Why Elvis Left the Building
'Elvis Through My Eyes'
book by
Heart Lanier Shapré
Videos, Reviews, Excerpts, Jimmy Denson Quotes
One of the outrageous, hilarious quotes from this books narrator, Jimmy Denson:
"Every day of his life he was pitiful, pathetic and no-one on earth to worship and idolize. He was to be pitied every day of his life. He was a victim every day of his life. He was being victimized before I met him, the day I met him and every day of his life he was being victimized. He was the only human being I know that had to be protected, physically, every day of his life by other human beings. He's the only one I've ever seen.
He's the only totally genetic infantile baby that I ever knew."
The very misleading publicity states of this book ...
"Before there was Michael Jackson and The Beatles, there was Elvis. Of all the entertainers who have influenced pop culture over the past 50 years, Elvis Presley stands at the top. His influence can be felt in music, film, fashion, and in the emotions of all the lives he has touched around the world. In this phenomenal book written by Heart Lanier Shapré, amazingly, seven lost years of the King’s childhood are revealed. Learn the foundations of what shaped this mega star’s life. 'Why ELVIS Left The Building - Revealing Seven Lost Years' explains the truth of these lost childhood years based on interviews with the book’s narrator, James Samuel Denson, who was selected by Gladys Presley to help raise her son Elvis, and on the DVD Elvis Through My Eyes.
Notes the author:
"The story has to be told; there was a person up there on stage beneath those costumes who had struggles, FBI involvement and is a phenomenon of life. What was the price?"
To quote Elvis, "My image is one thing and the human being is another … it’s hard to live up to an image."
by Heart Lanier Shapre
"Well, it's a satanic form of religion, Satan-inspired.
I saw the Devil in Elvis' brain one day, and his Momma told me to look.
She said, "Jimmy, look at Elvis' eyes," and "Elvis," she said, "show Jimmy what you showed me;" and he flashed his eyes and his skull looked like… his eyes looked like two pissholes in the snow.
And back in his brain I saw Lucifer in there.
July 5th, 1956
He was stoned out of his head.
Quotes from Jimmy Denson:
"There hasn't been a true story about Elvis yet"
"All of his teeth were brown, green and yellow""Pimply faced and ugly"
One of the craziest, completely bonkers interviews I've ever heard
A mix of the interview was made with Elvis talking and singing replies to Denson's absolute classic claims.
I laughed so my eyes looked like two pissholes in the snow!
(Quote: Jimmy Denson)
Some other things he reveals are described in this review of the interview I did with Denson:
Jimmy [Denson] did an interview with Lee over on Elvis Express Radio and he was crazy!!!Said Elvis had got "yella teeth cos he never brushed them"
was a dry washing king
claimed his mother "taught Elvis to talk"
claimed he had the skin off his ass grafted onto his face"
was a "big titty baby and a cissy"!! along with many many other bizarre claims
"ya better believe me cos I'm a double jaw breaking *** kickin fighter"
In Chapter 12 of the original 'Elvis Through My Eyes' the paragraph starts:
'An eclipse is obstruction of light, darkness, a casting of shadow. When a light 'goes out' early, there cannot be fullness of life and it is then obstructed.'
When reading this book it is not hard to imagine something has obstructed the vision and memory of Jimmy Denson. This could well be the book to rival Albert Goldman's mean spirited and much reviled, 'Elvis'!
Like the widely denigrated Goldman biography, separating fact from fiction in this totally over the top account of the Elvis story is challenging. It is a book well suited to the now, largely defunct Elvis "underground", with its sensational, colorful and fantastic claims, observations and beliefs, all neatly wrapped within a somewhat out of place spiritual texture.
At times you will laugh out loud, at other times you'll want to wring Denson's neck!
Both books are a revisionist dream. Interspersed with some solid research, Goldman set out to destroy the existing Elvis legend and replace it with one of the most damming and depraved accounts one could imagine.
Jimmy Denson's account, as told to writer Heart Lanier Shapre, approaches its subject in a strange, hybrid manner where the narrator professes great love for Elvis and then details him as a plentifully scared, drug addicted youth with rotting green teeth.
After so many mundane and repetitive biographies piecing the Elvis story together in the same one-dimensional jigsaw puzzle like mosaic, this books hits you right in the face with its 'out of left field,' rancid picture of the King of Rock 'n' Roll.
Denson traces Elvis' drug addiction to his days living in the Lauderdale Courts in Memphis. Starting out as a typical youth experiment with glue sniffing it progressed through the inhalation of gasoline fumes to amphetamines.
If you believe Denson (and a small number probably will), Elvis was a certified drug addict during his teenage years. This makes it seemingly consistent with the use of pills by Elvis et al. during Sun Studio days (as portrayed recently in the critically acclaimed film, 'Walk The Line'), a claim very much at odds with the usually told story that Elvis' pill problem started when he was in the Army.
