Last Train to Memphis
by Peter Guralnick
Little Brown, $24.95 hard
Sinking into the first pages of Last Train to
Memphis is like getting reacquainted with a long absent friend – and I’m
not even talking about Elvis. Peter Guralnick is that rarest of species, one of
the few contemporary music writers whose work is just as vital and inspiring as
that of his many subjects. A gifted re-creator of times, places, and sounds
gone by, Guralnick is a fan, critic, and profiler all at once, offering a full
sense of the physical world and everyday personality of the artists he
celebrates as well as their larger artistry. His unadorned, gently rising style
results in imagery that is both portentous and understated, drawing its power
from the simple facts of a situation rather than strained analysis or
overheated prose. And besides all that, as a tireless archivist, passionate
acolyte, and even occasional record producer, Guralnick has helped assure that
the music of people like Charlie Rich, Rufus Thomas, Bobby Bland, Hank Snow,
Solomon Burke, Sleepy LaBeef, and so many other blues, country, soul, and
rockabilly greats remains known and appreciated in this postmodern world. Guralnick has always been a miniaturist in theory and a visionary in
execution
– his two classic collections, Feel Like Going Home and Lost
Highway, were discrete essays of true thematic unity, an ongoing story of
American cultural imagination and extraordinary music heroes. The successor to
those books, Sweet Soul Music, offered a more singular narrative, but,
as a fairly far-reaching history of soul music – from Sam Cooke and James Brown
to Stax and Hi and Muscle Shoals – there were natural divisions of era and
subjects.
Last Train to Memphis, then, is really the first time Guralnick has
tackled a single subject at full book-length. The life of the King is, of
course, something like the Second Greatest Story Ever Told – except that it’s
probably been told even more times than the first one, by fans, hatchet men,
academics, so-called associates, and the tabloids. Could there possibly be
anything left to say? Guralnick is able to answer in the affirmative because he
chooses to look at Elvis Presley not as an icon or a star, but purely as a man
and an artist, with 10 years of research to back him up. The book, which
carries the subtitle The Rise of Elvis Presley, only goes up to 1958,
the time of Elvis’s Army induction and the death of his mother Gladys. The
story has never been told so straighforwardly, nor so vividly – it’s a measure
of Guralnick’s scrupulous vision that it takes 500 pages to cover 23 years (a
trifle in biographical terms), and 80 percent of those pages are devoted to the
four years after Elvis’ Sun debut.
The power of Guralnick’s plain-spun approach comes through for the first of
many times when it comes to said debut, the spontaneous legend of the session
that produced “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” No matter how
many times you’ve heard the story – of Elvis, Scotty, and Bill stumbling onto
magic after so many false starts – it still has an innumerable and unbelievable
power. All Guralnick has to do is get it right.
Plus there’s the marvel of the actual record. Guralnick is at his best when
he’s writing about music for music’s sake. He takes you inside classic records
and little-remembered outtakes alike, with lyrical, swinging descriptions that
nail the greatness of a song without excess adjectives or metaphors. Elvis was
a singer before he was a star, and more than that, he was an artist – a
self-conscious one, even. Guralnick suggests that Elvis wore eye make-up before
he had any reason to, and the kid’s persistent love of music and stubborn
attempts to play it early on – at school, at local fairs, for Sam Phillips –
shines through.
Elvis struggled constantly with the whims of producers, the record company,
and Colonel Tom, but when it finally came down to him and the microphone, there
was only one King. Sure, Colonel Parker pretty much invented the music biz
machinery as we know it, from marketing to merchandising. And Elvis never read
any of his numerous contracts, either. But when it came to picking material and
singing it, he asserted himself, arguing with producers and sometimes meeting
with arrangers and writers secretly. This book is as much about the making of
Elvis’ records as it is the making of Elvis, putting on full display Presley’s
musical intelligence and forceful vocal charisma.
As with any biographer, Guralnick is interested in childhood history and
overall personality traits, but he refuses to psychoanalyze, sticking with his
show-don’t-tell approach while concentrating on how character formed the
overriding artistic vision. Elvis was a wildman and a Christian, a complete
innocent overflowing with lewdness. Guralnick captures the duality while
remaining almost pristinely tasteful (remember, these were the early years) –
the book doesn’t actually state that Elvis was in fact sleeping with his many
lady friends until the final hundred pages. For this reason, and presumably
because Guralnick eschewed hearsay, you won’t find Memphis deejay Dewey
Phillips’ story (related by Stanley Booth in his collection Rythm Oil )
about how Elvis returned from Hollywood one day extolling the joys of
cunnilingus and Natalie Wood, inasmuch as the two went together, of course.
Last Train to Memphis is first-
rank myth-spinning without overt mythologizing. Taking things as they happened,
Guralnick avoids biographical hindsight – he doesn’t have to make a big deal
out of the fact that this simple Mississippi kid was going to change, and
did change, music and culture and teenagers and America in a profound
and definitive way. Readers will take care of that angle on their own. It’s
stunning enough to consider the whirlwind that Elvis was swept up in from the
age of 19 until he was 23; even more amazing is the knowledge of what came
after – not just the continuing fame, but the weirdness and failure and
debauchery and pain. That’s not in this book, though – at this point, even as
he was going Hollywood, Elvis still rode trains all the time (and a boat to
Hawaii) because his mother feared he’d die in a plane crash, and his devoutly
Christian anti-drug stance was only mildly hypocritical rather than incredibly,
tragically so. He would take producers out to dinner in his limousine and end
up getting burgers and cheese sandwiches at the drive-in. Graceland was still a
new (if somewhat tacky) dream, not a house of idol worship.
But things were starting to go wrong, obviously. The Colonel screwed over
Scotty Moore, Bill Black, and D.J. Fontana, none of whom reaped any real
financial gain from their crucial sidemanship (Moore and Black quit at one
point, then returned; years later there was the big reunion for Elvis’
“comeback” TV special). Songwriters Leiber & Stoller, who’d been working
more closely with Elvis than the Colonel and RCA preferred, saw the film
King Creole as a turning point – no one could afford for Elvis to be
anything other than what he’d already been, so the music sank into formula. And
then there was the Army stint, and the death of Gladys Presley.
Elvis simply didn’t control very much of his life anymore, so his life began
spinning out of control. “The Fall of Elvis Presley” was imminent, and
presumably that will be the subtitle of Guralnick’s second biographical volume,
which, given his exacting work habits, may or may not appear before the end of
this century.
Lagniappe
This article appears in May 19 • 1995 and May 19 • 1995 (Cover).