Rocker Melissa Etheridge to Join Million Dollar Quartet For One Night Only

Oscar- and Grammy Award-winning songstress Melissa Etheridge will join Broadway’s rockabilly jam session at Million Dollar Quartet for a one night only, producers have announced. The singing, songwriting and strumming queen takes the stage during the show’s blow-out finale number at the Nederlander Theatre for the evening performance on June 23. Etheridge’s performance, which will include a new song in the show’s lineup of rock ’n’ roll classics, marks her Broadway debut.

Etheridge plays with the Million Dollar Quartet in anticipation of her full length concert in New York on July 14 at the United Palace Theatre. An enduring presence on the rock scene, Etheridge is best known for songs including “Come to My Window,” “I’m the Only One,” “Like The Way I Do” and “Ain’t It Heavy,” the latter of which earned her the first of two Grammy Awards. Her album Yes I am brought the second grammy, going six-time platinum and spending over two years on the charts. In 2007, Etheridge won an Academy Award for her song “I Need To Wake Up,” penned for the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The artist’s tenth studio album, Fearless Love, was released on April 27.

Inspired by the famed December 4, 1956, recording session that brought together rock icons Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley, 2010 Tony Award nominee Million Dollar Quartet recreates the historic day in the Memphis Sun Records studio that brought together Presley, Cash, Lewis and Perkins. A recording exists of the impromptu jam session that happened once newly-famous Presley and Cash stopped by to see Perkins doing some recording with Lewis on piano. The show, starring Eddie Clendening (as Elvis Presley), Lance Guest (as Johnny Cash), Levi Kreis (as Jerry Lee Lewis), Rob Lyons (as Carl Perkins), Hunter Foster (as Sun Records’ Sam Phillips) and Elizabeth Stanley (Dyanne) includes some of the actual songs that were performed on the day as well as standards for the quartet including “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Who Do You Love?,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “I Walk the Line,” “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.”