In advance of our recent trip to Memphis (and to Woodall Mountain the highest point in Mississippi), I reread this first book in Guralnick's two-volume biography of Elvis Presley. Guralnick does an excellent job of presenting Elvis' "complexity and irreducibility" while also placing him in the context of his time and place. In fact, to me the most compelling parts of the book are the details about the regional nature of the 1950s music business: someone like Sam Phillips from Sun Records had to personally deliver his records to DJs and local distributors, and most concerts were revues featuring an array of mostly regional performers.
Last Train to Memphis is similar in many ways to another of my favorite biographies, Naifeh and Smith's Jackson Pollock: An American Saga. Presley and Pollock are both insecure, larger-than-life artists who died young, and both biographies use their lives as an entry point for showing artistic worlds on the cusp of major changes.
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