Despite its often repulsive narrative, 'Elvis Through My Eyes' threads a spiritual theme replete with biblical quotations. It is a strangely concocted brew!
Many of the quotes are from Jimmy Denson and his bother, Jesse Lee, while others are from members of the Memphis Mafia, third party authors, Al Dvorin, and a female Elvis impersonator.
The litany of amazing claims is staggering and hard to comprehend, as are Denson's gems of wisdom and observations, all of which continue to flow like an unstoppable, raging torrent careering down a stream.
Among his many statements:
-
Elvis was a babyfied male..."he was a skin and bones baby and one time, while in front of the old St. Joseph's Hospital on the corner of Jackson and Lauderdale, a gang of kids came by; a gang in front and a gang across the street and they started yelling at him, "Hey, baby! Mama's baby! Sissy, baby!"
Vernon was a gutter and porch-wino
'Elvis was the Forrest Gump of the Lauderdale Courts and if Priscilla or any woman saw those green teeth he had, they wouldn't want to kiss his mouth'
Elvis did not graduate from Humes High (the Colonel bought him his diploma years later)
Jimmy & Jesse Lee Denson were Elvis' "...mentors, his masters, we were the power in his life"
Graceland should have been called Drugland
(Elvis' version of) Miracle of the Rosary went to the Vatican where Vatican Radio played it as their opening and closing song for a long time
Denson also suggests (the not new idea of) a surrogate, Neo-incestual relationship between Elvis and Gladys, adding a statement that Gladys often said of her son,
"He'll never be normal".
Denson further suggests George Klein, wanting protection from school bullies, hung around Elvis hoping the Denson brothers would protect him too. Jimmy Denson claims he was taken aback at how George idolised him! It's nice to be wanted!
The underlying purpose of 'Elvis Through My Eyes' appears to be to showcase Denson's ego and need for recognition at Elvis' expense.
If it wasn't for the Denson brothers, Jimmy Denson would have you believe Elvis could have been in real trouble. Others will argue if Elvis did indeed spend a lot of time with the brothers, he was definitely in trouble!
"My brain told me that I would go to Sing-Sing Prison in New York for years and my brain also told me the Colonel would have someone kill me because he was affiliated. I could also hear his [Elvis'] Mama's dying, blood-curdling screams, 'Jesse Lee, Jimmy, bring my baby home safely to me.' Also I could hear her begging us to, 'Take care of my baby.'
(Quote: Jimmy Denson)
That audiences watching the documentary, 'Altered By Elvis', which features Denson, laughed out loud at some of his preposterous claims, says a lot about his credibility.
Noted Elvis world identity, Bill E. Burk, said of Denson (a former Golden Gloves pugilist) in a recent online newsletter:
How to describe Jimmy Denson:A. His elevator doesn't go to the top?B. A couple of Jokers short of a deck?C. Someone who stayed in the boxing ring a couple of bells too long?
"This book is TRASH! I would not waste my time!" BrenWhat others have said of 'Elvis Through My Eyes':"Mercy, this guy is seems to be demonic himself - or just plain crazy. Sounds a bit jealous or something. Just MHO". Jennie"If you thought Paul McLeod lived in his own world, then Jimmy Denson is the commander in chief of the entire universe!"
"I am writing to you about a book I am begging you not to buy or endorse. It was written by Las Vegas resident Heart Shapre with Jimmy Denson.
It has one of Ed Bonja's pictures on the cover and says "By Ed Bonja" misleading people into thinking Ed wrote this piece of trash.
The name is the same as Bill Burk's "Elvis: Through My Eyes". IT IS IN NO WAY CONNECTED TO BILL BURK!
It says Elvis was a drug addict before he went into the army, among other lies. It is an awful book that does nothing but tarnish Elvis' image, based on lies.
It alludes to homosexuality, Vernon being a womanizer and abuser and other trash. PLEASE FORWARD THIS INFORMATION TO ANYONE YOU KNOW.
Sandi Pichon
On the back cover of the book are the words: Eternal Love Vigil In Song. Cute device but outdated, and very much in contrast with the often debasing nature of the narrative inside.
The book's image gallery comprises a series of low grade, dark black & white visuals including many of various Elvis tribute artists. A few of the Elvis visuals are reasonably rare.
When the tirade of online messages (see above) vehemently criticized 'Elvis Through My Eyes' earlier this year the 'negative' publicity was in fact a positive, as interest in the pervasive nature of the book saw online sales spike, at least temporarily. On Amazon, the book dramatically rose from around 330,000 to inside the top 100,000! Undoubtedly many fans wanted to see what the fuss was all about, and in all likelihood this review will have the same effect.
listen to Lee Dawson’s Elvis Express Radio archives 2009 interview with the very odd Jimmy Denson, upon whose recollections this book is based.
