A Word on Words; 2803; Peter Guralnick

remember welcome once again to word on words i guess the rock welcome to word on words of fact it is great that you talk about elvis day by day you know you've run and a safer ellis lands this is the ultimate book every important and elvis presley's life is encapsulated by the pope so far the idea come from oh really came from the research that i've done on the two volume biography and the elders have become a cottage industry you look at the book that as this is there's a second volume came out this is it but really what happened was i got into the archives addresses are just jack soden ceo told me if i asked the question i've been asking for eight years he thought am i going to finance and i did and he said yes and so i got a chance to get into the archives which are just a treasure trove of information obviously i was looking to impose all of that information

onto a biography which is intended to be a narrative depicting character i'm sure that sort of thing but there was so much leftover that i felt that this was something that would be rewarding both for the casual reader and also really for anybody who was there and i wish i had this when i started with a biography will there is an angel of london and millions and millions of the eldest land there are those who believe is still there i have a relative as periodic overseas fighting it's a un itself are not going up and that is without match in this true argument then when the king is the king is the king and anne you've written the definitive article maher you didn't repeat offender piracy and you repeat and you take the two books together and he had a great sense of who he was and what he was this book and on the same day monday i wondered how you got a

great deal of the material that was where i know you say don't trust any source memory is fading speculation ends the facts myths contributes to legend that i had the grace long try to throw provided a rich resource which you can use to check out stories and anecdotes of people have provided you over a long period of oh absolutely and what i tried to do when writing a biography was too actually put in chronological order so many of these anecdotes that have been floated for years and i added that the best my ability but once i got into the archive of grayson who had a complete written documentation of all kinds of things things that you never would have suspected postcards of aaron presley wrote from prison you know actually i thought i was i thought was well i thought it was wonderful to have that note that that moment where where vernon writes from prison asks about is his baby boy i was extremely touching them and

them things like it often in history and i am a bit guilty of this myself at one time berman's been portrayed ellis' eldest brothers portrayed as a lazy shiftless kind of prisoners will you look you see the records that he maintained the scraps of paper showing every loan he took out every repayment he made and all these carefully in a careful back to life and you see this is there's nobody who couldn't have had a working in he grew up in the depression hit every pa jobs they ran out to the hundreds of miles for job to support his family and that general mattis as a totally just one us dollars and then well someone who was preying on over and clearly i was his relationship with both a fallen log or marvel stories and again and again is really truly truly love them well not only that i think that everything that he felt that alice was someone who from a very early age believed he was destined for greatness human and they were going to find at the age of eight

but there's no question in my mind that he was meant to achieve some degree some kind of greatness it was tied in with the welfare of his family i mean both his father mother spoke in elvis's early knew it at the time miller says early success but how it as a group as a family they they were set upon they were i mean it's a peculiar kind of i think as a part of a large extended family everyone of hormel has supported over the years but the three of them saw themselves as not apply well this is it changes his success at the key side assumption was best and then when his mother died it was almost as if his called into question is very sense of the justice of the universe and then that led to what am i here for what my success meant to be and that really was his downfall the other thing about the book is that you indeed were not ellis land cannot be fascinated with with where it came from and the heights northern well

you see it's really only reached nominates it's a horatio alger story and go to the other side of horatio alger story is that what happened after success achieved but it it just seems to me that in terms of needing to mandela's as a conscious creative artist which is how i see him or even to see this isn't as another aspect of american popular culture that if you have any interest whatsoever in urban aquaculture this is a story of central to that don't know was settled in the story of muddy waters and how will share of hank williams but it's also all those are shown absolutely you know i and my family have a preferred touch love with the widow with my wife was a professional signing lourdes what's and every poster home of the three below and we went down there and we've talked about that night and many times our young woman song stays in the afternoon colonel parker call the government said you must

