Peter Guralnick

Peter Guralnick (born December 15, 1943, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American music critic, author and screenwriter. He specializes in the history of early rock'n'roll and has written prominent works on Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, and Sam Cooke.

Guralnick graduated from Boston University in 1971 with a master's degree in creative writing. He then began writing books about the history of rock'n'roll, blues, country music, and soul music.

Guralnick's first two books, Almost Grown (1964) and Mister Downchild (1967), were collections of short stories published by the Larry Stark Press, a small press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, devoted to stories and poems. Mona Dickson, writing in MIT's The Tech (May 13, 1964) gave Almost Grown a favorable review.

His two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis in 1994, followed by Careless Love in 1999, placed the story of Presley's career into a rise and fall arc. Encompassing more than 1,300 pages (including 1,150 pages of text), the work was preceded by Presley's first biography by Jerry Hopkins in two important volumes, Elvis in 1971 and Elvis: The Final Years in 1980 and countered earlier biographies such as Albert Goldman's Elvis from 1981, with an in-depth, scholarly examination of Presley's life and music. Guralnick previously wrote about Presley in the The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, in its first edition, in 1976; his article has been reprinted in each subsequent edition. He also contributed the complete text for the 240-page hardcover book accompanying the 2010 30-disc CD boxed set, The Complete Elvis Presley Masters.

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