It is possibly the most insane thing you will ever hear.
Overall Verdict:
I found 'Elvis Through My Eyes' to be strangely riveting, and at the same time, totally repulsive. It is one of those rare, colorfully extreme works that is so bad it is almost good. For many, it will leave a long lasting bitter residue for all the lies and bitterness it contains. You've been warned. It is a very unpleasant book.
And yes, it will have little trouble sitting comfortably alongside the widely despised Goldman biography. Dear old Albert must be turning in his grave now that his carefully planned notoriety is being usurped by what he would term a virtually unknown country hick.
Dee Presley, Elvis' former mother-in-law, achieved worldwide tabloid attention by once suggesting an instinctual relationship between Elvis and Gladys.
The real issue between Elvis and Gladys is appropriately explained by psychologist, Peter Whitmer, in his absorbing pathological profile of Elvis, 'The Inner Elvis'.
Go here to the author's website for her version of the book's details - it makes very different reading.
Review by Nigel Patterson
Copyright EIN MAY 2011/April 2006 EIN Website content © Copyright the Elvis Information Network.
2013 FeedbackAnonymous:
I WILL REMAIN ANTONYMOUS BUT HAVE TO SAY IN DEFENSE OF James Samuel Denson THAT HE DEEPLY LOVED ELVIS AND DID NOT WANT TO SEE HIM ON ANY TRACK THAT WOULD LEAD TO ANY TYPE OF DESTRUCTION. DENSON’S EMOTION EXPRESSED IN THE BOOK EXPLAINS HIS OBSERVATION OF A BOY HE LOVED AND DID NOT WANT TO SEE DISILLUSION HIMSELF. DENSON’S DESCRIPTIONS OF ELVIS DESCRIBE WHAT HE SAW THAT HE DID NOT WANT TO SEE HAPPENING – THE READER MUST UNDERSTAND THAT POINT AND DISREGARD ANY COMMENTS THAT ARE CONTRA TO DENSON’S LOVE FOR ELVIS AND MAYBE BETTER PUT AS HIS HOPEFULLY PROTECTIVE DESCRIPTIONS. ANY DESCRIPTIONS OF ELVIS EXPOSED WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM THAT DENSON DID NOT WANT TO HAPPEN. ONE MIGHT EVEN CALL IT DENSON’S FEAR OF LOSING HIM.
2006 FeedbackIda Ritter (USA):
I read your review and have to say that I am in complete agreement with your verdict about this book. I red about this book before and I also listened to an interview that Lee Dawson from EER made to Denson and when I listened to him I made up my own opinion about this evil man, at the end of the interview he even used four letter words towards Lee at which he did not even responded, the way he talks and the tone of his voice full of hatrage says it all.What are the real reasons this man had to write such bunch of lies and damaging material that only tries to hurt Elvis's image and reputation only he knows, he is so full of bad intentions and as a human being deserves no respect at all from any other human being. But again some Elvis fans will buy anything referring to Elvis but in the again I cannot blame them for wanting to read first hand what is said about Elvis instead of taking second hand news about it.
We all know the drug problem Elvis had, the Memphis Mafia said all in their book without hiding anything (drug related of course) proff exists that the drug problem started while he was in the army, I heard from some other people, a lady that still lives at Lauderdale that Denson never had the kind of relationship with the Presley's that he pretended and portrayed in his book. I hope nobody believes anything of what he wrote in this evil book.
Elvis, Bullying, and once again, Jimmy Lee Denson
Pretty horrible stuff, but we need to know this. It's an update to the documentary I saw several months ago, in which Jimmy Lee Denson horrifyingly mocks Elvis, rolling his hands over and over so as to indicate a cognitively disabled person . . . It shook me to the core. His brother Jesse Lee claimed to Guralnick that he bowed to his mother's pressure to help the "geek" with his guitar playing. Peter believed him . . . I suppose it could be true cause some other kids who grabbed him, took his car keys, and were going to break him and/or his guitar if he didn't play something, said he played the song the brother often played, and "quite expertly." Under those circumstances, he could have played anything expertly, I guess. It's what's called "motivation." But since he played that song, Peter believed him. What Peter ignored was what I found here:
Bullying Elvis Presley
By Donald W. Hendon, PhD
Bullying has been in the news a lot lately. Some teenagers who were cyber-bullied have committed suicide. Bullies proudly post their exploits on YouTube.
