The Roots of Elvis PDF Download

Author: Julian C. Riley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781450718080
Category : Rock musicians
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Author: Gary Lindberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781959770084
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Roots of Elvis" corrects the historical record of Elvis Presley, the most popular singer in the history of the world history. Unfortunately, the origin story that most people have been told is a mess of myth and factual errors. After years of research, onsite sleuthing and abundant DNA analysis, the truth can now be told in this book.

Author: Jonathan Goldstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781550224627
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
It may sound crazy, but Elvis Presley - that god-fearing, gospel-singing American pop icon - was a Jew; these maverick journalists and filmmakers have proven it. A behind-the-scenes account of their irreverent and witty film documentary, in which Wallace and Goldstein took a Hasidic Jewish Elvis impersonator and an Orthodox Rabbi on a trek to trace Elvis's roots all the way to Israel and then bring the good news home to Graceland, this book compiles production logs, selections from the script, trivia and the investigator's official report on Elvis's roots.

Author: Michael T. Bertrand
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252025860
Category : Music and race
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
In Race, Rock, and Elvis, Michael T. Bertrand contends that popular music, specifically Elvis Presley's brand of rock 'n' roll, helped revise racial attitudes after World War II. Observing that youthful fans of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, and other black-inspired music seemed more inclined than their segregationist elders to ignore the color line, Bertrand links popular music with a more general relaxation, led by white youths, of the historical denigration of blacks in the South. The tradition of southern racism, successfully communicated to previous generations, failed for the first time when confronted with the demand for rock 'n' roll by a new, national, commercialized youth culture. In a narrative peppered with the colorful observations of ordinary southerners, Bertrand argues that appreciating black music made possible a new recognition of blacks as fellow human beings. Bertrand documents black enthusiasm for Elvis Presley and cites the racially mixed audiences that flocked to the new music at a time when adults expected separate performances for black audiences and white. He describes the critical role of radio and recordings in blurring the color line and notes that these media made black culture available to appreciative whites on an unprecedented scale. He also shows how music was used to define and express the values of a southern working-class youth culture in transition, as young whites, many of them trying to orient themselves in an unfamiliar urban setting, embraced black music and culture as a means of identifying themselves. By adding rock 'n' roll to the mix of factors that fed into civil rights advances in the South, Race, Rock, and Elvis shows how the music,with its rituals and vehicles, symbolized the vast potential for racial accord inherent in postwar society.

Author: Joe Moscheo
Publisher: Center Street
ISBN: 1599950251
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Gospel music was a significant part of not only who Elvis became as a man, but as an artist as well. As Elvis mania continues to consume generation after generation throughout the world, fans still crave new insights into the person of Elvis Presley. This book takes a look at his roots and the role of gospel in his foundational years, as well as the comfort, solace, and strength it offered him in the years of his meteoric rise in popularity. With the addition of "150 Little Known facts about Elvis" and eight unique appendices not included in the original hardcover book, this paperback edition THE GOSPEL SIDE OF ELVIS reveals much about the Elvis so many have yet to discover and is sure to become a collector's treasure.

Author: Larry Birnbaum
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0810886383
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
An essential work for rock fans and scholars, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock 'n' Roll surveys the origins of rock 'n' roll from the minstrel era to the emergence of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley. Unlike other histories of rock, Before Elvis offers a far broader and deeper analysis of the influences on rock music. Dispelling common misconceptions, it examines rock's origins in hokum songs and big-band boogies as well as Delta blues, detailing the embrace by white artists of African-American styles long before rock 'n' roll appeared. This unique study ranges far and wide, highlighting not only the contributions of obscure but key precursors like Hardrock Gunter and Sam Theard but also the influence of celebrity performers like Gene Autry and Ella Fitzgerald. Too often, rock historians treat the genesis of rock 'n' roll as a bolt from the blue, an overnight revolution provoked by the bland pop music that immediately preceded it and created through the white appropriation of music till then played only by and for black audiences. In Before Elvis, Birnbaum daringly argues a more complicated history of rock's evolution from a heady mix of ragtime, boogie-woogie, swing, country music, mainstream pop, and rhythm-and-blues--a melange that influenced one another along the way, from the absorption of blues and boogies into jazz and pop to the integration of country and Caribbean music into rhythm-and-blues. Written in an easy style, Before Elvis presents a bold argument about rock's origins and required reading for fans and scholars of rock 'n' roll history.

