One of the two or three key Elvis books of all time. Full of rare and remarkable photographs, as well as a brilliantly illuminating text.
The year is 1956. Elvis Presley, at age 21, was about to become the greatest rocker in the history of rock 'n roll. Here is Elvis before he became the prisoner of his own celebrity. Soon his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, would put an end to all unmanaged reporting. Never again would anyone capture the essential freshness and vigour of these impromptu photographs. Never again would anyone be allowed to see the man behind the myth.
Elvis '56 shows us the King before the curtain fell - Elvis at his most innocent, most vulnerable, most intensely charismatic - Elvis in the last moments before the man became a legend.
Author Biography
Reviews
Each of Alfred Wertheimer's pictures is worth the proverbail 1000 words, but his words, too, offer a rare glimpse of a man and a world rendered virtually impenetrable by marketing and myth-making. Wertheimer's book is the real thing - touching, exuberant, honest in its documentation, beautiful in its visual images. You'll learn more about Elvis Presley from this book than you will from a dozen weighty treatises, and you'll come back to its images again and again for thier wit, wisdom, eloquence, insight, and humour.,Alfred Wertheimer has given us complete access to the Presley operation: in the studio, backstage, at TV rehearsals, on the road, at home in Memphis. Almost 4000 pictures resulted... the best are collected in Wertheimer's
Elvis '56... a fitting rebuke to all the shoddy Elvis books that have clogged the market in the last few years.,Indispensable... one of the very few rock books that transcends time and fashion... the most vivid and personal record of the young Elvis that we have.
