The Boy from Tupelo: The Life and Legacy of Elvis Presley (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798181858497)

He was born in a two-room shotgun shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, the surviving half of twins, into a poverty so total that his family sometimes had nothing but each other. Two decades later he was the most famous performer alive - and the most misunderstood.

The Boy from Tupelo tells the whole story, start to finish, in one vivid sitting. It follows Elvis Presley from the gospel tents and segregated radio dials of the Depression-era South, into a tiny Memphis studio where a teenager and a producer named Sam Phillips caught lightning on tape, and out onto a stage that would never be the same again. It is the story of how one voice fused the separated musical worlds of America into a sound that detonated a culture.

But fame built a machine around him, and the machine never let go. This is also the story of the army years, the death of the mother he adored, the Hollywood treadmill, the electrifying 1968 comeback, the Vegas lights, and the slow unraveling behind the gates of Graceland - ending on an August morning in 1977 that the world has never quite gotten over.

Inside you'll discover: how a dirt-poor childhood shaped the performer the world would meet; the real story of the Sun Records sessions and the sound nobody had heard before; how Colonel Tom Parker's machine made Elvis rich and slowly boxed him in; the army, Gladys's death, and the Hollywood years; the 1968 comeback; Las Vegas, Aloha from Hawaii, and the gilded cage of superstardom; the final years and the truth of August 16, 1977; and why, decades later, the boy from Tupelo still won't leave the building.

Clear, accurate, and impossible to put down - a complete life of the King of Rock and Roll for readers who want the whole arc without the doorstop.

This is an independent, unauthorized work. It is not affiliated with, licensed by, or endorsed by the Presley estate or any related entity.