When she died at the age of 42 in 1958, reporters descended on Graceland and came across a haunting scene. Never quite at ease with her son’s fame, she sipped beer at Graceland while he conquered the globe, uncomfortable amongst her new riches. While the meteoric rise of “Elvis the Pelvis” is undeniably magical, the most compelling character in Guralnick’s tome is that of the overprotective, loving Gladys. “I don’t sound like nobody,” Elvis reportedly responded. He was there, Presley said, to make a record to “surprise his mother.” When the gangling teen arrived at the studio, Marion Keisker asked, “Who do you sound like?” Guralnick lovingly chronicles the vibrant forces propelling Elvis’s rise in the bubbling Memphis music scene-especially the fascinating, revolutionary Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, at whose studio Elvis appeared in 1953.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |