Elvis In Texas

Book

ElvisNews review

The design of the book is pretty good; it has clear chapters with a good balance between text and pictures. Unfortunately it is printed on plain paper, while a lot of the pictures deserve glossy paper. We understand that would give it a higher price tag, let’s see if the content deserves that too.

The book is written in a very popular way, which makes it very easy to read at first, but after a couple of chapters this “childish” style gets boring. Especially the remarks with some of the photographs are looking like they are written for kindergarten.

Another minor is presenting rumours or possibilities as facts, like the first airing of “That’s All Right”. Where e.g. “Day By Day” clearly states that the exact date for the interview by Dewey Phillips is not sure, “Elvis In Texas” gives July 10 as the day. Of course it is possible that some evidence turned up, but the writer should have made that clear somewhere. Also presenting the recording and destroying of “Running Scared” in the 60’s as fact looks a bit strange to us. Also annoying are some minor mistakes, like the misspelling of song titles (“I’ve Got A Woman”).

“So, the book is nothing good” you might think by now. To be honest, this is far from the truth. Most of the first hand background stories are very interesting, and they are decorated with many, many marvelous photos. A lot of those pictures are of the buildings where Elvis performed, but there are also many shots of The King, both “behind the scene” and “in action”. We never saw many of them before.

Furthermore there is a lot of background information in the form of letters, telegrams, contracts etc. Together with captions that make the reader able to place the happenings in time, it makes the book a pretty complete document.

All together we have to advice you to add this book to your collection, you won’t feel sorry! The only thing you might feel sorry about is that the book isn’t published on glossy paper.