On this day in 1956, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash got together for the first and last time for an impromptu jam session consisting of mostly Country and Gospel songs.
An article about the session was published in the Memphis Press-Scimitar under the title "Million Dollar Quartet". The recording was first released in Europe in 1981 as The Million Dollar Quartet with 17 tracks. A few years later more tracks were discovered and released as The Complete Million Dollar Session. In 1990, the recordings were released in the United States as Elvis Presley: The Million Dollar Quartet. This session is considered a seminal moment in rock and roll history.
Also on this day, in 1971, during a concert of Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention at the Montreux Casino, an audience member fired a flare gun into the venue's ceiling, causing a fire that destroyed the venue. The rock band Deep Purple, who were to use the Casino as the site for the recording of their next album, witnessed the fire from their hotel; the incident would be immortalized in their best known song, "Smoke on the Water".
In a 2004 publication by Rolling Stone magazine "Smoke on the Water" was ranked number 434 on its list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time", Total Guitar magazine's ranked "Smoke on the Water" number 4 on its "Greatest Guitar Riffs Ever", and in March 2005, Q magazine placed "Smoke on the Water" at number 12 in its list of the 100 greatest guitar tracks.
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