Elvis Presley’’s from Elvis in Memphis

＂I had to leave town for a little while--＂ with these words, Elvis Presley truly came home to rock and roll. A little over a month earlier he had staged rock’s first and greatest comeback in a television program, forever known as ＂The ’68 Comeback Special.＂ With this show, he resurrected himself--at the age of 33, no less--from the ashes of a career mired in bad movies and soundtracks. So where to go from here?

Like a killer returning to the scene of the crime, Elvis came back home to Memphis, where it had all begun. Eschewing the fancier studios of Nashville and Hollywood, he set up shop at the ramshackle American Sound Studio, run by a maverick named Chips Moman with an in-house backing band now known as ＂The Memphis Boys,＂ and made the music of his life. The resulting work, From Elvis in Memphis, would be the finest studio album of his career, an explosion of mature confidence and fiery inspiration. It was the sound of Elvis establishing himself as a true rock and roll artist--and proving his status as a legend.

Eric Wolfson worked as an artist in Boston (where he was written up by the Boston Globe) and as a musician in New York City (where he appeared in the New York Times), before settling in Washington, D.C. He works at the United States Copyright Office in the Library of Congress, where he has registered works by the likes of everyone from Burt Bacharach to Beyoncé. He is the only employee in the agency whose desk has a shrine to Elvis.