In the mid-1950s, two young men were signed to the same tiny record label in Memphis. One would become the King of Rock and Roll. The other would become the Man in Black. And the strangest thing connecting them is a single sad country song that neither of them was especially attached to — a song that marked a turning point for both of their careers, three years apart, in the same building.
The song is “I Forgot to Remember to Forget.”
The label was Sun Records, run by a producer named Sam Phillips, who had an extraordinary ear for talent and almost no money. Elvis recorded the song in July 1955. And here is the part people find hardest to believe: he did not particularly want to. Elvis wanted to make loud, fast records — rock and roll and blues. This was a slow, aching country ballad about a man who cannot stop thinking about a woman who left him. Sam Phillips pushed him into it anyway.
Phillips was right. That song, the one Elvis was lukewarm about, became his first number one record — topping the American country chart in 1956.
Elvis Presley – I Forgot to Remember to Forget (Official Audio)
And it did exactly what a first number one does. It caught the attention of the major labels. RCA Victor bought Elvis’s contract from Sun, and within months he had recorded “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Hound Dog” and become the most famous young man on the planet. That one country ballad was the door he walked through.
Then, three years later, the story repeated itself with a different man.
In 1958, Johnny Cash walked into the same Sun studio and recorded his own version of the same song. And it served the same function in reverse — it was the last thing he recorded for Sun Records before leaving to sign with Columbia.
I Forgot to Remember to Forget (2017 Remaster)
The song launched Elvis into global stardom. And it closed Johnny Cash’s Sun chapter and pushed him toward the deep, dark country storytelling side.
The two versions could not be more different, either. Elvis sings it with youthful ache — a young man who has been hurt and has not quite worked out what to do about it. Cash sings the same words like a man who has known that feeling for twenty years and stopped expecting it to lift. Same heartbreak. Two completely different men reporting it.
The Real “Million Dollar Quartet”.
They stayed friendly, too. In December 1956, Cash happened to be at Sun when Elvis dropped in to visit, along with Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. Somebody sat down at the piano, somebody picked up a guitar, and the four of them played together for the fun of it while an engineer quietly rolled tape. That accident is now known as the Million Dollar Quartet.
Both men are now in the Rock and Roll, Country, and Gospel Halls of Fame.
Two labelmates. One small studio. And one heartbreak song that happened to be standing at the exact spot where both of their lives turned.