Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
    Unavailable
    Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
    Unavailable
    Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
    Audiobook22 hours

    Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley

    Written by Peter Guralnick

    Narrated by Kevin Stillwell

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the moment that he first shook up the world in the mid 1950s, Elvis Presley has been one of the most vivid and enduring myths of American culture.

    Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley is the first biography to go past that myth and present an Elvis beyond the legend. Based on hundreds of interviews and nearly a decade of research, it traces the evolution not just of the man but of the music and of the culture he left utterly transformed, creating a completely fresh portrait of Elvis and his world.

    This volume tracks the first twenty-four years of Elvis' life, covering his childhood, the stunning first recordings at Sun Records ("That's All Right," "Mystery Train"), and the early RCA hits ("Heartbreak Hotel," "Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel"). These were the years of his improbable self-invention and unprecedented triumphs, when it seemed that everything that Elvis tried succeeded wildly. There was scarcely a cloud in sight through this period until, in 1958, he was drafted into the army and his mother died shortly thereafter. The audiobook closes on that somber and poignant note.

    Last Train to Memphis takes us deep inside Elvis' life, exploring his lifelong passion for music of every sort (from blues and gospel to Bing Crosby and Mario Lanza), his compelling affection for his family, and his intimate relationships with girlfriends, mentors, band members, professional associates, and friends. It shows us the loneliness, the trustfulness, the voracious appetite for experience, and above all the unshakable, almost mystical faith that Elvis had in himself and his music. Drawing frequently on Elvis' own words and on the recollections of those closest to him, the audiobook offers an emotional, complex portrait of young Elvis Presley with a depth and dimension that for the first time allow his extraordinary accomplishments to ring true.

    Peter Guralnick has given us a previously unseen world, a rich panoply of people and events that illuminate an achievement, a place, and a time as never revealed before. Written with grace, humor, and affection, Last Train to Memphis has been hailed as the definitive biography of Elvis Presley. It is the first to set aside the myths and focus on Elvis' humanity in a way that has yet to be duplicated.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateNov 1, 2012
    ISBN9781611135275
    Unavailable
    Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
    Author

    Peter Guralnick

    Peter Guralink has been called "a natrual resource" by critic Nat Hentoff for work that has argued passionately and persuasively for the vitality of this country's intertwined black and whiite musical traditions. His books include the prize-winning two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love; Searching for Robert Johnson; Sweet Soul Music; and Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke. His 2015 biography, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll, was a finalist for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography of the Year, awarded by the Biographers International Organization. His most recent book is Looking to Get Lost: Adventures in Music and Writing

    Related to Last Train to Memphis

    Related audiobooks

    Music For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Elvis Has Not Left The Building

      Jun 25, 2022

      Elvis Has Not Left The Building
      6 min read

    • Article

      Netflix

      Jun 30, 2021

      ELVIS PRESLEY: THE SEARCHER You might think this Elvis documentary would be biased. It was devised by his ex-wife, Priscilla Presley, and his great friend, Jerry Schilling, cleverest of the Memphis Mafia. Instead, it’s a two-part, 215-minute, objecti

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Return Of The King

      Oct 7, 2021

      SEND FORUM SUBMISSIONS TO THE EDITOR: DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM The King isn’t dead. Or so countless eyewitnesses would have us believe. Not a day goes by since Elvis Presley’s demise in 1977 that someone hasn’t spotted the ageing rocker in a branch

      4 min read

    • Article

      Amerrican Trilogy

      May 27, 2022

      Amerrican Trilogy
      8 min read

    • Article

      The King and I

      Jan 26, 2022

      The King and I
      7 min read

    • Article

      Dusty Springfield, Reluctant Queen of Blue-Eyed Soul

      Mar 3, 2017

      Despite her standing across the Atlantic as one of the crown jewels of British pop, in American histories of 1960s music Dusty Springfield tends to float around the edges as an outlier. Among female soul singers, black and white, her star is well ecl

      8 min read

    • Article

      Rock’n Roll ’n Race

      Aug 24, 2021

      Rock’n Roll ’n Race
      11 min read

    • Article

      Entertainment

      Dec 6, 2022

      ELVIS What becomes an iconoclast the most? Some pop culture icons stand the test of time (The Beatles, The Godfather), while others only capture the zeitgeist of the era/movement they oh-so-perfectly served (Strawberry Alarm Clock, we hardly knew ye!

      2 min read

    • Article

      What’s Worth watching

      Nov 19, 2020

      What’s Worth watching
      1 min read

    • Article

      Have Your Say…

      Oct 29, 2020

      I was left with mixed feelings about BBC Four’s interesting documentary Black Classical Music: the Forgotten History. On one hand, Suzy Klein and Lenny Henry both made valid points about certain works by various black classical composers such as Samu

      3 min read

    • Article

      The King and I

      Jan 26, 2022

      The King and I
      7 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Sep 6, 2022

      Books
      3 min read

    • Article

      History Sings In Memphis

      Nov 9, 2023

      I AM ON THE PORCH SWING OF A tiny wooden house, creaking to and fro and contemplating where I am. Inside this two-room ‘shotgun’ house, is where it all began for one of the world’s biggest stars. Standing in the bedroom, I have goosebumps as the guid