cut the national guard and the evening's performances guard was lined up many young women were crawling all over the guards when they get to the stage and the guardian had a wonderful time there was wasn't going to hold parker i used it as that great show it was to a further boost those other thing i didn't have any idea i'm a wife i'm sure i know it about without a forty year old timey one of the founder and hosted monday yet none of the attack ad it's really funny i mean you see the newsreels of tupelo and fifty six even seen tammy wynette the front row one of the sense of a letdown tammy told me not too long before she died was that her mother had worked for scotty moore as brothers in memphis with a cleaning business which is still very high in memphis and tammy when she went to visit her mother but she grew up with her i said i want i think her but if she would go visit

her mother in memphis and she would be upstairs with scotty moore elvis guardian bill morrison and she was twelve or thirteen you are good listeners and readers and fifty for fifty five at that i'm sure knows wynette pugh that's right now in our us look inside book i mean our viewers won't be able to get much more maybe they can take another look at the car that bit different lenses of of alice through that through that cover photographs at the beginning of the chao with a port on the upper level of burma when you begin the book with her birth she was older is mozilla's follow that is four years older or his older and answer that but de silva's they buy they all way back to nineteen twelve us mostly more than the picture on the cover up of the cover is there and their pictures of young i was i mean the book is just shock picture a photograph

really have a photo our mothers like there's also beat us over to reproduce in their documents from his past that really give new life to the anecdotes we hadn't really tried to make something that reflected a life i'm in the that say it's the exoskeleton alive but it's for example we reproduced a letter from colonel parker to elvis and germany and for one thing it shows the colonel ed article iii is a great letter writer i mean if someone would've if he wouldn't give up a glacier's letters will be published it would turn around people's perception as a as a as a corrupt that's right an end but i mean in this in this one letter which is just one of many you see the effects may ask yourselves i'm here it is it's not simply that elvis's career is on hold and and the future's altogether uncertainty and a half he's in germany the colonel put his career on hold he takes on no other quietly he adapted to get into a the bat masterson a wider back in with one another they just

totally blew his own career on hold in his letters i really intended to bolster else's conflict with elvis's having terrible doubt in germany that he'll have any zika come home to their own pace for a six is a newspaper clipping the headline is neil is manager for young star elvis presley the nineteen year old mentioned the first director of blue moon of kentucky and that's all right and good rockin and i don't care if the sun don't shine one in political and the sun amazing contract would bother neil that india's folk music right well i mentioned that there was a relationship with bob meal was an interesting one too low is a very interesting one and again i was educated after i'd written the first time a biography then i got into the ipad's and i really was educated as to the nature of that relationship which it shows we were i would try to portray him but what's really interesting is that colonel

parker came into the picture in virtually the same time that neil the camels as manager and he came in independently and the connection between but malin colonel parker the extent which the hillside the colonel's help and the extent to which france as colonel was responsible for getting over saw me it began in the trial plaza godfrey's talent scouts might all of that is that human in ways that i never would have unable to imagine until we sign that the correspondence really this and the one thing was that the kernel appear to be trying to instruct by mail and how to be a professional manager and i think at the time couldn't quite as a letter there's a letter in here for with a letter in here from up from colonel for her to tell me all the money in which he does just what you do you just well this has

apparently been into it while onstage and their performance and the very young and atlanta yesterday right ben and the promoter doesn't like it and wants a refund of what fifty bucks something like that about and parker writes neil lennon and again even that early on you can tell that they're sort of folly arm around the show or a level of guys coming from and parker genoa salami andy pettitte says you know i was really just learned that that he owes is to people who are paying the scene and promoters have put along that early on i guess so i guess the kernel of solace is a rising star with great talent i'm not sure what point you know and i don't remember at what point you

decide you would as you say huge issues where the lips or lattes lot earlier than ice that i mean he picked up on the fact that that one of the back and the letter you mentioned but he picked up on the fact that elvis was a possum possible phenomenon on january fourth nineteen fifty five miles to the show in new boston texas and was on the basis of the box office receipts the culprit deposition he then went to see elvis on the hay ride two weeks later which astonished me i had no idea that there was any on the basis of that he put down was on a tour in february fifty five really before anyone much of her that just as at one else was starting to go out but the event that you allude to the place of the white river campbell exactly and i can sign of this the same white river which is the time where president click here at israel's development that's right and in one more of a parallel between the elvis presley bill clinton but it is what it is yeah and but what was what's what's really funny about that is

