Volume 24, Number 20 · December 8, 1977
The King
By Mark Crispin Miller
The Private Elvis
by May Mann
Pocket Books, 294 pp., $1.95
My Life With Elvis: The Fond Memories of a Fan Who Became Elvis's Private Secretary
by Becky Yancey, by Cliff Linedecker
St. Martin's, 360 pp., $8.95
Elvis: A Biography
by Jerry Hopkins
Warner Books, 448 pp., $2.50 (paper)
Elvis: What Happened?
by Red West, by Sonny West, by Dave Hebler, as told to Steve Dunleavy
Ballantine Books, 332 pp., $1.95 (paper)
In the Fifties, Elvis Presley appalled his elders and delighted his fans by singing about sex with evident pleasure. No matter what the lyrics said, Presley seemed to change them as he sang them. His vast success depended equally on the adulation of teenagers and the revulsion of their parents, for it was Elvis's seeming promise of forbidden things that began all the excitement. This violent national ambivalence was inspired largely by television, because Elvis had to be seen to be believed, or believed in. After gaining a big following, mostly in the South, on the strength of concert tours through 1954 and 1955, he appeared on several television programs in 1956, just after the release of 'Heartbreak Hotel,' his first million-seller. (He might have appeared the previous year, on Arthur Godfrey's 'Talent Scouts,' but failed his audition.) Thousands of young viewers were ecstatic, having discovered someone who could tap and reciprocate their own energy. On the other hand, various clergymen and columnists made outraged statements about the imminent decline of American culture.
Review, 3796 words
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