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If the 21-year-old know-nothing drummer had just leaned in a smidge, or that dang photographer had stepped back a few paces, one of the most iconic snaps in rock lore would have had an extra dude in it.
Instead, the famous Dec. 4, 1956, photo of the "Million Dollar Quartet" features just the four immortals: Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash, all jamming around a piano in producer Sam Phillips' small Memphis recording Valhalla of Sun Records.
But drummer W.S. "Fluke" Holland was there, too, just out of frame and trying to keep up. He kept the beat that day, when rock gods in different stages of deification sang a few songs together (Don't Be Cruel, When the Saints Go Marching In, Peace in the Valley), casually shot the breeze and — as perhaps the meeting's most significant moment — took one heck of a cool snapshot. "Another four feet," he says, "and I would have been in that picture!"
Holland, 76, will fly from Tennessee to Tampa for tonight's Broadway take on the Million Dollar Quartet at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts. No matter where the show goes, he tries to make it to at least one performance a week.
The Mount Rushmore of rock featured some of the mightiest egos (and raging testosterone factories) in pop. But Holland, Perkins' drummer and, later, the Man in Black's beat-keeper for 40 years, says braggadocio at Sun wasn't a problem that day.
"It's hard for people to understand, but there were no big stars there," says Holland, who played drums on Perkins' seminal Blue Suede Shoes, the first million-selling country song to cross over to both R&B and pop charts. "Elvis was getting pretty popular, but really we were all just guys in a band. Everybody was equal."
The way Holland tells it, Perkins and his band were at Sun to record Matchbox, the followup single to Blue Suede Shoes. They needed a piano player, so Phillips called up a young hellraiser named Jerry Lee Lewis, who wasn't yet "the Killer." Cash, who also recorded for Sun but wasn't a household name either, wanted to hear Perkins play, so he dropped by. And Sun alum Presley, in town with girlfriend Marilyn Evans and already a star for RCA, dropped by to say hello.
"Nobody knew John and Elvis were coming," Holland says. "They just wandered in. And because it was Cash and Presley, it of course turned into a jam session. Later, it became a big event, but it wasn't a big deal at the time. [Engineer] Jack Clement turned on the recorder and left the building, got himself a sandwich! We were all just playing along. We didn't know what they were going to do next."
Still an active drummer with a dedicated fan base (he stopped touring with Cash in the late '90s, but now does a tribute show to his late boss), Holland says every time he sees the stage version of MDQ "so many things come to my mind." Most recently, he remembered the time he and pals pranked Elvis by putting fish in the hubcaps of the King's brand-new '55 Cadillac. "We were the only people in the world who made Elvis Presley smell bad!"
Tonight, at the end of Million Dollar Quartet, Holland will be invited onstage as a special guest to play drums during Matchbox. Someone will no doubt pull out a camera. And this time, more than five decades later, the drummer will finally make the picture.
Sean Daly can be reached at sdaly@tampabay.com and (727) 893-8467. His Pop Life blog is at tampabay.com/blogs/poplife.
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