The Book Sense 76
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In the early morning hours of November 23, 1976, a late model Lincoln careened up the driveway of the second most famous residence in the United States, Graceland, and did not come to a complete stop before its bumper met a guarded, wrought iron gate. The driver, visibly drunk, cursing the night, waving a .38 derringer in the air, demanded an audience of the man of the house, Elvis Presley: "You just tell him the Killer's here." The security guard instead summoned the Memphis police, and the hell-bent man left Graceland in the backseat of a patrol car, his hands in cuffs. It was the second arrest in two days for Jerry Lee Lewis.

It would take a careful reader to tally the multitude of Jerry Lee's crimes, sins against God and man and his own mortal vessel, chronicled in Nick Tosches' Hellfire. But they're all there (there couldn't be any more, could there?), along, of course, with the incendiary rock n' roll Lewis made along the way. Hellfire is as wildly original as its subject -- Tosches alternates between the cadence and tone of a country preacher ("It was everywhere, blasting forth like thunder without rain from cars and bars and all the opened windows of the unsaved. Its wicked rhythm devoured the young of the land," he writes of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and the summer of 1957) and that of a simple reporter ("By the end of July, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" had sold about 100,000 copies."). It's rock n' roll biography as classic American literature.

Elvis' biographer makes no mention of Lewis' pre-dawn visit to the gates of Graceland, but that seems to be about the only detail missing from the 1,326 pages of Peter Guralnick's magisterial two-volume life of the man they called the King. Last Train To Memphis is an epic, Careless Love a tragedy. Together, they tell the story of a polite country boy who got what he wanted but lost what he had, and wound up in the end on a lost highway, unable to remember the difference between the two. Presley has had his hagiographers and his pathographers, and now, in Guralnick, he has a biographer with a respect for the art. He deserves no less.

Elvis made his first appearance on the "Grand Ole Opry" on October 2, 1954, awed and anxious at the prospect of meeting Opry regulars backstage, some of whom he numbered among his heroes, not least the composer of "Blue Moon Of Kentucky." Presley had recorded a souped-up version of the song for his first record, and he had reason to believe its author was none too pleased. Guralnick describes the man as "conservatively dressed in dark suit and tie and trademark white hat and, at 43, already an elder statesman possessed of a dignity that permitted neither bullshit nor informality." He is, of course, describing Bill Monroe.

Bill Monroe is arguably among the most broadly talented and influential figures in the history of American popular music. At least that is the argument of Richard D. Smith, author of Can't You Hear Me Callin', the first full-dress biography of Monroe, and, with all due respect to the other contenders, he has a strong case. Monroe was a man of massive talents -- skilled singer, virtuoso instrumentalist, gifted composer, brilliant bandleader -- and he was also, (and here's Smith's ace in the hole) "the only person to create -- not just dominate but wholly create -- a distinctive musical genre." In the beginning was the Father of Bluegrass, cradling a mandolin, wearing a Stetson as if born to it.

Monroe could be arrogant, cheap, tyrannical, rude, and tempted by pleasures of the flesh…when, that is, he wasn't being gracious, generous, nurturing, amiable, and otherwise the perfect Christian gentleman. As it happened, Elvis encountered the latter Monroe persona that night backstage at the Opry. It's never been reported if Jerry Lee Lewis had the opportunity to test Bill's patience.

When Mitchell Moore isn't selling books, he writes about American roots music.

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