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Imagine Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash getting together to shoot the shit and play some of their favourite songs. It’s a wet dream for rock ’n’ roll fans. And if this underpowered touring musical, inspired by the real-life 1956 jam session, doesn’t go much further than four big names in one room, it’s still a treat for anyone who wants to bask in a little jukebox magic.
They’re hanging out in the studio of Sun Records with Sam Phillips (Martin Kemp) the manager who discovered them. They don’t move beyond its four walls. And if that’s a pretty big flaw for anyone hoping for some kind of plot, it’s a big sell for music fans. Where musicals usually relegate their bands to sweaty, smelly pits hidden half-underneath the stage, ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ lets you see four eerily good musicians do their thing up close. Ross William Wild’s performance as Elvis gets the audience screaming with a go at ‘Hounddog’, and Robbie Durham as Johnny Cash offers spine-tingling deep-voiced renditions of the gospel songs he grew up with. Jerry Lee Lewis is the maddening brat of this pack, but it’s a treat to hear Martin Kaye tear up the piano in between precocious boasts about his future stardom.
Phillips steps out of the frame to offer biographical nuggets and folksy musings on nurturing these smalltown boys, teaching them to howl out the pain of growing up outsiders in rural poverty.
As his million-dollar babies leave him behind, progressing to bigger and better things, we’re probably meant to feel a pang for Phillips. But it’s hard to. After all, this is a man who unapologetically boasts of having built his fortune on white racism: his artfully cultivated stable of stars repackaged the African-American songs and sounds that white kids wouldn’t buy. Oh, and he’s just bought shares in a little company called ‘Holiday Inn’...