Elvis Presley

by Bobbie Ann Mason Narrated by Karen White

Overview

PEN/Hemingway Award-winner Bobbie Ann Mason turns her acumen on one of twentieth-century America's most mysterious icons, The King himself. This new biography eschews sensational speculation to paint a thoughtfully researched but wholly felt portrait of the man-child who metamorphosed into a hero, one of the most popular and least supported characters in American history. In 1955, at age 20, Elvis provoked his first near-riot when he sang at a baseball park in Jacksonville. Inspired by black gospel quartets and mentored by producer Sam Phillips, Elvis blended hillbilly music with rhythm and blues in a synthesis that defined a new direction for popular music. Mason's book gets at the consciousness of the icon and of the cultural climate that made him one.

Editorial Reviews

An Interview with Bobbie Ann Mason

Barnes & Noble.com: How did you come to write this biography of Elvis, given your fame as a writer of fiction?

Bobbie Ann Mason: It's a short biography, so I couldn't tell everything. It's more of an essay with a point of view. I came at all of this as a southerner, and I approached it in a somewhat literary way, using images and descriptions of photographs and little moments in his life that were not that well known but that I thought might be revealing. It was Elvis's dream to rise above his impoverished background and to buy his mama a Cadillac and a nice home, and that dream fueled his music. I am from western Kentucky, and my fiction takes place in that setting, which is directly north of Tupelo [Mississippi, Elvis's hometown] and Memphis. So I grew up hearing the same music and being aware of a similar culture. I felt I had some insight into him.

Another motivation for writing the book was to counteract that stereotype, all of those clichés about Elvis. Many people don't know much more than spangle jump suits, the guy who shot out TV sets, gorged on peanut butter sandwiches, and gave away cars to perfect strangers. That's really not Elvis. His people were country people, and they had their own culture, and Elvis was always loyal to that world at the same time he wanted to get out of it. And he was always uncomfortable when he would cross class lines. There is so much about Elvis that you can understand when you understand the textures of that upbringing.

When Elvis first was able to buy his parents a house in Memphis in 1956, I imagine that there was probably nothing more exciting in his life from then on -- the ability to achieve that dream, the idea that they could have a real house, a nice house with two bathrooms, four bedrooms. Gladys hung her wash out on the line because it was what she was used to, but the neighbors didn't approve. Life became impossible at that house because Elvis's fans stole the wash, and it was getting on his mother's nerves. It was his parents who found Graceland because it was out in the country -- so Gladys could have some chickens and Vernon [Elvis's father] could raise some hogs. Elvis bought it and kept it as his home for the rest of his life. It was the place he was devoted to, where he honored his mother.

B&N.com: He was extraordinarily close to his mother, Gladys. Could you talk about his relationship with her?

BAM: I think it was a very volatile relationship. She was very strict with him as well as indulgent with her affection. And after she died, it is often said that he lost his moral compass. And part, I think, of his lack of inhibition in his performances and as a performer are ways of rebelling against her, in a way. He could let loose on stage in a way and cause all of the girls to squeal when he would go on road trips and was discovering his sexual magnetism as a performer, much to his surprise. He was totally devoted to his mother. At the same time, he couldn't be what she wanted for him to be, which was to marry a nice girl and have children. And Gladys died and Elvis had difficulty after that.

B&N.com: Please tell us about Elvis's early career and why he was considered so controversial.

BAM: Nobody had done anything like this before: the mixing of the music, rhythm and blues, and country music. Elvis loved all kinds of music. He was hearing it in his head from the time he was born. It was the way he performed without inhibition and the way he brought in these new strains of music that upset the nation at large. I think that maybe southerners were not so shocked, depending on what class level they were. So, it was the revolutionary new music and the fact that he swiveled his hips.

He thought it was funny. All his life he mocked his image. When he first, very first, went on stage, and his leg was shaking out of nervousness, he didn't know why the girls were squealing. He thought they were criticizing him, but it took him not very long to discover what they were responding to. I think he just let loose in a way because he didn't know any better. He was always very polite and had manners, but that kind of crude behavior that he let loose with, he just thought, What the hell? This is creating some excitement. I like it.

B&N.com: Elvis did a large number of films but grew dissatisfied in Hollywood. What bothered him about it?

BAM: He wanted from the very beginning to be taken seriously as an actor. Singing was natural to him. He always sang -- gospel music especially -- but had also grown up with movies. That was just a dream -- something you couldn't even imagine you could ever do. But he got the chance to go to Hollywood and was so serious with Love Me Tender that when he showed up the first day he had memorized not only his own lines but also everybody else's. Not just that day's worth of dialogue but the entire script. He kept losing out on big opportunities to make serious movies because the Colonel discouraged him.

