Tuesday May 7, 1957. A lovely spring day in the city of Cranbrook. Monday the temperature had reached eighty-degrees. Why, only a few days earlier Mrs. Webster stopped by the newspaper office with a branch of crabapple blossoms in full bloom, if you can imagine.

As the bus cruised along Baker Street, the thoughts of the musicians onboard were less likely the weather than the hopes of a decent meal and the show that night. There were eight of them riding together, a long way from their homes in Louisiana and Tennessee and Mississippi. On a strenuous tour with eleven shows in eleven towns in eleven nights; Saskatoon on May 2, then Calgary, Billings, Camrose, Trail and now Cranbrook. Halfway through, halfway to go. Play the show, take the bows, hop the bus and hit the road. Back then, they were mostly in their twenties but already, for some of them, the joy of a warm spring day did not do what a drink or a pill did better. Wrestling demons they would face for the rest of their lives, private mountains as steep and high as the Rockies they watched roll past their windows.

It was a new era, a new music straining to bust out and these particular musicians were the ones breaking down the doors. They had not yet become The Man in Black or The Killer or The King and Queen of Rockabilly. They were not yet legends. They were just somewhere in the mountains of Canada and on that Tuesday night of May 7 1956, they hit Cranbrook.

As the top record seller for Sun Records in Memphis, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two headlined the tour. Johnny with "Hey Porter," and "I Walk the Line," featuring Luther Perkins (no relation to Carl) on guitar and Marshall Grant on bass. Luther would die in a house fire in 1968. Marshall continued to travel with Johnny for years and years and years.

Carl Perkins, composer of "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Matchbox" was trying to revive a career derailed by a nearly fatal car accident the previous year. His band consisted of his two brothers Clayton and Jay along with good friend W.S. "Fluke" Holland. Brother Jay died one year later from a brain tumor. He was in the same car accident as Carl. Clayton took his own life in 1973. Clayton had violent tendencies. Pioneer rock and roll drummer W.S.Holland soon joined up with Johnny. It was the Tennessee Three from then on. W.S. is still touring.

Wanda Jackson, later to become "The Queen of Rockabilly," is still on the road. She performs with Jerry Lee upon occasion. She has a new album out produced by Jack White of The White Stripes.

As for Mr. Jerry Lee Lewis, well, a few months after the Cranbrook show he married Myra Gale Brown, his thirteen-year-old first cousin once removed, sparking a scandal that would permanently affect his career and seriously blacken the eye of the fledgling rock-and-roll scene. Jerry Lee is still pounding the piano. Nothing much stops ol' Jerry Lee.

As for the two shows that night, well, it must have been a disappointment for the performers. Three hundred people showed up all told, just a handful of fans in the big empty arena to see Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis and Wanda Jackson. Maybe it was the fact it was a school night or maybe it was the $2.00 ticket price. Maybe it was parents laying down the law, "No child of mine is paying good money to listen to that garbage they call music nowadays." Maybe it was "The Eddie Duchin Story" at the Armond Theatre or "Ghost Town" at the Rex Drive-In. Hard to say but, whatever the reasons, there was a whole lot of people missed something special in our town on that sweet spring evening of May 1957. On that one night, fifty-seven years ago, the music was here. In the long lonely echoes of the Cranbrook Memorial Arena with the crab apples blooming and the snow coming off the mountains and it surely would have been nice to have been there with them. To watch them climb down from their bus, guitars in hand, ready to play, ready to take on the world. It would have been worth the two bucks.