Believe it or not, Elvis Presley was bullied a lot when he was in high school in the 1940s and 1950s. When he was 12, he was undernourished and weak, according to Jimmy Lee Denson. When I lived in Memphis in the 1990s, Denson contacted me because he wanted me to help him write a book about Elvis with a very unique point of view. I ended up with six hours of audio tapes. I forgot about them until recently, when I found them in a box. I’m now transcribing them, and my next book will be called Elvis, the Geek with Green Teeth. Denson’s father was the pastor of a mission-thrift store in downtown Memphis, near the Lauderdale Courts where the Densons and the Presleys lived. Here’s part of our interview: Denson: Elvis was physically very weak. He was a malnourished ectomorph. And the first time I laid eyes on him, he was 12 years old. Skin-and-bones. Holding his mama’s hand. He was on the other dirt path that was paralleling down and triangling into Jackson and Lauderdale. I had just moved back to Memphis when I saw him. I was saying to my two little sisters, “Virginia, Dolores, who is that?” And they said, “Oh, that’s baby Elvis and his mama. They go to our mission. His mama and daddy sing. They go to the mission every night.” So I knew immediately they were Pentacostal Holy Rollers like my mama and daddy. And Dolores and Virginia said, “He’s mama’s and daddy’s date. They go every night.” And he’s walking like this: (Denson pantomimes Elvis’s walking pattern, shuffling, digging his heels into the ground begrudgingly, like a petulant spoiled child who doesn’t really want to go where his parents are taking him, with his eyes facing downward, not looking up to see where he’s going.) Note: Elvis was using defensive tactic 1 in my book, The Power of Powerlessness. But he was using it incorrectly. His walking pattern only attracted more attention to him, and he wanted to avoid attention. Denson continues: Kicking his heels in the ground. I was 20 years old then. I had never seen it before that. And I haven’t seen it in the 46 years since then. Hendon: You mean he walked with his head down? Denson: He walked with his eyes in the dirt and on the sidewalk for seven years before Dewey Philips put him on drugs. Note: Dewey was the disc jockey at Memphis station WHBQ, and was the first person to play an Elvis record on the radio. Dewey used dirty trick 80, Get the other person high / drunk. But he had a good motive—to turn introverted Elvis into a star. And it worked. Hendon: So the drugs changed his personality? Denson: They released his inhibitions, yes. Before that, he was very inhibited and quiet. Ten times reclusive, ten times a hermit. Pitiful. And my heart bled for him the first time I laid eyes on him. And that very day I started protecting him. I learned that my mama had already had my younger brother Jesse Lee protecting him from the mean kids for the past couple of months. Maybe over two months. Hendon: You and your brother couldn’t protect Elvis all the time. What did he do when you weren’t around? Denson: He went where nobody could see him. He became an usher at the movie theater on Main Street, Lowe’s State. A good hiding place. (Elvis was using defensive tactic 27, Get lost.) Hendon: What about when he was at school? How did he stop the bullying there? Denson: He never took a bath. And he never brushed his teeth. His teeth were so bad, they were green. He stunk all over—his breath, his armpits, his crotch. People stayed away from him, and that’s what he wanted. (Elvis was using dirty trick 45, Offensive odors.) Hendon: Did his tactics work? Denson: They worked pretty good. But he could never get his mother to stop taking him to school and picking him up after school. She always held his hand. And that made the bullies want to beat him up even more.
Dr. Donald Hendon lives in Mesquite. He is a retired university professor of business, active consultant, speaker, and author of 365 Powerful Ways to Influence. Download Chapter 1 free of charge at http://www.donaldhendon.com. His column appears the first Saturday of each month at http://www.MesquiteLocalNews.com.
Show Number 442 Broadcast Date: 30.01.09 Download: 442a 442b 442c 442d Elvis Request Show (Includes Jimmy Denson interview)
JIMMY DENSON IS BACK
He was the subject of the most infamous interview in Elvis Express Radio history and for a while it seemed we had rid the Elvis world of Denson and his venomous words. The book 'Why Elvis Left The Building' by Heart Lanier Shapré first made itself known to us in 2006 and in the book the author takes her information from a man who was, at the time described as:
This nice looking book seems to be fine doesn't it? It even tells us it reveals "7 lost years", but watch out because Denson seems to have graduated from the Albert Goldman school of Elvis hatred! On the authors own site she describes her own book: "In this phenomenal book written by Heart Lanier Shapré, amazingly, seven lost years of the King’s childhood are revealed. Learn the foundations of what shaped this mega star’s life. The truth of these lost childhood years is based on interviews with the book’s narrator, James Samuel Denson, who was selected by Gladys Presley to help raise her son Elvis". In my interview with him the radio show I challenged him regarding some of his claims, to which he eventually told me, "Lee Dawson you can kiss my ass!", at which point he was cut off.
Heart Lanier Shapré lives in Las Vegas and is researching her next book.
