THE FIFTYSIXCOLLECTION BY VACHERON CONSTANTIN
It was 4 December 1956 when one Elvis Aaron Presley dropped into Sun Record Studios on Union Avenue, Memphis to see his friend and fellow musician Carl Perkins who was working with the then-unknown Jerry Lee Lewis. Together with another Sun artist, Johnny Cash, the four spent the next few hours jamming, resulting in an impromptu recording that would resurface in Europe in 1981 entitled The Million Dollar Quartet.
This legendary session was the culmination of 12 months that, for Presley, had involved numerous TV appearances and live concerts, his first No.1 record with Heartbreak Hotel, followed by a further three No.1 singles, two No.1 albums in Elvis Presley and Elvis, the release of his first movie, Love Me Tender, plus an infamous order from a juvenile court judge to tone down his onstage movements. Not too shabby a year for a 21-year-old “mama’s boy” from Tupelo.
While no one would claim that Presley invented rock ‘n’ roll, he undoubtedly had a greater influence on youth culture than any single artist who had gone before. Taking inspiration from many of America’s more marginalised music and cultural genres, he blended rhythm ‘n’ blues, country and gospel seamlessly in a synthesis of black and white, urban and rural. In an era of imitation, Presley revolutionised the status quo by adding to it without constraint – and 1956 saw the power of this sound unleashed on the world, along with its newly crowned King.
Presley’s contemporaries, as well as the greats that came before and after, all paid dues to the man that Sammy Davis Jr. rated an 11 out of 10, who John Lennon said the Beatles could not have existed without and who led Little Richard to declare: “He was God-given, there’s no other explanation… Before Elvis everything was in black and white. Then came Elvis.
