Bobbie Phillips Books

This book depicts the best from collections of early Native American Pueblo silverwork. The photographs allow the reader to identify key characteristic features of traditional Native American jewelry. The informative verbal descriptions do not insult the reader nor the makers. There are few books that portray the early Southwest jewelry as well as this one.

Excellent reference on Southwest Indian Jewelry. A good read before going in search of old or modern day Native American jewelry teasures.

Wilford
Wilford's Trading Post
Gallup, New Mexico

At 200 or fewer pages, the Penguin Lives impose the quality of succinctness upon their authors. After all, who wants to read a thousand-page tome about someone in whom you have only a passing interest?

The other good thing about them is that authors are matched to their subjects (e.g., Paul Johnson on Napoleon, John Keegan on Churchill, Sherwin Nuland on Leonardo).

Prior to reading this book, I had never heard of Bobbie Ann Mason, but based upon name alone, it was clear that she was a southern woman. That caused me to worry that the book would be adulatory, and so it was at both the beginning and end of the book, with Ms. Mason attributing everything that happened in the world in the 1950s to Elvis.

She goes on, however, to provide a highly readable, detailed acccount of Elvis' life, just about as much as the typical reader is likely to find interesting. Obviously, anyone interested in pursuing the subject can move on to the the longer biographies (Ms. Mason provides an extensive bibliography), but the average reader is likely to be satisfied by what she has put on their plate. An interesting documentary to view after, or in conjunction with, reading the book is Elvis Presley - Memphis Flash, which details Elvis'life during the early Tupelo and Memphis years, including extensive interviews with his friends, classmates, and musical historians.

It's worth noting that Elvis was not the first rock star nor the only one during the 50s. Two others that spring to mind were Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison, both of whom wrote their own music and had major impact on the musicians that followed (e.g., the Beatles and the Rolling Stones). Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, they were not "cute," and consequently, did not attain a following among teen-aged girls.

I am not sure why all the reviewers rated this book so low. Perhaps, they are angry with Mason for telling us that Elvis was hooked on drugs.
Elvis was a great singer (and my favorite). It was a loss he had to do die so young. Mason details the rise of Elvis, and his short twenty plus years in the spotlight. The author also shows the negatives of Elvis, and why these eventually led to his destruction. Perhaps Mason analizes Elvis too deeply. After all, he was only a singer.

This is a OK read for those interested in Elvis's life. I thought the author did a good job of breaking down what constituted Presley's life and meaning.

I sometimes assign Mason's light biography of Elvis in my southern history classes, and it is always a favorite of my students.

Those looking for serious scholarship will be disappointed in the book. But it is a fun book that my students actually enjoy reading and provides a great foundation for a serious discussion of youth culture, race, and class relations. And, of course, it also shows students, who are only familiar with the kitsch, why Elvis mattered to so many people.

Bobbie Ann Mason is the person who should have written this book on Elvis. Born in 1942, she grew up on a dairy farm in Mayfield, Kentucky; she and Elvis then are from the same time and part of the country. It is obvious from every page of this work that Ms. Mason likes Elvis's music and understands what his contribution to America and the world was. There is no substitute, as some of us remember, to being alive when Elvis literally burst on the music scene and shook us from the Eisenhower 50's. Of course Ms. Mason, one of our best living fiction writers, says it better than I: "For me, Elvis is personal--as a Southerner and something of a neighbor. I heard Elvis from the very beginning on the Memphis radio stations. Many parents found Elvis's music dangerously evocative, his movements lewd and suggestive--but when my family saw Elvis on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, singing 'Ready Teddy', my father cried, 'Boy, he's good!'"

My problem with this book is the same I have with the other books in this series-- their required brevity makes any in-depth study of the character impossible. This series works best, I think, in Douglas Brinkley's book on Rosa Parks since no bio of her except one for children had ever been written so he was covering new ground rather than rehashing previous material. Ms. Mason lists her sources, saying she relied heavily on Peter Guaralnick's two books on Pressley that I have not read. I did read, however, the awful book by Albert Goldman whom I believe Ms. Mason alludes to in her introduction: "In 1980, a scurrilous biography portrayed him as a redneck with savage appetites and perverted mentality, and of no musical significance to American culture." Ms. Mason provides the ultimate insult by not giving the name of the biographer.

Ms. Mason discusses briefly Elvis's movies and his interest in books. I didn't know he read books or that Priscilla got him to burn them. Ms. Mason also says that by the end of 2000 Graceland had become the most visited private home in the U. S. When I visited his grave a few years ago-- Graceland was closed that day-- I was saddened so see that out of hundreds of "floral arrangements" there was not one real flower. I suppose as the Lorettta Lynn character says in "Cold Miner's Daughter," that the plastic ones last longer.

When these publishing houses reach into the shallow end of the writing pool to assign authors the task of patching together a novella, this is the inevitable pitiful result. Superficiality overflows her perspectives, and the style of the book is forced, as she tries to spin a tome of the south as a tapestry into Elvis' life. I must've been absent from the planet during the minute that Elvis' career took this downward spiral she focuses on. Recently he has had the number 1 song and album in the world, which went gold or platinum in 60 countries. 15,000,000 people from around the world have stopped by his house over the last 20 years, making Graceland the most visited home in the world (next to the White House which is a public building); there are over 700 fan clubs; he has sold more records since 1977 than any 3 acts combined; his posthumous concert tour breaks attendance records around the world, and a whole new generation of children have discovered him in the Lilo & Stitch movie. There are still more books sold and written about Elvis than any other artist. He was voted the "Artist of the Century" the 57th "Most Influential Person of the Millennium," and his song, "That's All Right Mama" was chosen by CNN as the "Song That Changed The World." He revolutionized, Radio, Concerts, the Record Industry, the Music Charts, Television, Movies, Pop Culture, Male Sexuality and fan devotion. He first created the generation gap in the 50s and bridged it in the 70s. Without Elvis crossing over to open the portal for Black entertainers, Motown would've been a regional success only. After 9/11 when the world sought emotional comfort through songs of inspiration and patriotism, "America The Beautiful" sung by Elvis in 1972, went up the Top 10 charts worldwide. A man that accomplished all this in just 22 years---so much that his work and image still dominate the perlieu 26 years after his demise--- deserves better than to be written about by an author of the ilk of a Bobbie Ann Mason.
P.S He is releasing another album, that will be pushed to the top by another Number 1 single.