Cash, the King and the Legends of Sun

Special to the Times It may be the House of Cash, but Elvis is still the star attraction. I was in Nashville this past week with my family who were visiting me from New England.

I had been to Music City four years ago as a treat to myself for finishing my master’s degree in history and saw the Grand Ole Opry, Country Music Hall of Fame, and a show at the Ryman Auditorium. But this time I was excited to be able to go and see the Johnny Cash Museum which opened in 2013.

I grew up listening to the Man in Black and am a fan because my mom and dad were country music fans.

We watched the “Grand Ole Opry” every Saturday on TV, and “Hee Haw” and all of those country music programs. But what I really wanted to see was the exhibit “The Legends of Sun.” I’m an even bigger Elvis fan, and of course, I love all of those rockabilly artists who came out of Sun.

Johnny Cash got his start at Sun Records at the same time that Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison were making music history in the 1950s in Memphis. Johnny Cash and Elvis liked each other, but weren’t close friends.

But as Cash recalled, they did have a lot of fun together while on tour. Cash first saw Elvis when he sang from a flatbed trailer at the opening of Katz Drug Store on Lamar Avenue in Memphis in 1954. Elvis was already starting to make some noise with his hit “That’s Alright, Mama” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” He and his wife Vivian went up to him after the show and were invited to see him play at his next gig at the Eagle’s Nest in Memphis. “I thought Elvis was great,” Cash recalled.

“His charisma alone kept everyone’s attention. I loved that clean, simple combination of Scotty, Bill, and Elvis with his acoustic guitar.” The museum, on Third Avenue in downtown Nashville, has a treasure trove of Cash relics that were collected over the years by Bill Miller and his wife Shannon.

They have Cash’s Air Force uniform, the original hand written lyrics to “Folsom Prison Blues,” Cash’s guitar, several of his stage suits, and even a section of the wall from Cash’s Hendersonville house and some original home furnishings.

But what made it even more special for me to see is the fact that the Elvis artifacts that are on display belong to my co-worker and friend’s father, John Heath. Mr. Heath is a world renowned expert on Elvis who has consulted for Graceland and owns one of the most extensive private collections of original Elvis artifacts. He said that when the exhibit opened last August, everyone immediately went straight to see the Elvis artifacts.

“When they pulled the curtain guess where everybody went?” Heath said. “To Elvis! Ninety percent of them went to Elvis.” Mr. Heath has loaned them the original acetate of “That’s Alright, Mama,” which was played on the air on WHBQ by disc jockey Dewey Phillips before the record had even been pressed on vinyl, and is considered to be the “Holy Grail” of all Elvis artifacts. Randall Bart, who is the Cash museum’s acquisitions manager, told me that when he was carrying the record down to set up the exhibit they told him “Don’t drop it! It’s worth about $300,000.”

Another highlight is a rare jacket owned by Heath which was worn by Elvis at a show in Lubbock, Texas on Februrary 13, 1955 where a young Buddy Holly opened up for Elvis. “That is the earliest known piece of clothing owned by Elvis from the Sun era,” Heath said. He acquired the jacket after a teacher who was working for him mentioned that he had a jacket that once belonged to Elvis.

Elvis gave the jacket to his father’s girlfriend after she went backstage at a show he was playing in Texarkana a few weeks after his Lubbock appearance.

“I got a picture of the jacket off of eBay about a year and a half ago,” Heath said. “It’s an amazing story.

The girl went backstage to meet Elvis, and Elvis gave her the jacket. She gave it to her boyfriend to keep it for her and said she would pick it up later. A few days later, he shipped out for Germany. So after I found the picture, it validated it. I bought it for $300.”

Another interesting item on display is the hand signed contract for “Heartbreak Hotel.” Heath was working for Graceland at the time and they sent him to Nashville to Mae Axton’s estate sale. Axton penned the famous song that became Elvis’s first hit record for RCA. Graceland was hoping to find the original hand written lyrics, but instead they stumbled on a treasure trove of documents his daughter found in a box. His son, John Michael, found the contact in a file folder.

“I started going through the box and found this rare Hank Snow program of Elvis in 1955 when Mae Axton was a publicist in 1955 when he toured in Florida in a music jamboree Colonel (Tom) Parker was putting on,” Heath said. “I said ‘how much would you take for this whole box?’ He said. ‘Fifty dollars.’ So I bought the box. We loaded up and were driving back, and John Michael was going through it and found a folder with Tree Publishing written on it. He said ‘Daddy, you won’t believe what I found. I’ve got the original contract from Heartbreak Hotel signed by Elvis.’” Another rare piece in the museum is a sign that Sun Records owner Sam Phillips had made to promote “That’s Alright, Mama” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”

“Sam didn’t have a lot of money,” Heath said. “He had this sign painted and they put it in Pop Tunes to advertise his first release.

It’s really a very historical piece.” Bart said that the museum was thrilled that Heath agreed to lend them the items from his collection.

“Those are some very historical pieces,” Bart told me during my visit. “It’s probably the best early collection on Elvis.” The exhibit also has a suit worn by Carl Perkins and, appropriately, a pair of blue suede shoes; a jacket worn by Jerry Lee Lewis; Roy Orbison’s glasses; and the drum set used by W.S. Holland, Cash’s drummer for 40 years, that can be heard on some of Cash’s Sun hits including “I Walk the Line,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and Elvis’s version of “Blue Suede Shoes.” So whether you are a Johnny Cash fan or an Elvis fan, if you happen to be in Nashville don’t miss this fabulous exhibit.