      4 min read

    • Article

      Allen Lowe

      Feb 5, 2022

      Allen Lowe
      5 min read

    Reviews for Last Train to Memphis

    4/5

    181 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      A very detailed biography told as if close to each of the events. A good book ... but I'm not sure why it is listed as a 100 New Classics.
    • 4/5
      Peter Guralnick certainly did his research for this book! He details the first half of Elvis's life, from early childhood growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi to his mother's death and his deployment to Germany during his stint in the army. Guralnick offers a fairly complete portrait of Elvis Presley as a polite, eager-to-please Southern kid with a penchant for loud clothes, nice cars, and pretty girls. Elvis's rise to fame happened pretty quickly (or, at least faster than I had originally thought), and the descriptions of the pandemonium that followed him wherever he went were wild. The only downside to this book is, ironically, the extreme attention to detail - at times I got confused trying to keep all the people straight. I look forward to reading the second volume of this biography, detailing "the fall of Elvis Presley".
    • 3/5
      The Moby Dick on Elvis - if you want to know what Elvis had for dinner on March 14, 1955, along with what color socks he was wearing, you'll find out in this book. An exhaustive investigation of the young man, soon to be King. I read this as part of my research into the American Road Novel (nonfiction book I'm writing) to see the impact traveling on the road had on Elvis, but not much was presented other than his love of Cadillacs and Lincoln Continentals. Nonetheless, this is a must-read for any Elvis fan.
    • 5/5
      Conocer de los inicios de Elvis fue muy lindo porque él era un sencillo y humilde muchacho, sano y extremadamente amoroso con su madre!
    • 5/5
      When Guralnick calls Elvis a "myth" is he referring to the unfolding of events that created rock and roll, or is he implying Elvis had an unverifiable existence? Was Elvis a false notion? I'm not really sure. What I am sure about is Guralnick's ability to tease apart the smaller pieces of Elvis Aron Presley's early life; the moments that led up to his stardom. There is certainly enough emphasis on Elvis's shy and polite and humble beginnings as a sheltered country & western wannabe who couldn't play the guitar worth beans. There is also emphasis on the key people surrounding Elvis during his rise to fame. It is obvious as Elvis' stardom rose, the less he was able to discern who was trustworthy. He needed an entourage and he struggled with identity, but a growing confidence led him to expect adoration and special treatment, especially when it came to cars and women. I appreciated the historical context of the songs Elvis made famous, especially since someone else wrote them and almost always sang them first. Everyone knows Elvis made 'Blue Suede Shoes' famous, but few recognize the true origins of the song. I also appreciated the emphasis placed on Elvis' connection to family. Elvis may have had a taste of reality when he had to enter the military, but he had to swallow it whole when his mother died. The event changed his life. This is where Last Train to Memphis ends. The sequel, Careless Love picks up the biography.Last Train to Memphis includes photographs (as it should), but that's not the cool part. The cool part is that the photos are not clumped together in the middle of the book like most biographies, but rather they begin each chapter like a little surprise.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Part one of a great Elvis bio.If you like Elvis, you'll love this!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Elvis' life 1935-1959, in great detail, but quite readable, if you're interested in Elvis Presley.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Last Train to Memphis (first of two volumes) is probably one of the best biographies about Elvis. It covers the early years from Elvis' birth in 1935 to his mothers death in 1958. The first couple chapters are about his childhood, but the majority of the volumes length are about the first five years of his professional career from July 1953 to September 1958. It's a very readable and often gripping account by a self-avowed Elvis fan - Peter Guralnick - who wanted to present Elvis as a normal person and not a mythological characture. Guralnick says up front he does not analyze or interpret Elvis but leaves it to the reader to find their own interpretation; so, right away we know this is not a scholarly book or serious attempt at understanding and interpreting Elvis, but a well-told narrative of the events of his life, akin perhaps to a well done History Channel or PBS show.Probably the most compelling question the reader will have about Elvis' early life is how and why he became so successful. Elvis once explained his success in response to a question asking if he was lucky, "I've been very lucky. I happened to come along at a time in the music business when there was no trend. The people were looking for something different, and I was lucky. I came along just in time." Of course Elvis also had a genius for giving people what they wanted, as the above answer reveals, Elvis was a mirror who could mold himself to be whatever people wanted. True to his word, Guralnick never really discusses why Elvis became successful, but my own interpretation is that he was the right person at the right time at the right place, a combination of luck, talent and hard work. It was a matter of contingencies. Elvis was known as the cross-over artist, but cross-over was in the air, if it hadn't been him it would have been someone else - although probably combinations of many artists over time, instead of so much talent in one person at one time and place.I'll be honest, I'm not an Elvis fan. I don't dislike him, just neutral, although after reading this I'm more sympathetic, he just wasn't part of my generation or my parents. There is no doubt he was a major talent, not to mention key figure of 20th century world history, which is why I wanted to learn more about him. I had many questions about his early life and rise to fame which were mostly answered in the first 150 pages or so. After that it became a little tedious reading about concert performances, snakelike handlers and the recording industry, and so I stopped reading around page 220, or in 1955. By then Elvis was on the express train his success was assured, there were too many people invested in seeing it happen, the machine was in motion. What I missed, however, was the interpretation and analysis by Guralnick to better reveal who Elvis was, he still felt remote to me.Note: there is a wealth of material on YouTube about Elvis including early recordings and rare video before he became famous making it a richer documentary experience when combined with reading the book. Search YouTube for "Elvis 1954".