The Ultimate Elvis

The Ultimate Elvis? No!

David Neale

You may have seen an addition to the shelves of you local bookshop recently. It's a good looking volume entitled The Ultimate Elvis.

A hardback publication, this book carries a fine 50's shot of Elvis on the dust-jacket and looks mightily impressive, with 560 nicely printed pages, including quite a number of photos, all of which are black and white. And it's not just a rerun of the familiar story in a familiar fashion, either. The Ultimate Elvis is divided into six parts, as well as an introduction, a collection of quotations about Elvis, a bibliography, and an index.

Part I is a close to 300-page chronology of Elvis' life with entries listed on a day-by-day basis.

Part II is a similar chronologically arranged look at Elvis-related events from 1977 to the end of 1993 and also includes a look at what the future has in store, a review of the men and women who have featured prominently in the Elvis phenomenon, a list of TV appearances by Elvis and TV shows about him, and a list of radio shows by Elvis.

Part III looks at a host of aspects related to Elvis' film career, and includes several unusual but interesting lists such as debut and last performances.

Part IV is an innocuous collection of lists of people (and pets) associated with Elvis, but who either did not merit a mention in Part II or have a more detailed entry in that part.

Part V is entitled Collecting Elvis, but in its 21 pages also lists over one hundred fan clubs with their addresses, the vast majority of which are in the USA. Further, the sections actually pertaining to memorabilia merely itemise hundreds of possible collectibles with little real price indication or additional details of availability, collectibility, and so on. An address list of buyers and sellers of Elvis memorabilia contains only a few addresses outside the US, two of which are in Britain.

Part VI is again heavily US biased and contains several lists pertaining to records, CDs, and videos. With sections such as Unreleased Recorded Songs this could have contained some interesting material, but again, the information is very superficial, and the accuracy of the lists must be brought into question when the aforementioned one contains You Can't Say No In Acapulco!

And this is certainly not the most blatant of mistakes in The Ultimate Elvis. It is full of inaccuracies which more careful editing should have spotted, as well as factual errors. A few examples will illustrate:

  • a photo of Elvis performing in King Creole (including some brass-holding Jordanaires in the background) is captioned as "Elvis performing at the Louisiana Hayride, sometime between 1953-54";
  • a sketch of Elvis shows him playing guitar left-handed;
  • Ain't That Loving You Baby is said to have eventually become a hit from the film Roustabout;
  • Elvis is said to be at number one on Billboard's Top 100 on April 10, 1957, with All Shook Up, but, just a couple of pages further on is noted as having recorded it on June 28 of that very same year;
  • during the Frank Sinatra TV show, following his demob, Elvis is said to have sung a duet with Nancy Sinatra, performing her hit Witchcraft;
  • Dirty, Dirty Feeling was first titled The Girl Next Door and later The Girl Next Door Went-a-Walking.

    • And there are many, many more such bloopers. Too many, in fact, to take anything else in the book with more than a very large pinch of salt. This is a real pity, given the book's presentation and admirable concept. Some better research, more attention to detail, and less superficiality could have resulted in a book well worth owning. Sadly this is not the case, and if I were you, I would leave The Ultimate Elvis to gather dust on the shop's shelf.

    The Ultimate Elvis is written by Patricia Jobe Pierce, and is published by Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-671-87022-X, price £15.99.

    David Neale

    Copyright 1996

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