Elvis Presley Calls His Mother After The Ed Sullivan Show

In this monologue, without deifying Elvis, Charters lifts the King to a higher plane, portraying him as a sensitive young man who naively intuits much about the media and the celebrities it glorifies. Charters's Elvis is so sweet he calls his mother after an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. He responds to his mother's questions or interrupts the call to quiet his partying band and entourage. But the wily 21-year-old is not above momentarily burying the phone under his pillow to sneak a kiss from a sweet young groupie. That night he had been shown from the waist up to avoid his society-threatening lower-torso wiggling. Elvis understands that this censorship is in itself suggestive: than prurient. "I didn't do anything that wasn't like I always do when I'm out in front of the public. . . . Now that idea Mr. Sullivan had of cutting off the bottom part of me, that was to make people think I was doing something different." This brief novel skips along on amusing anecdotes--like the time the band inadvertently played for the KKK, narrowly escaping a beating with a finale of "Dixie." Charters ( Louisiana Black ) reminds us that the King was once a less worldly prince.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Charters (Louisiana Black, 1986; Jelly Roll Morton's Last Night at the Jungle Inn, 1983, etc.) creates an imaginary phone conversation between a young, newly famous Elvis and his adored mother, after the notorious appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in which Elvis got his convention-shaking pelvis chopped off. ``Now, Momma, you got to understand I didn't have no idea what all those camera people were doing when the show went out over the air.'' So begins a lulling nightlong conversation between the boy who would be King and his insomniac, famously overattached mama Gladys. Elvis speculates to Gladys that savvy Sullivan was just trying to drive up ratings by generating a little mystery about what the singer's bottom half was up to. Charters's Elvis is hip enough to concede that the press is too intellectual to get the spontaneous stuff he does on stage, but he talks as if he's too innocent to get the effect he has on women. He minds his manners, putting down the phone so Gladys can't hear him talk to the sweet little girl his boys brought in for the night. Charters does offer, though, some witty and revealing moments. The best is an image of Elvis spontaneously spinning out the idea for a movie called The Lord's Singing Spirits, in which Elvis and Gladys flee a bum murder rap and take refuge with a traveling gospel group. Far too much of the brief narrative, however, strains for a feeling of wavering innocence, depending too much on the grizzled stories about Elvis's need for cheeseburgers and company, his difficulty sleeping, and his penchant for innocent little girls: ``How do you do, miss.'' An affectionate but shapeless character sketch, lacking both the revelatory punch of expos‚ and the insight and interest of a developed novel. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Charters, an ethnomusicologist and writer on the blues and jazz, takes on the deified Elvis Presley in his latest novel. Writing partly to defend Elvis from his critics, and partly to illuminate a more human side of the singer that is rarely documented, he succeeds in conveying the sense of innocence Elvis still possessed after his controversial 1957 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The book, an extended monolog by Elvis on the telephone to his mother, effectively captures his bewilderment about the uproar caused by his then-provocative gyrations: "Those shakes I put in is just so the girls will have a little show. Most of the time they're all screaming so loud I know they can't hear what I'm singing so I give them something to look at." Even at this stage of Elvis's career, we see the groupies and the beginning of drug problems, and we get the feeling of a mixed-up kid with a smouldering sexuality entering the lion's den. Recommended for public libraries, especially where Elvis remains popular.
- Kevin M. Roddy, Univ. of Hawai'i at Hilo Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.