Elvis August 16, 1977 music icon Elvis Presley dies in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 42. Doctors said he died of a heart attack, likely brought on by his addiction to prescription barbiturates. Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jesse, died during the birth. Elvis grew up dirt-poor in Tupelo and Memphis and found work as a truck driver after high school. When he was 19, he walked into a Memphis recording studio and paid $4 to record a few songs as a present to his mother. Sam Philips, the owner of the studio, was intrigued by the rough, soulful quality of his voice and invited Presley back to practice with some local musicians. After Philips heard Elvis sing the rhythm-and-blues song “That's All Right,” which Presley imbued with an accessible country-and-western flavor, he agreed to release the rendition as a single on his Sun Records label. The recording went to the top of the local charts, and Presley's career was launched. Check out these titles |
|
Books on the Air An overview of talked-about books and authors. This weekly update, published every Friday, provides descriptions of recent TV and radio appearances by authors and their recently released books. See the hot titles from the media this week. |
|
Helen Phillips Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including the novel The Need (Simon & Schuster, 2019; Chatto & Windus, 2019), which was long-listed for the National Book Award and named a New York Times Notable Book of 2019. Helen has received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award, the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, the Iowa Review Nonfiction Award, and the DIAGRAM Innovative Fiction Award. A graduate of Yale and the Brooklyn College MFA program, she is an associate professor at Brooklyn College. Born and raised in Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn with artist/cartoonist Adam Douglas Thompson, their children, and their dog. Check out her books here |
|
Indie Next August The Indie Next List epitomizes the heart and soul of passionate bookselling. Independent booksellers are and have always been discoverers of the next big thing, the next great read, the next bestseller, and the next undiscovered gem. Check out the August 2024 picks |
|
Values are like fingerprints. Nobody's are the same, but you leave 'em all over everything you do-Elvis Presley
| |
|
|