, and he can’t have that song. I said, ‘But I wrote it for him. He asked me to.’ Sam said, ‘No, I wanna release it by you. That’s a hit.’ As it happened, it was the other side of “I Walk the Line,” and it didn’t get much play.”
The early days at Sun Records mark a fascinating time in the future King of Rock and Roll and Man in Black’s careers when they were effectively musical outcasts: too country for rock, too rock for country, too sacred for secular, too secular for the gospel. Whether consciously or not, these artists helped shape each other into the musical icons we know and love them as today.