Bobbie Ann Mason

I found this 2003 bio of ELVIS PRESLEY at a good Will store a few days ago. Started reading it yesterday morning and finished it last night. It's that good. I've read a few other books about Elvis (and there are many) back in the 80s when they were popping up everywhere, written, it seemed, by just about everyone who knew him - old girlfriends, his bodyguards, cousins, Priscilla (of course) and some other better, more objective writers. Peter Guralnick's two-volume bio is probably the best of the lot, but this little Penguin Lives book by southerner Bobbie Ann Mason is also simply excellent. In fact, her name on the spine was what prompted me to buy the book, as I had much enjoyed her novel, IN COUNTRY, many years back, and, more recently, her latest, DEAR ANN. Like Mason, I had my own memories of when Elvis first burst upon the music world. I was just twelve when my older brother (who was a student at Michigan State and worked part-time in the record department of an East Lansing Sears store) brought home that first 45 rpm record, "Hound Dog" b/w "Don't Be Cruel." I played that record to death, and the very first LP I ever bought was Elvis's Christmas album.

Mason's book is less than 200 pages, but she is quite thorough, and manages to make Elvis's story both objective and intimate at the same time, from his dirt poor Mississippi childhood and awkward years as an outsider at a Memphis high school to his first recordings with Sun Records, and sudden stardom, with the unprincipled Colonel Parker controlling every aspect of his career.

Sadly, Elvis never quite recovered from the "too much too soon" rocket ship of success, and, despite his gifts as a singer and performer, remained uncultured and ignorant, and always under the greedy thumb of Colonel Parker. Always closely attached to his mother he never quite recovered from her early death while he was in the Army. And his last years, drug-addled and overworked, were just sad, I thought, as was his death, at 42.

My hat is off to Mason for making this such a compelling, personal read. I'm so glad I found it. Very highly recommended. Especially, of course, for Elvis fans.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (more)