Elvis Presley

A vibrant, sympathetic portrait of the once and future king of rock ?n? roll by the award-winning author of Shiloh and In CountryTo this clear-eyed portrait of the first rock ?n? roll superstar, Bobbie Ann Mason brings a novelist?s insight and the empathy of a fellow Southerner who, from the first time she heard his voice on the family radio, knew that Elvis was ?one of us.? Elvis Presley deftly braids the mythic and human aspects of his story, capturing both the charismatic, boundary-breaking singer who reveled in his celebrity and the soft-spoken, working-class Southern boy who was fatally unprepared for his success. The result is a riveting, tragic book that goes to the heart of the American dream.IntroductionON AUGUST 16, 1977, when I learned that the King-Elvis Presley-was dead, I was vacationing in Nova Scotia. In the lounge at the inn where I was staying, the news came on TV. Stunned, I could only mumble some cliches. The bartender recalled the death of the actor Audie Murphy, a war hero of his generation. I felt far from home. Although I hadn't thought much about Elvis lately, I now sensed there was a great hole in the American cultural landscape. Elvis had always been there, hovering in the national psyche, his life punctuating our times-his appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, his first movie, the death of his mother, the Army, his marriage, the 1968 "Comeback Special." It seemed inconceivable that Elvis-just forty-two years old-was gone.For me, Elvis is personal-as a Southerner and something of a neighbor. I heard Elvis from the very beginning on the Memphis radio stations. Many parents found Elvis's music dangerously evocative, his movements lewd and suggestive-but when my family saw Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show, singing "Ready Teddy," my father cried, "Boy, he's good!" We had been listening to rhythm-and-blues late at night on the radio for years, and we immediately recognized what Elvis was about. We had heard Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup and Little Junior Parker and Big Bill Broonzy and Wynonie Harris and Elmore James. In the daytime we listened to big bands, pop hits, country, the opera, everything we could find on the dial. On Sundays we sang in church along with the congregation, and we heard plenty of gospel music-especially the Blackwood Brothers, who influenced Elvis so much. Elvis listened to the same regional stew, seasoned by the far-ranging reach of the radio, so when he emerged with his own startling, idiosyncratic singing style, we recognized its sources.Elvis was great, so familiar-and he was ours! I don't remember the controversy he stirred up because everything he did seemed so natural and real, and he was one of us, a country person who spoke our language. It was hard to grasp how revolutionary his music was to the rest of the world. And it was years before we could realize what a true revolution in American culture Elvis had ignited.But now the King was dead. Two writer friends of mine dropped everything when they heard the news and rushed to Graceland, Elvis's Memphis home, to grieve with the multitudes of fans. One of the writers snitched a rose from a floral wreath and still has it displayed under glass on her wall. The other helped himself to the newspaper that had arrived at Graceland the day after Elvis died-the paper Elvis would have read if he had lived. Elvis, who was taken seriously in a wide variety of circles, inspired such a need for connection. He mattered deeply to many different kinds of people. After his death, the world absorbed the story-the utter loneliness of his life, his grasping for ways to ease his pain and sorrow. It was a sad-in some ways a sordid-story, hard to take. Then the grief gave way to a...