edible kernel rights but realize you set and says you know elvis has to learn to hear the professional standards these people pay good money and they deserve a good show and you have to tell us as we also wrote to elvis i think we have one of the ladies at all time and he said you know if you can't if you're not to make a professional stands and i don't want to have anything to do with you and this was really after this was appointed which i think it was a you know i don't think he was serious and expected out was to say yes the grill packer i will do it but is a weird thing it never occurred to me until the book was in galleys just a few months ago wyatt was adults behave that way and the reason that i think i can prove it is a two days before colonel packard had his friend to duke of paducah whitey ford and that's in here to the us and he had had him go to little rock and try to persuade else's parents to sign a management contract with colonel parker they haven't signed and elbows with poseidon seven will have whitey for the duke of paducah om unit spoke of how elvis was beside himself that his pants with inside world in the original book was in galleys i'm positive that's the

reason why he was so over the you know over the edge in a high enough that they're white river apparently already performed earlier yeah that it's a it's one of the few occasions until towards the end of his life that there was ever any acting out on stage and people have the illusion that audiences were reacting to al pacino this is shocking it never happened so long as he was a regional stars along with his audience as when the south you can see films of his performances at that time people were laughing they're amused by some people ran out of like that the whole first time anderson ties in with freedom for a medical issue of censorship the first time ellison counter any impulse any impetus to its censorship was after you'd become a national star at the point at which it was a pay off for politicians listeners newspaper people to really go on the attack against them and wouldn't wear the way that attack came from was almost exclusively from the north it was never from the south was it basically covers outlets that they said oh well you know what it had that the twenty eleven attack it had been to

give you and publicity and if that's a business here and i went to i went through the book and was fascinated by incidental moment but i also was looking for those follows a phenomenal startling really a history making a bit of naturally i look press all right ann the controversy that some of the i was was swirling beneath the surfaces elvis was not appear on a song called already the negative reaction moralistic right and i had yeah i was saving whole well what happened really what happened was that the elves and milton berle and he did as it was a second appearance and he did a version of hound dog which ended with a slow romani a bump and grind and that was a point in which all the newspaper critics together

basically the your newspaper critics at which when alice was already booked for the steve allen show in july and nbc took advantage of a publicity so we don't know for one point one i shall which i think was just a way of getting for the publicity and steve allen breast milk and tails and our goals really humiliated by that i mean as a documentary recently we have steve allen says i think he loved it took about that specifically lebanon has a cup to scotty moore elvis's guitarist the chaplains and he hated isn't really really did hate it but i mean basically what you see is just the media publicity machine at work as i can in all of this i it became very good business the newspapers for you know politicians is a for all kinds of people to take off on elvis at that point and of course in the south at that time do with the criticism was coming from was from theo white citizens councils and the whole the outcry about race mixing an absence and none of which had ever come up before at a

one very interesting thing is that everybody today makes the assumption that ellis took his whole act from the blacker than blues singers who we admired so much all his life i mean really as though his best friends in show business remained people like roy hamilton jackie wilson fats domino and when he opened in las vegas and fats domino was in the audience at that that's the king of rock n roll but the fact is i would say that his act really came from gospel music from white gospel music because he be our quartet to the most admired was a statesman the center the most admired the world was j cass but one of the focal points of the statesmen says in these all night singing such a pleasure here in nashville and in memphis a monthly basis be a focal point was a bass singer big chief of an engine whether a lawyer great rolling bridge that our sensational base but you know the basis for his visual act was that leg constantly moving and caused a great sensation in audiences and caused a good deal of criticism from the church and so elvis attended every one of these armored saint so i don't have any doubt

of the how the influence of black music on it it's rare that people will recognize the degree to which he was influenced by court at music not simply in the style which he took from it but also in the stage act that prohibits selling performance well you know it was and that it would if it was the last show i think which they did from the waist up i was like to say was from the waist down as ceo but they were but that with a direct a result of the new protests young man o n n n it's amazingly the ed sullivan laughter well yeah it is in and what's interesting is that i think elizabeth sell those requests from a minute the colonel's requests noah sang at a gospel number on his last appearance and that's almost times they do as he's stunned the peace and value as well remembered the second but it down hi anna and dividend and sell them came out what is

