Fascinating. Read both volumes. Review reflects opinion after completing second book. Elvis in Part 1 is the child-father of the “mature” ( grown older, still childlike in man’s body) man in Part 2.

Compelling, riveting, thoroughly researched. Reading this was fascinating. As the author highlighted different songs I listened to them on Alexa and definitely developed an appreciation for his broad talent. Having come of age 60s/70s I was brought up on folk music and post-Elvis rock. He was not popular among my influencers: too flashy and a “greaser.”

Learning of his spiritual and gospel foundation and his impoverished background in segregated Tupelo and Memphis was new info for me. His beginnings were so inauspicious and his relationship with his mother quite unnerving. The loss of his twin at birth sets the stage for intense pressure, duality in persona and an unhealthy Oedipal complex.

Gorgeous voice, music in his soul, deeply spiritual, trapped forever in troubled adolescent urgings and ambivalence.

Read this. Then read the second volume.