Author: Peter Guralnick
Publisher: Abacus
ISBN: 0349144451
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 723

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Book Description
This is the first of two volumes that make up what is arguably the definitive Elvis biography. Rich in documentary and interview material, this volume charts Elvis' early years and his rise to fame, taking us up to his departure for Germany in 1958. Of all the biographies of Elvis - this is the one you will keep coming back to.

Author: Peter Guralnick
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316206725
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description
Hailed as "a masterwork" by the Wall Street Journal, Careless Loveis the full, true, and mesmerizing story of Elvis Presley's last two decades, in the long-awaited second volume of Peter Guralnick's masterful two-part biography. Winner of the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award Last Train to Memphis, the first part of Guralnick's two-volume life of Elvis Presley, was acclaimed by the New York Times as "a triumph of biographical art." This concluding volume recounts the second half of Elvis' life in rich and previously unimagined detail, and confirms Guralnick's status as one of the great biographers of our time. Beginning with Presley's army service in Germany in 1958 and ending with his death in Memphis in 1977, Careless Love chronicles the unravelling of the dream that once shone so brightly, homing in on the complex playing-out of Elvis' relationship with his Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It's a breathtaking revelatory drama that for the first time places the events of a too-often mistold tale in a fresh, believable, and understandable context. Elvis' changes during these years form a tragic mystery that Careless Love unlocks for the first time. This is the quintessential American story, encompassing elements of race, class, wealth, sex, music, religion, and personal transformation. Written with grace, sensitivity, and passion, Careless Love is a unique contribution to our understanding of American popular culture and the nature of success, giving us true insight at last into one of the most misunderstood public figures of our times.

Author: Richard Zoglin
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501151207
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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“Outstanding pop-culture history.” —Newsday The “smart and zippy account” (The Wall Street Journal) of how Las Vegas saved Elvis and Elvis saved Las Vegas in the greatest musical comeback of all time. Elvis’s 1969 opening night in Vegas was his first time back on a live stage in more than eight years. His career had gone sour—bad movies, mediocre pop songs that no longer made the charts—and he’d been dismissed by most critics as over-the-hill. But in Vegas he played the biggest showroom in the biggest hotel in the city, drawing more people for his four-week engagement than any other show in Vegas history. His performance got rave reviews; “Suspicious Minds,” the song he introduced there, gave him his first number-one hit in seven years; and Elvis became Vegas’s biggest star. Over the next seven years, he performed more than 600 shows there, and sold out every one. Las Vegas was changed, too. By the end of the ‘60s, Vegas’ golden age—when the Rat Pack led a glittering array of stars who made it the nation’s premier live-entertainment center—was losing its luster. Elvis created a new kind of Vegas show: an over-the-top, rock-concert extravaganza. He set a new bar for Vegas performers, with the biggest salary, the biggest musical production, and the biggest promotion campaign the city had ever seen. He opened the door to a new generation of pop/rock artists and brought a new audience to Vegas—not the traditional well-heeled older gamblers, but a mass audience from Middle America that Vegas depends on for its success to this day. At once “a fascinating history of Vegas as gambling capital, celebrity playground, mob hangout, [and] entertainment Valhalla” (Rolling Stone) and the incredible “tale of how the King got his groove back” (Associated Press), Elvis in Vegas is a classic feel-good story for the ages.

Author: Peter Doggett
Publisher: Viking Adult
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
In 1969, at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, American music changed for ever. Bob Dylan, the most daredevil spirit of the rock era, took the stage for the first time with Johnny Cash, country music superstar. This show at the temple of country music, The Grand Ole Opry, was the most public evidence of a collision of styles which first occurred in the mid-1950s and has sent shockwaves through American music ever since. Country Rock, as played by the Byrds, the Eagles and Gram Parsons, was to become the dominant style in American music during the 1970s.