Last Train To Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley - 'The richest portrait of Presley we have ever had' Sunday Telegraph

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From some peculiar mixture of gospel, hillbilly, and Negro blues Elvis had hit on a new sound that caught the imagination of teenage America.

The writing is strong and while it does tend a little bit towards tedium, it only serves to shore up reality and dispel myths. I really felt it was detailed in all the wrong places, ended in a weird spot, and just lacked an overall ‘interesting’ quality. Well, that's how I felt when I picked Peter Guralnick's latest Elvis tome, Careless Love, out of its package after it had been delivered by the postman. In the same way it would have felt to have been among the screaming masses at an Elvis concert as he created the rock n' roll scene with a shake of his leg. Another issue is the effect that Elvis had on people who initially had a low opinion of him: examples include the American Studio session players, the Sweet Inspirations, and, perhaps most eloquently described, Joe Guercio, but there are countless others.This is the second time I read this book, but I almost feel like it's the first time around all over again. As much as I thought I knew about America's most-famous son, and certainly my state's most-famous son. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. He never said a wrong thing from the very first night he appeared on the Dewey Phillips show - he was like a mirror in a way: whatever you were looking for, you were going to find in him.

The book is a page turner, except for the moments when you want to put it down to Google Dewey Phillips (famed Memphis DJ who first played Elvis's tunes) or The Statesmen (one of the gospel quartets that greatly influenced Elvis's sound), or look at the famous, breathtakingly intimate photos of Elvis on the cusp of massive fame, taken by Alfred Wertheimer in 1956.Guralnick's first two books, Almost Grown (1964) and Mister Downchild (1967), were short story collections published by Larry Stark, whose small press in Cambridge, Larry Stark Press, was devoted to stories and poems. Guralnik is a bit reticent about Elvis' relationships with women which is fair enough in avoiding a kind of intrusive prurience, but slightly frustrating at the same time.