The history of rock music is littered with landmarks – from Woodstock to the Beatles break-up, writes Alf Bennett.

And December 4 1956 might not loom large in too many music fans’ minds.

But that was the day, in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, when rock’n’roll history was made as four music legends played together for the first and only time.

Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins jammed together in the Sun Records Studios of legendary music producer Sam Phillips.

And this low-key but luminous event is celebrated in joyous fashion in Million Dollar Quartet, now playing at the Noel Coward Theatre in London’s West End.

If there is a better night out in London right now then good luck to them.

From the opening notes of Blue Suede Shoes, with the four stars front of stage and brilliantly back-lit, this is an in-your-face musical experience.

Ben Goddard plays Jerry Lee Lewis for laughs but with the barely contained wildness long associated with ‘The Killer’.

Derek Hagen is quietly majestic as Johnny Cash – no small feat when a man so imposing in real life is so fresh in our memories.

Michael Malarkey is suitably limber as the young Elvis and Oliver Semour-Marsh provides the musical backbone as Carl Perkins.

One of the best lines in the show comes from his exchange with Sam Phillips ( Bill Ward): “I Got a song called Blue Suede Shoes”

“You wrote a song about your shoes?”

There is an undercurrent of music business chicanerie underpinning the encounter – Elvis has left Sun to join RCA and wishes he hadn’t, Perkins is desperate for another hit and Johnny Cash is about to leave to join Colombia Records.

But in the end it is all about the music. And what music it is - I Walk the Line, Fulsom Prison Blues, Hound Dog, Fever, I Hear You Knocking, Great Balls of Fire, of course.

At the end performers, audience and theatre usherettes were up and dancing as one.

As the bloke next to me said: “They don’t make music like that any more.”

Ain’t that the truth.

-Million Dollar Quartet is currently running at the Noel Coward Theatre in St Martin’s Lane in London. For ticket information go to http://www.milliondollarquartet.co.uk/