Book review/foreword by Elvis

Pretty self-explanatory
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johnfoyle
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Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 4:37 pm
Location: Dublin , Ireland

Book review/foreword by Elvis

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In more
I`ve-got-a-scanner-and-I`m-going-to-use-it mode , here
are some more non-net Costello items , this time some
book related writings.
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Musician , Jan/Feb 1995

LAST TRAIN TO MEMPHIS
THE RISE OF ELVIS PRESLEY
By Peter Guralnick
Reviewed by Elvis Costello
ALBERT GOLDMAN WROTE a good book once. At least I
remember being quite taken by Ladies and Gentlemen,
Lenny Bruce when I was 20 or so. Of course Mr. Bruce
did not provide quite so much evidence to contradict
the grave robber so I could be mistaken. Later on I
found that the main virtue of Mr. Goldman’s writing
was that it bounced. His Elvis biography rebounded
very sweetly from the wall where I often seemed to
fling it. Since his death Elvis Presley must have
reached more people than he did in life. Yet he is
caught in a smudge of tabloid fantasies, bio-flicks
and gimmick books—the kind that are glued to a
cassette message from beyond the grave.

Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis is much more
than the book that was needed to set things straight.
It is the great human story of the otherworldly soul
who inhabits the Dorsey and “Ed Sullivan Show” clips
and the spookiest Sun sides. At first older women
gather, almost innocently, at his side. Later on the
little girls understand.

Now you would probably want stained-glass windows in
the front room and the odd parade of fancy cars if you
had grown up as poor as told here. There is a dark
chorus of sullen relations with names that sound
misheard but the gothic and social-engineering
elements are left to lesser writers. Mostly it is the
pure, thrilling discovery of the Sun sessions
(and the roadwork!) that drives the book along.

The country must have appeared twice as big in those
days with only a few berserk radio madmen to point the
way. Back-scratching country show business didn’t
really care if Elvis was part Dean Martin and part
pine marten until, suddenly, he was everywhere and
they were less than history. However, he really might
have stayed a wonderful country freak with a few
forgotten hits without the Colonel’s carney greed and
cunning. After that there is a life that is no longer
his own, paid friends and the sad falling curtain of
occasional greatness struggling against trumped-up RCA
excitement. Just listen to “Party” next to “Blue Moon”
and you’ll see what I mean.

Last Train to Memphis is short on penis envy and pop
psychology and long on first-hand account. I am not
happy to hear that Ira Louvin was a bigoted hot-head
but glad that Bill Monroe emerges heroically. There
are characters absent from other tellings of the tale
such as tough Biloxi girlfriend June, who faces down
the oafish pranks of Elvis’s guys. Five hundred pages
take us only to the Army. The tragedies that must lie
ahead in volume two will be hard to take.

As with his other writings on American music,
Feel Like Going Home, Lost Highway, Sweet Soul Music
and Searching for Robert Johnson, Peter Guralnick
sends you rushing back to the recordings with fresh
ears. This is the finest compliment that I can pay
someone writing about music. What else can I tell you
to persuade you to read this book? How about the raw
Elvis belching on the mike under a deluge of screams
and mumbling, “Fuck you very much, ladies and
gentlemen.” Gladys grooming every girlfriend to cook
and take care of her son. The transcript of Elvis
really losing his famous politeness in the face of a
smart-arse interviewer who suggests that he is
dragging church music onto the rock ‘n’ roll stage.
The search for the perfect take of “Heartbreak Hotel”
with so much at stake. The account of his mother’s
death that may keep you awake at night. The picture on
the steps of Graceland, inconsolable in unbuckled
shoes. Some would say this is the beginning of the
end. Volume two will be a difficult book to write.
Here at least the writer has made the man better than
the myth.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 83-6295609
-------------------------------------------------------

Such Sweet Thunder - Benny Green On Jazz ( 2001)
Scribner


FOREWORD by
Fivis Costello




One Sunday afternoon in the early 1980s, I was making
a guest appearance on a Radio One music show. We were
playing an ‘exclusive preview’ of tracks from my
latest album. My attitude to thc media in those days
was not famously co-operative. Nevertheless, the DJ
was attempting some matey small talk. He had willingly
played one or two of my records in the past, so we
were not actually enemies or anything.

The programme stumbled on through another of our new,
not very Radio One-friendly cuts. As the music faded
away, my host began a new line of enquiry in his still
youthful and confidential Canadian delivery, ‘So,
Elvis,’ . . . always an unlikely opening for a
conversation . . . ‘If this were a regular Sunday
afternoon at home, what would you be doing?’ Without
hesitation, I answered truthfully if with careless
disregard for his feelings. `Listening to Benny
Green.’

Benny, I should remind you, was broadcasting on Radio
Two at the very same moment. I was just being honest.
At that time, I hardly ever turned on the radio to
hear the pop music of the day. I had a shelf full of
records to play and I could talk rubbish all by
myself. However, Sunday afternoon was completely
different.

Over on Radio Two, Benny might take one song and
present us with its history, tales of the writers and
performers, then play several recorded versions that
would turn the tune inside out and reveal all its
charm and beauty. He seemed to revel in playing the
Ella Fitzgerald version of ‘Bewitched, Bothered And
Bewildered’, the one with all of the vaguely risque
verses. Perhaps it was also here that I first heard
Louis Armstrong’s rendition of ‘Let’s Do It’ — a
nine-minute virtuoso lesson in delivering a punch
line. It was the kind of show that took the time and
had the pace to appreiate riches. When it came to the
art of Coleman Hawkins or the debt that the Benny
Goodman Orchestra owed to the genius of Fletcher
Henderson, Benny Green could take a theme, sustain it
and embellish it delightfully.

The result of these Sunday masterclasses in jazz and
vocal music appreciation was that I could nearly
always be found in Potter’s Music Shop at the foot of
Richmond Hill on a Monday afternoon hunting for
something played on the Benny Green show the day
before. I had bought my first serious guitar in this
shop when I was thirteen; my mother had worked there
for a while in the 1960s, so I had been as regular a
customer as pocket money allowed. Now, the owner,
Gerry Southard and his wife Ann must have wondered
about me coming with my new pop star cash to burn,
seeking rare Lee Wiley records. Gerry and I would
discuss the merits of Benny’s selections and I would
sometimes be directed to yet another valuable
interpretation of the tune in question. More often
than not I went home with a selection of titles first
heard on Sunday afternoon. I should have a Benny Green
shelf for all those discs. It’s either that or we’ll
have to burn some of the furniture to make room for
all this music.

This book is a wonderful collection of Benny Green’s
writings. The musical appreciation and anecdotes are
sometimes founded in the experience of a working
musician. Other times, obscure quotations, pieces of
background detail or the vivid descriptions of people
and places are teased out until the glorious main
point emerges. That dry and laconic radio manner can
also be detected in print.

You may find compassionate estimation more than
combative criticism in these pages. Everybody has an
opinion but when it is surrounded and supported by
history, humour and she telling of a wonderful tale
you are more gently persuaded. Most of all, this is a
voice that likes to celebrate more than to break down.
There is nothing quite like it in the brittle and
trite cacophony of modern critical posturing. At the
risk of sounding like an old fool who longs for days
that I can barely remember, I shall be diving into
these writings from time to time to remind myself of a
voice, in every sense, to which I shall always be
grateful. In the end, it all leads back to the music.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 83-6295609
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