Peter Guralnick – författare

Rock ''n'' roll was born in rural Alabama, 1923, in the form of Sam Phillips, the youngest son of a large family living in a remote colony called the Lovelace Community. His father had a gift for farming, which was brought to an end by the Depression. His mother picked guitar and showed the kind of forbearance that allowed her to name her son after the doctor who delivered him drunk and then had to be put to bed himself. And yet from these unprepossessing origins, in 1951 Phillips made what is widely considered to be the first rock ''n'' roll record, Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston''s ''Rocket 88''. Just two years later a shy eighteen-year-old kid with sideburns, fresh out of high school, wandered into his recording studio to make a record ''for his mother'', secretly hoping that it might somehow get him noticed. His name was Elvis Presley. Elvis''s success, and the subsequent triumph of rock ''n'' roll, was initially propelled to an almost astonishing degree by a limited number of releases by Carl ''Blue Suede Shoes'' Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis - all from this tiny, one-man label. An engaging mix of biography and anecdote, Peter Guralnick''s book brilliantly recreates one shining moment in the history of popular culture. And Sam Phillips was the man who brought it all about.

Written with grace, humour, and affection, Last Train to Memphis has been hailed as the definitive biography of Elvis Presley

Essential reading for anyone who loved Baz Luhrmann''s biopic Elvis, starring Austin Butler and Tom HanksLast Train to Memphis, the first part of Guralnick''s two-volume life of Elvis Presley, received unprecedented accolades. This concluding volume recounts the second half of Elvis''s life in rich and previously unimagined detail, and confirms Guralnick''s status as one of the great biographers of our time. Beginning with Presley''s army service in Germany in 1958 and ending with his death in Memphis in 1977, Careless Love chronicles the unraveling of the dream that once shone so brightly, homing in on the complex playing-out of Elvis''s relationship with his Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It''s a breathtaking drama that places the events of a too often mistold tale in a fresh, believable, and understandable context. This is the quintessential American story, encompassing race, class, wealth, sex, music, religion, and personal transformation. Written with grace, sensitivity, and passion, Careless Love is a unique contribution to our understanding of American popular culture and the nature of success, giving us true insight at last into one of the most misunderstood public figures of our times.

Available in this new hardback edition for the first time in decades, Sweet Soul Music was hailed by Newsweek on publication as ''a stunning chronicle.... a panoramic survey of a lost world [and] one of the best books ever written on American popular music''.Since then it has acquired the status of a classic. Pitchfork included it among its ''50 Favourite Music Books of All Time,'' the Daily Beast placed it on their ''Essential Civil Rights Reading List,'' David Bowie named it one of his ''100 Must-Read books'', while noted author Ta Nehisi Coates, whose work chronicles the contemporary racial divide, called it ''one of the ten books I couldn''t live without.''A gripping narrative that captures the tumult and sweep of a music that will forever be linked to the Civil Rights Movement which inspired it, (think of Sam Cooke''s ''A Change Is Gonna Come'') Sweet Soul Music provides intimate portraits of performers like Cooke, Ray Charles, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Al Green among others, whose passionate gospel-based music embodied the liberating energy of a nation in transition. Through rare interviews, Peter Guralnick tells the definitive story of the music and the musicians, bringing to it the same empathy and insight that has informed all of his other work.As Roddy Doyle writes in his introduction to this new edition: ''Sweet Soul Music delivers all that we love to read in a great, sprawling novel, and still manages to be richly informative, historically and musically precise; it''s a work of high scholarship written by a born storyteller.''

Feel Like Going Home vividly brings to life such early blues masters as Muddy Waters , Skip James, and Howlin'' Wolf, along with illuminating excursions into the blues-based rock ''n'' roll of Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, and the Sun Records label. With unique insight and unparalleled access, celebrated author Peter Guralnick (Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley) dramatically depicts the people, the songs, and the performances that forever changed not only the American music scene but America itself.With a brand-new introduction by David Keenan to cast new light on the book today, and published for the first time as part of White Rabbit''s Deep Cuts series, Feel Like Going Home takes its place once again as a classic in the world of music literature.

In early 1955, Colonel Tom Parker (the manager of the number-one country music star of the day) heard that an unknown teenager from Memphis had just drawn a crowd of more than 800 people to a Texas schoolhouse and headed south to investigate. Within a matter of days, Parker was sending out telegrams and letters to promoters and booking agents: ''We have a new boy that is absolutely going to be one of the biggest things in the business in a very short time. His name is ELVIS PRESLEY.'' The close personal bond between Elvis and the Colonel is something that has never been fully portrayed before. It was a relationship founded on mutual admiration and support. From the outset, the Colonel defended Elvis fiercely and indefatigably against RCA executives, Elvis'' own booking agents and movie moguls. But in their final years together, the story grew darker, as the Colonel found himself unable to protect Elvis from himself - or to control growing problems of his own. Featuring troves of previously unpublished correspondence from the Colonel''s own archives, revelatory for both their insights and their emotional depth, The Colonel and the King provides a groundbreaking dual portrait of the relationship between the iconic artist and his legendary manager and a unique perspective on not one but two American originals. A tale of the birth of the modern-day superstar (an invention almost entirely of Parker''s making) by the most acclaimed music writer of his generation, it presents these two misunderstood icons as they''ve never been seen before: with all of their brilliance, humour and flaws on full display.