CMT’s Sun Records, Chronicling the Birth of Rock and Roll, Releases Teaser Trailer (VIDEO)

CMT Will Pair Sun Records with Nashville Thursday Nights

Sun Records is based on the 2010 Broadway show Million Dollar Quartet, a jukebox musical which portrays a recording session that took place on December 4, 1956 in Memphis, Tennessee. Early rock and roll stars Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash,  Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins gather at Sun Records, the recording studio of Sam Phillips, the man who discovered them all.

Set in Memphis during the tumultuous early days of the civil rights movement, Sun Records tells the untold story of nothing less than the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. Guided by Sam Phillips, young musicians such as Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis combined the styles of hillbilly country with the 1950s R&B sound created by artists like Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Fats Domino and Ike Turner and changed the course of music forever. The series chronicles these young artists’ often jarring and sudden meteoric rise to fame in the face of sweeping political change and social unrest.

The trailer shows young Elvis Presley (Drake Milligan) and Johnny Cash (Kevin Fonteyne) on guitars, Jerry Lee Lewis (Christian Lees) on the piano, and Sun Records founder Sam Phillips (Chad Michael Murray) asking to hear something new. He had no idea what he was about to unleash.

The cast also includes Dustin Ingram (Carl Perkins), Billy Gardell (Presley and Eddy Arnold’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker), Jonah Lees (Jimmy Swaggart), Trevor Donovan (Eddy Arnold), Keir O’Donnell (Dewey Phillips), Jennifer Holland (Sam’s wife Becky Phillips), Margaret Anne Florence (Sam’s assistant Marion Keisker) and Kerry Holliday (Ike Turner).

Sun Records premieres Thursday, February 23 at 10:00 PM ET/PT following Nashville, where it will air for 8 weeks as part of CMT’s new scripted Thursday night line up.

This looks like a fun show, and a great pairing with Nashville! I’m so excited to see how it turns out, and to have Chad Michael Murray back on my TV. It looks like Jack Thompson (Chad Michael Murray) is safely hiding in Memphis as part of the Witness Protection Program,* waiting for ABC to relent and give Agent Carter a season 3.

Sources: Rolling Stone   CMT.com   Deadline

 

*He was shot, not killed.  You won’t convince me otherwise. It’s a fake death cliffhanger. Jack and Peggy are endgame. He has some growing as a person to do, but, in the end, he’s less sexist than Sousa, and understands Peggy better. If there ever were a season 3 I would argue this in long headcanon posts. Agent Carter headcanons were actually the beginning of the idea for this site, but it was cancelled before we were ready to post. Oh, the long treatises we could have put up, if it was still around for anyone to care about. Bits of them will show up eventually in other Marvel headcanons.