From Publishers Weekly
In this monologue, without deifying Elvis, Charters lifts the King to a higher plane, portraying him as a sensitive young man who naively intuits much about the media and the celebrities it glorifies. Charters's Elvis is so sweet he calls his mother after an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. He responds to his mother's questions or interrupts the call to quiet his partying band and entourage. But the wily 21-year-old is not above momentarily burying the phone under his pillow to sneak a kiss from a sweet young groupie. That night he had been shown from the waist up to avoid his society-threatening lower-torso wiggling. Elvis understands that this censorship is in itself suggestive: than prurient. "I didn't do anything that wasn't like I always do when I'm out in front of the public. . . . Now that idea Mr. Sullivan had of cutting off the bottom part of me, that was to make people think I was doing something different." This brief novel skips along on amusing anecdotes--like the time the band inadvertently played for the KKK, narrowly escaping a beating with a finale of "Dixie." Charters ( Louisiana Black ) reminds us that the King was once a less worldly prince.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Charters, an ethnomusicologist and writer on the blues and jazz, takes on the deified Elvis Presley in his latest novel. Writing partly to defend Elvis from his critics, and partly to illuminate a more human side of the singer that is rarely documented, he succeeds in conveying the sense of innocence Elvis still possessed after his controversial 1957 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The book, an extended monolog by Elvis on the telephone to his mother, effectively captures his bewilderment about the uproar caused by his then-provocative gyrations: "Those shakes I put in is just so the girls will have a little show. Most of the time they're all screaming so loud I know they can't hear what I'm singing so I give them something to look at." Even at this stage of Elvis's career, we see the groupies and the beginning of drug problems, and we get the feeling of a mixed-up kid with a smouldering sexuality entering the lion's den. Recommended for public libraries, especially where Elvis remains popular.
- Kevin M. Roddy, Univ. of Hawai'i at Hilo Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Kevin M. Roddy, Univ. of Hawai'i at Hilo Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
