Legends Live Again

When Cody Ray Slaughter found his dad’s collection of Elvis Presley cassette tapes, he was immediately inspired.

“I just thought it was really cool, and so I greased my hair up, went to school and got made fun of,” says the 20-yearold Harrison native.

No one is laughing now.

Slaughter forged a career as an Elvis impersonator, earning many awards along the way, including being named the Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist by Elvis Presley Enterprises and receiving the Horizon Award as the best new performer at the Las Vegas Elvis Fest.

Slaughter parlayed that attention into an audition for the touring version of the musical “Million Dollar Quartet,” which was on Broadway for more than a year and continues in a U.S. tour. It was his first audition for any role in his entire life, Slaughter told a crowd gathered at Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center for a creative conversation. He got the part, and the tour will bring him back to his native state for an eight-show run that begins Tuesday.

Slaughter learned to play guitar and harmonize in preparation for the show, which brings Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins together at Sun Studios. The musical is based on a real life Dec. 4, 1956, meeting of the four legendary performers at the studio in Memphis, Tenn. Together, the quartet performed a collection of gospel numbers and traditional songs, among them “Peace in the Valley,” “JingleBells, “I Shall Not Be Moved” and “Down By the Riverside.”

In the stage version, the musicians each get a turn to play their own hits: “Great Balls of Fire” for Jerry Lee Lewis, “Folsom Prison Blues” for Johnny Cash, “Hound Dog” for Presley and “Matchbox” for Carl Perkins. A total of 22 songs are split among the cast or performed as a company that also includes Elvis’ girlfriend and Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Studios. Several of the tracks, such as Chuck Berry’s “Brown EyedHandsome Man,” “Peace in the Valley” and “Down by the Riverside,” are part of both the original recording session from 1956 and the touring musical.

Among the men gathered for the session, it was Presley who was the biggest star at the time. His movie “Love Me Tender” had just been released, and several of his songs were hits, says Slaughter. Cash and Perkins had recorded a few hits by then (notably Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes”), but Jerry Lee Lewis was still looking for a big break.

“The sky was the limit,” Slaughter says of the four men. “But they didn’t know how long rock ’n’ roll would last.”

Slaughter’s interpretation of Elvis as it pertains to the situation presented in the musical is one of ease. He was back in Memphis, where he’d spent his teenage years, and at the studio where he had recorded many times.

“He was home. He could relax,” Slaughter says.

Perhaps that’s exactly how Slaughter will feel when he returns to Arkansas.