1956 in Music

The room had to be re-miked because the singer wouldn't stand still On January 10, Elvis Presley walks into RCA's Nashville studio for his second session with the label. Producer Steve Sholes has to re-mike the entire room because Presley keeps jumping around while singing and his voice won't stay on axis. Every RCA executive who hears the finished recording of Heartbreak Hotel insists it can't be released. One internal memo reads: We certainly can't release that one. Sholes releases it anyway. By April it is a million-seller, and by year's end it is the biggest-selling single in America.

The first record to chart pop, country, and R&B at the same time Carl Perkins records Blue Suede Shoes at Sun Studio on December 19, 1955, and it is released on New Year's Day 1956. It becomes the first single in history to appear simultaneously on the pop, country, and R&B charts. It peaks at number two pop, kept from the top only by Heartbreak Hotel. On March 22, heading to New York for a national TV appearance, the Perkins Brothers' car slams into a poultry truck in Delaware. Carl breaks three vertebrae and his collarbone. While he lies in a hospital bed for months, Elvis covers the song and takes the spotlight. Perkins never fully recovers the momentum.

Sixty million people watch a man who isn't there Ed Sullivan swears he will never book Elvis Presley. Then the Steve Allen Show, which dressed Elvis in a tuxedo and made him sing to a basset hound, beats Sullivan in the ratings for the first time. Sullivan pays fifty thousand dollars for three appearances, the highest sum ever paid to a television performer. On September 9, sixty million viewers tune in, 82.6 percent of the American television audience. Sullivan is recovering from a car accident and isn't even on his own show. Elvis performs from a studio in Hollywood. Charles Laughton hosts from New York.

A napkin, a label owner who hated it, and the birth of soul The origin story of Please, Please, Please goes like this: Little Richard scrawls the words on a napkin and James Brown decides to build a song from them. The Famous Flames cut it in Cincinnati in three hours on February 4. King Records founder Syd Nathan declares it unreleasable and nearly fires the A&R man who signed them. It is released anyway on Federal Records in May, and it reaches number six R&B by September. Nathan rehires the A&R man once the checks start clearing.

The drunken session Screamin' Jay Hawkins originally records I Put a Spell on You as a polished love ballad. Nobody cares. For the re-recording on Okeh Records, producer Arnold Maxim orders crates of beer and fried chicken, tells the musicians this isn't a session, it's a party, and waits until everyone is drunk enough. Then he hits record. The result is a wild, screaming, grunting performance that gets banned from most radio stations for its cannibalistic sound. It reportedly sells a million copies anyway.

A church basement in New Haven The Five Satins are broke and need a free place to record. They set up in the basement of St. Bernadette's Catholic Church in the Morris Cove section of New Haven, Connecticut, on February 19. The result is In the Still of the Nite, one of the defining doo-wop records. It peaks at number three R&B and becomes one of only three non-Christmas songs to chart on the Hot 100 three separate times by the same artist with the same recording.

A thirteen-year-old from Washington Heights Frankie Lymon is thirteen years old when Why Do Fools Fall in Love is released in January. The song started as a poem passed around a Harlem apartment building. During the audition for George Goldner's Gee Records, Lymon's soprano cut through so clearly that Goldner moved him to lead on the spot. It reaches number one R&B and number six pop. Rock and roll's first all-teenage act, and the lead singer hasn't started high school.

One chord, one riff, one vamp Howlin' Wolf records Smokestack Lightning at Chess Studios in Chicago in January 1956. The song is a single-chord vamp in E, with Hubert Sumlin playing a hypnotic guitar figure that never resolves. Wolf's voice floats above it, half-singing, half-howling. No bridge, no chorus, no chord change. The song was later selected for permanent preservation in the Library of Congress. It proves you can build a record from almost nothing if the nothing is right.

A dollar bill in the guitar neck Johnny Cash records I Walk the Line at Sun Studio on April 2. The title comes from Carl Perkins; the song is a promise to stay faithful on the road. Sam Phillips pushes Cash to speed it up from the original ballad tempo. Cash threads a dollar bill under the strings at the neck of his guitar to dampen them, producing the percussive boom-chicka-boom that becomes his signature. It reaches number one country and stays on the charts for over forty-three weeks.

The secret weapon on a Gretsch Duo-Jet Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula is recorded May 4 in Nashville, originally pressed as a B-side. When Capitol flips it to the A-side, it sells two million copies. But the real story is guitarist Cliff Gallup, a married man from Norfolk, Virginia, playing a 1954 Gretsch Duo-Jet. His right hand holds a flatpick between thumb and forefinger, fingerpicks on the middle and ring fingers, and his little finger rides the vibrato bar. He records thirty-five tracks with Vincent in 1956, then quietly quits because he doesn't want to tour. Jeff Beck and Brian Setzer will spend decades trying to sound like him.

Four Sun Records artists in one room On December 4, Carl Perkins comes to Sun Studio to cut new material with Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Phillips' newest signing, on piano. Elvis Presley drops by with his girlfriend. Johnny Cash shows up at some point. An impromptu jam breaks out: gospel songs they all grew up singing, country standards, Chuck Berry, Elvis's own hits. A Memphis newspaper photographer catches the moment and coins the phrase Million Dollar Quartet. The tapes sit in the Sun archives for twenty-five years before anyone hears them.

What marvelous diction that girl has Ella Fitzgerald records the Cole Porter Songbook in Hollywood across sessions in February and March, backed by a studio orchestra arranged by Buddy Bregman. It is the first album released on Norman Granz's new Verve Records label, and the first in what will become Fitzgerald's eight-volume Songbook series. When Granz plays the finished album for Cole Porter at the Waldorf-Astoria, Porter's only comment is: My, what marvelous diction that girl has.