B&N.com: There was a very spiritual side to Elvis. He grew up a fundamentalist Christian. As an adult he explored numerous religions, including many Eastern religions.

BAM: Elvis was a very serious, introspective person. He had a very religious upbringing in the Pentecostal Holiness Church. It didn't suit his needs as he got older and more famous, but he couldn't stop thinking about these more spiritual questions: Why was I chosen to be Elvis? Why did this happen to me? What should I do about it? So, because he had a religious bent, he explored a lot of religions and underlined a lot of passages in books that he thought applied to his situation. He just read all the time and was tormented by these questions.

Ultimately, he thought he had an important role to play, not as a minister but as an entertainer. He was devoted to being Elvis. His tragedy was that he was so sincere in trying to move up to the image that the public imposed on him. He would say nobody could live up to an image but he was so grateful to his fans for making him the King of Rock 'n' Roll that he felt he had a duty toward them -- a responsibility. So, in a way, he was the servant of his fans. And that probably inhibited him artistically as well.

B&N.com: How did Elvis get involved in taking drugs, and how did the habit lead to his death?

BAM: Elvis started to take amphetamines in the army because his officers gave them to him so he could stay awake during tank patrol. And he loved them and he placed his faith in them, because he innocently thought they could not be bad for you if the army officers agreed to give them to you. He liked it, and he kept using them after he got out of the army. That really was his drug problem, because he had to take downers to go to sleep. His faith was in prescription drugs. He then abused them, because he thought they were all right. So, he ruined his health.

B&N.com: How do you explain that Elvis is the great American musical figure, a great American phenomenon -- even in death? Why is he such an important figure in American history. And exactly why has his image survived him?

BAM: Elvis, of course, changed American culture [and] American popular music. By the end of the 20th century, rock 'n' roll was the dominant world form, I guess. And he was largely responsible for that. And his image -- and this is a scary thing -- he had the power to communicate directly with people. First of all, he was musically electrifying. Secondly, he was an electrifying performer. But it is a complex question, why his image has survived him. We may not realize how huge his popularity is, but [during] Elvis Week in August there are fans in Britain [who] will charter 10 to 20 jets. Also, that recent [recording] of 31 No. 1 hits went platinum in Brazil and many other countries. It went triple platinum in the U.S. The power of his music is his ultimate legacy. I hope it is not jump suits from the '70s. Most people got to throw away their clothes from that time.

B&N.com: What are you working on now?

BAM: I am working on a novel. It takes place in Lexington, Kentucky, where all my fiction does. I don't know much more.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

If you're going to read one book to find out what Elvis was all about, Mason's is a good choice. She brings to the task a novelist's eye and the sensibilities of a Southern girl who came of age in the 1950s.

James Sullivan

As scores of Elvis Presley biographies will tell you, Elvis was born alongside a stillborn twin. For bestselling Kentucky novelist Mason (In Country), the beating of that other heart in the womb is only the first mythic episode in a life that transcended the most imaginative fiction. Elvis "began his life with a backbeat," she writes in this highly enjoyable rendering of the Presley folklore. There can hardly be anything left unsaid about Elvis, and Mason acknowledges as much. Gliding through the particulars—the dizzy rise to superstardom, the development of the quintessential Vegas act—she is at her sharpest when analyzing Presley's inner turmoil. In later years, his sometimes bizarre antics were symptomatic: "He seemed to plead with the audience to see through his act—to reject him," she writes. The pressures of being Elvis were colossal, and Mason's little bio ably illuminates them.

Kirkus Reviews

A noted fiction writer (Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail, 2001, etc.) applies a bracing working-class sensibility and a native understanding of Elvis Presley’s southern roots to the familiar tale of his meteoric career. Penguin Lives are not usually based on primary sources, and Mason acknowledges as her main reference Peter Guralnick’s definitive two-volume biography (Last Train to Memphis, 1994; Careless Love, 1999). She didn’t need to do original research to feel close to the King. Raised on a farm in Kentucky, the author absorbed the same diverse musical influences, from R&B to gospel to opera. "When he emerged with his own startling, idiosyncratic singing style, we recognized its sources," she recalls. "Elvis was great, so familiar—and he was ours!" It wasn’t just a musical heritage they shared. Mason, who has written about her own feelings of inferiority as a country girl attending the University of Kentucky in Lexington, nails the opposing drives that sent a polite mama’s boy onstage to drive girls wild with his gyrations. "Elvis was born into the mind-set of poverty," she reminds us: "the deference toward authority and the insolent snarl underlying it." This instinctive understanding is particularly helpful in addressing the thorny question of Presley’s loyalty to Colonel Parker, whose focus on the fast buck played a major role in his artistic decline. Elvis and his parents knew the Colonel was a con man, Mason believes; they wanted someone unscrupulous to "maneuver among the bankers, lawyers, company executives . . . because they knew the big dudes would just stomp on them." Her take on Presley’s drug use as a means of suppressing his insecurities is similarly convincing. Readerslooking for evocative descriptions of the King’s boundary-smashing music will do better with Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train or Dave Marsh’s Elvis, but Mason’s plain prose and blunt opinions are the perfect vehicles to convey his utterly American life. Although the complexities of Elvis’s character and his place in American culture can’t be entirely explicated with such brevity, Mason grasps the essentials with perception and passion. Author tour

