From the publisher:
"Elvis Presley is a giant figure in American popular culture, a man whose talent and fame were matched only by his later excesses and tragic end. A godlike entity in the history of rock and roll, this twentieth-century icon with a dazzling voice blended gospel and traditionally black rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which simply blew the doors off a staid and repressed 1950s America.In Being Elvis veteran rock journalist Ray Connolly takes a fresh look at the career of the world’s most loved singer, placing him, forty years after his death, not exhaustively in the garish neon lights of Las Vegas but back in his mid-twentieth-century, distinctly southern world.
For new and seasoned fans alike, Connolly, who interviewed Elvis in 1969, re-creates a man who sprang from poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, to unprecedented overnight fame, eclipsing Frank Sinatra and then inspiring the Beatles along the way.Juxtaposing the music, the songs, and the incendiary live concerts with a personal life that would later careen wildly out of control, Connolly demonstrates that Elvis’s amphetamine use began as early as his touring days of hysteria in the late 1950s, and that the financial needs that drove him in the beginning would return to plague him at the very end.
With a narrative informed by interviews over many years with John Lennon, Bob Dylan, B. B. King, Sam Phillips, and Roy Orbison, among many others, Connolly creates one of the most nuanced and mature portraits of this cultural phenomenon to date.What distinguishes Being Elvis beyond the narrative itself is Connolly’s more subtle examinations of white poverty, class aspirations, and the prison that is extreme fame. As we reach the end of this poignant account, Elvis’s death at forty-two takes on the hue of a profoundly American tragedy. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could “seamlessly soar into a falsetto of pleading and yearning” and capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate.Intimate and unsparing, Being Elvis explores the extravagance and irrationality inherent in the Elvis mythology, ultimately offering a thoughtful celebration of an immortal life."
Complete 1956-62 AlbumsDue for release from the Valentine Records (H'Art) label on Juli 8, 2018 is a re-issue of the "Complete 1956-62 Albums" 8 CD bod-set.
Graceland Expansion Proposal
The plans for the Graceland campus expansion shows two exhibit buildings of 80,000 square feet each on either side of the "live Event Center" EPE wants to build on the western border behind its Elvis Presley's Memphis entertainment complex.
The plan and rendering released last Monday by Graceland managing partner Joel Weinshanker, also includes:
A "Made in USA Outlet" building of more than 64,000 square feet directly across the boulevard from the Guest House at Graceland.
An aircraft hangar for the two restored jets owned by Elvis Presley.
A new wing for the Guest House.
Weinshanker also touts 1,000 new jobs to be created by the expansion.
Graceland is now seeking financing for both the arena and exhibit space with approval earlier this month from the Economic Development Growth Engine, the city-county agency that approves economic incentives for such projects.
The EDGE board approved a plan that would specifically increase the flow of city and county property tax revenue through a tax increment financing district, or TIF, to the financing of the Guest House at Graceland and Elvis Presley's Memphis. Graceland would then use the money it now puts toward financing those two projects toward the financing of a 6,000- to 7,000-seat arena estimated to cost $50 million.
Graceland's new legal position is that the OK'd arrangement means it can build the arena and not violate the non-compete agreement the Memphis Grizzlies.
City chief legal officer Bruce McMullen also said he had hoped Graceland and the Grizzlies could work out some agreement without the matter being decided in court.
(Source: Elvis Club Berlin / Amazon / Elvis Information Network)