our analysis about this is a very good boy does dr iser is it's a great scene in american palate as and i think it's i think it's sincere but it's a show that while the anomalies all the contradictions you know and here's something else that there is a deeper into the book of those area and you just go through the pigeon elephant almost arthurian with many times but but let me set up mazda crew to me in there is one in there and there is a hat they're handwritten notes at the bottom well this prayer with us body lotion best when he's saying right now about inviting well you know alice really the last thirteen fourteen years of his life i would say the praise principal preoccupation was a spiritual search and he probably the one of the most consistent aspect of life

i'm sixty four on or spiritual ratings andy annotated although the summer books are extremely heavy books now i'm not a big expert on this but ellis read and re read these tax and new ones that come to mind are the autobiography of the yogi that is right his favorite book was the impersonal a life which he gave out to anyone and everyone who we met from sixty four on he read and re read it put notes in the margin but i thought this was so touching because i think as that that god loves you but he loves the best when you saying you just expressed both ellis' insecurity in a sense about god's love and also his dedication to signing it also for some of us and running and it's very primitive it better handwriting early in his life that i definitely degenerate do his letter to president nixon and if we have that and you're not but his letter to

president nixon is is really in a kind of childish scrawled look at earlier letters of the road literally in the fifties he it could run pretty well in penmanship in school you mention you mentioned doesn't listen and i haven't i did not find and i did not fine in here but i know it is in here but they was muted hoover which was really so you never actually got me to read in the time and ability of love from when he got a letter that struck as it because of overhead i would say diplomatically avoided him on two occasions our dignity and pride the second occasion and bill myers who had been the sheriff and mayor in memphis a major when he was at that point i've brought elvis in to do the fbi the fbi headquarters and out of over almond made his excuses and the churches in town or if he does implement his excuses but subsequently when it over got the fbi report that this is a nice well mannered young man at despite his appearance high on the advice of them point

in the vermont wrote the letter to help us and then end in iowa those were no longer alive well he also begun to the arm you know the art of federal bureau drugs it's out and gotten his and i thought experiment particular resonates and i was always knew when to sue miller in there from a parker outlining the terms of his new management contract which he twenty five percent and then you're over it was clear that the role was very rare well well it's essentially what what happened was that the contract went from being as standard management contract with a high percentage and twenty five percent i want to be in a joint venture and as sad and by the end i cannot to find their business as a joint venture which i think was not altogether unfair in that elvis was his only client and just as patti page and kate smith had had a sad had fifty fifty

arrangements they did point to probably was unfair and was it was it was a thing that became operative only at the very end of else's life was that colonel had a good many over just on special deals so that when for example high energy he unveiled was determined to sell else's masters for a flat fee rather get future royalties which was definitely not taken the long view at that point it was about seven million dollars changed hands and colonel got well over half of that over by virtue of special deals he has advisors is not so i think at that point you could look around this is a marriage which had run its course and in which you know there had been great mutual affection but at this point our colonel i think stop it alice was not gonna be he's around one manageable much like who is very difficult to say in the end as you know day by day you

find authentic shown up and request a doctor nixon went to the dentist need painkillers from it and you know because you know the story that this is the end at hand i you know it's a great story and a great life in a great book you worked with alexandra a very closely and she i contributed mr whitmore well i found an and you work in in collaboration with guards during son who's also an analysis of al assad it's hard for a long time and in this poverty really has produced all the elders reassure since about nineteen ninety a box that's now how was that that was really work together in an end put this great book <unk> fought like cats and you know it was it was a it was a lot of fun it was it was time that the unusual part of it was that when we first got into the archives of the state an understandable

concern so much has wiped out of out of grace loans themselves as beth and an unstable concerned about having dykeman sleeve so what we did initially was to top all these documents all these things into tape recorders that we have and how many have fifty ninety minute tapes or something comprise an enormous amount of later on obviously do the book we needed to represent the documents in and loosened up a but organizing all that and doing and coordinating all that with the research i had done on elvis's life it