From the Publisher

If you're going to read one book to find out what Elvis was all about, Mason's is a good choice. She brings to the task a novelist's eye and the sensibilities of a Southern girl who came of age in the 1950s. (The San Diego Union-Tribune)

If you're going to read one book to find out what Elvis was all about, Mason's is a good choice. She brings to the task a novelist's eye and the sensibilities of a Southern girl who came of age in the 1950s. (The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169205985
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/06/2002
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

In the Drain

When Mrs. Frederick C. Little's second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse. The truth of the matter was, the baby looked very much like a mouse in every way. He was only about two inches high; and he had a mouse's sharp nose, a mouse's tail, a mouse's whiskers, and the pleasant, shy manner of a mouse. Before he was many days old he was not only looking like a mouse but acting like one, too-wearing a gray hat and carrying a small cane. Mr. and Mrs. Little named him Stuart, and Mr. Little made him a tiny bed out of four clothespins and a cigarette box.

Unlike most babies, Stuart could walk as soon as he was born. When he was a week old he could climb lamps by shinnying up the cord. Mrs. Little saw right away that the infant clothes she had provided were unsuitable, and she set to work and made him a fine little blue worsted suit with patch pockets in which he could keep his handkerchief, his money, and his keys. Every morning, before Stuart dressed, Mrs. Little went into his room and weighed him on a small scale which was really meant for weighing letters. At birth Stuart could have been sent by first class mail for three cents, but his parents preferred to keep him rather than send him away; and when, at the age of a month, he had gained only a third of an ounce, his mother was so worried she sent for the doctor.

The doctor was delighted with Stuart and said that it was very unusual for an American family to have a mouse. He took Stuart's temperature and found that it was 98.6, which is normal for a mouse. He also examined Stuart's chest and heart and looked into his ears solemnly with a flashlight. (Not every doctor can lookinto a mouse's ear without laughing.) Everything seemed to be all right, and Mrs. Little was pleased to get such a good report.

"Feed him up!" said the doctor cheerfully, as he left.

The home of the Little family was a pleasant place near a park in New York City. In the mornings the sun streamed in through the east windows, and all the Littles were up early as a general rule. Stuart was a great help to his parents, and to his older brother George, because of his small size and because he could do things that a mouse can do and was agreeable about doing them. One day when Mrs. Little was washing out the bathtub after Mr. Little had taken a bath, she lost a ring off her finger and was horrified to discover that it had fallen down the drain.

"What had I better do?" she cried, trying to keep the tears back.

"If I were you," said George, "I should bend a hairpin in the shape of a fishhook and tie it onto a piece of string and try to fish the ring out with it." So Mrs. Little found a piece of string and a hairpin, and for about a half-hour she fished for the ring; but it was dark down the drain and the hook always seemed to catch on something before she could get it down to where the ring was.

"What luck?" inquired Mr. Little, coming into the bathroom.

"No luck at all," said Mrs. Little. "The ring is so far down I can't fish it up."

"Why don't we send Stuart down after it?" suggested Mr. Little. "How about it, Stuart, would you like to try?"

"Yes, I would," Stuart replied, "but I think I'd better get into my old pants. I imagine it's wet down there."

"It's all of that," said George, who was a trifle annoyed that his hook idea hadn't worked. So Stuart slipped into his old pants and prepared to go down the drain after the ring. He decided to carry the string along with him, leaving one end in charge of his father.

"When I jerk three times on the string, pull me up," he said. And while Mr. Little knelt in the tub, Stuart slid easily down the drain and was lost to view. In a minute or so, there came three quick jerks on the string, and Mr. Little carefully hauled it up. There, at the end, was Stuart, with the ring safely around his neck.

"Oh, my brave little son," said Mrs. Little proudly, as she kissed Stuart and thanked him.

"How was it down there?" asked Mr. Little, who was always curious to know about places he had never been to.

"It was all right," said Stuart.

But the truth was the drain had made him very slimy, and it was necessary for him to take a bath and sprinkle himself with a bit of his mother's violet water before he felt himself again. Everybody in the family thought he had been awfully good about the whole thing.

Stuart Little. Copyright © by E. White. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Videos