Book Review: Jerry Hopkins
Posted: October 22nd, 2025, 11:20 pm
Jerry Hopkins was one of the first cultural writers to tackle Elvis as a cultural force. Hopkins wrote the first serious biography of Elvis Presley in 1971. It was before the various Memphis Mafia were speaking.
this was one of the earliest books I bought when I started collecting in the late 1970s and it set the tone for serious Elvis books
It did have a lot of errors as it was written when most where not willing to dish on Elvis, which were later corrected
https://archive.org/details/elvisfinalyearsb0000hopk
After Elvis died, Hopkins wrote another to counter the Trash Trilogy of The Body Guard Book, The Goldman Book and the Stanley Family’s Elvis We Love You Tender.
They were considered the best pair of books about Elvis, until Peter Guralnick’s 2 volumes.
Hopkins revised his 2 early works, with corrections and updates owing to the massive flood of new information, into a single volumn Elvis the Biography.
In more recent years, Hopkins has produced specialty interest Elvis books
https://www.elvisinfonet.com/bookreview_alohaelvis.html
see also
https://www.elvisinfonet.com/bookreview ... _2009.html
https://www.elvisnews.com/2003/06/inter ... in-hawai-i
