Elvis In Texas: The Undiscovered King 1954-1958 [Paperback]

Stanley Oberst (Author), Lori Torrance (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 19, 2001

Elvis Presley and his two faithful sidekicks tore up Texas highways, crisscrossing the state, always late for their next high school hop, car dealership opening, or Lion's Club fund raiser.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

As a QA Manager, author Lori Torrance enjoys breaking software for a living in Dallas. She also wrote Tea for Texas: A Guide to Tearooms in the State.

Stanley Oberst teaches high school Social Studies in Plano and is an amateur archaeologist, environmentalist, and animal and music lover.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing; 1St Edition edition (November 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556228872
• ISBN-13: 978-1556228872
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,526,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great photos! Frustrating read & sometimes inaccurate text., August 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Elvis In Texas: The Undiscovered King 1954-1958 (Paperback)

Scotty Moore, Elvis' original guitar player and manager, recently said he thought he had seen every photo from that era until he saw this book. That's why I bought it. The photos, mostly performance snapshots, are great. Unfortunately the text is not. At best the writing gets in the way, and at worst it is just plain wrong (which Scotty warned me about). Still, this rare glimpse of one of the greatest American bands merits its recommendation.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Fact Checker's Day Off, September 12, 2011

By 

Hugh Brown - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elvis In Texas: The Undiscovered King 1954-1958 (Paperback)

A friend sent me this book when I was researching a music project about Wilma Burgess. The book is laughably written and there are so many factual errors I couldn't finish it. For instance, on pages 62 and 63 they spend two pages on an Elvis Concert that never happened!

The supposed concert was March 19, 1955 at "G. Rolle White Coliseum". They misspell Rollie, They misspell Little Jimmy Dickens and not only get the name of his song, "May The Bird of Paradise...," wrong, the song wouldn't be released for another ten years. They mention, correctly, that Elvis was doing a well-documented show in Houston, Texas later that night, but then say "College Station lay northeast of Houston about one hour's drive for normal people. Elvis, Scotty, and Bill could do it in thirty-five minutes after the farmer's relinquished the two-lane roads to the speed-aholics for the evening." The distance in 1955,(pre-freeway) was just over 100 miles. Wow! 100 miles in half an hour!

Worst of all, and why my friend sent me the book, is a poster advertising the March 19, 1955 show that lists Wilma Burgess as one of the seven acts. In 1955, Wilma Burgess was 15 years old and had never been near a stage or recording studio. The poster is fake, and is actually an altered/forged poster for an 11 years later, March 19, 1966, G.Rollie White show which had six of the listed artists but "Nat Stuckey" instead of Elvis. I guess Nat Stuckey posters aren't worth as much on the collector's circuit. For the record, Elvis didn't play Texas A&M until Oct. 3, 1955.

There are a few photos I'd never seen but the print quality is not very good.

All in all, a useless book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth a look, May 25, 2004

By 

sp "Critics Rule" (Glasgow, UK) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Elvis In Texas: The Undiscovered King 1954-1958 (Paperback)

This a very nice book. There are some great pictures in here. I own a lot of Elvis books and there are some pictures in here I haven't seen before. The text is a bit gossipy but okay. It's not an in depth study of the King but good coffee table fodder. According to this, he really did sow his wild oats in Texas - I wonder how many little Elvi are going about?

It's interesting to see Elvis the boy at the beginning, looking full of life and looking to the future and then look at pictures of him toward the end. Was all the success worth it? Perhaps not.