On the Shelf
The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership That Rocked the World
By Peter GuralnickLittle, Brown & Co.: 624 pages, $38If you purchase books linked on our website, The Instances might earn a fee from Bookshop.org, whose charges help impartial bookstores.
Because the creator of a number of books about Elvis Presley — together with his magisterial 1994 biography “Last Train to Memphis” and its 1999 sequel, “Careless Love” — Peter Guralnick has interviewed tons of of topics and combed by a tall mountain of archival materials in his quest for the reality about probably the most consequential American musical artist of the put up World-Warfare II period.
However because it turned on the market was extra materials, excess of Guralnick may squeeze into his Elvis biographies, and that materials is the premise for his newest deep dive, “The Colonel and the King.” A go to to the Graceland archive shortly after the publication of “Last Train to Memphis” revealed a trove of correspondence written by Presley’s supervisor Colonel Tom Parker, the rotund, blustery operator that shepherded the musician’s profession from the mid-Nineteen Fifties till shortly earlier than his demise in 1977. A cursory sift by the fabric revealed tens of 1000’s of letters tracing in minute element the interior workings of Elvis enterprise, from publicity campaigns to the finer factors of his recording and film contracts.
These missives exploded the myths round a person who has for many years been derided as a cynical and unscrupulous opportunist that cheapened Presley’s legacy whereas enriching himself at his shopper’s expense. “I read the letters and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is nothing like the person that has been portrayed,’” says Guralnick from his Massachusetts dwelling.
What Guralnick discovered was a scrupulously sincere businessman in love with what he referred to as “the wonderful world of show business” and the artwork of the handshake deal, in thrall to his star shopper’s expertise and keen to do no matter was essential to preserve him entrance and middle. Guralnick’s new e book is the story of an immigrant scrapper who turned a kingmaker together with his unerring intuition for the principle likelihood. The primary half of the e book is Guralnick’s narrative; the second half accommodates a beneficiant number of Parker letters.
Born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk in Holland, Elvis’ manager-to be-dropped out of college at 12. “His uncle owned a small circus,” Guralnick notes. “He did every sort of job, like how to site the tent so it would have the maximum visual impact. He knew how to water the elephants, he studied the acrobats.”
After a couple of false begins, he stowed away in 1929 on a ship certain for New Jersey, adopting the identify Tom Parker shortly after reaching American soil. There was an Military stint in Hawaii, some odd jobs, after which he discovered what he cherished: the itinerant world of the touring carnival. At dwelling on this milieu, Parker mastered the artwork of grassroots promotion, of pulling in massive crowds by plastering the city with loud, hyperbolic placards. “In the world of the carnival and the circus, nobody questioned your pedigree,” says Guralnick. “Your handshake was your word, and everyone trusted and supported each other.”
Parker scouted expertise and took them on as shoppers. By the point he witnessed Elvis performing on the Louisiana Hayride in the summertime of 1955, he had already loved massive success with singers Hank Snow and Eddy Arnold and had adopted the Colonel moniker. Elvis, he sensed, was totally different.
“He sees in Elvis someone without limits, a great creative artist with great drive,” says Guralnick, “and Parker was prepared to throw over all of what he had achieved with Arnold and Snow in order to cultivate this untested talent. And he put everything he had into it.”
Even a cursory studying of Parker’s voluminous correspondence reveals a person not liable to passing over even the smallest element so as to please his shopper. Working with a small employees of loyalists together with his trusted affiliate Tom Diskin, Parker oversaw each facet of Elvis’ enterprise, from meals to publicity to lodge lodging. Work was play, it consumed his life, and that is precisely how he favored it. “It is of course these funny letters and my feeling that One must enjoy his work or grow stale keeps me on the go,” he wrote to his pal Paul Wilder in a 1957 letter.
He was a tireless proselytizer for his star shopper. Shortly after signing Elvis to a administration deal, he instantly set about convincing the William Morris Company of the greatness of his cost, writing to agent Harry Kalcheim that Elvis “has the same type of personality, and talents along the line of James Dean,” and that “if you ever follow one of my hunches, follow up on this one and you won’t go wrong.”
Elvis, for his half, deeply appreciated Parker’s enthusiasm and loyalty. “Believe me when I say I will stick with you thru thick and thin and do everything I can to uphold your faith in me,” Presley wrote to Parker in November 1955, shortly after he had secured a recording contract with RCA. “I love you like a father.”
Writer Peter Guralnick beforehand wrote Elvis biographies “Last Train to Memphis” and “Careless Love.”
(Mike Leahy)
“Parker defended Elvis against every single entity with which he was dealing,” says Guralnick. “RCA wanted to turn him into a mainstream artist, like a crooner, and Colonel wouldn’t allow that to happen. When Kalsheim asked Parker to rein in Elvis, because he was too wild on stage, Parker refused.”
“The Colonel and the King” debunks a few of the most cussed myths about Parker, refuting the notion that Parker destroyed Elvis’ profession by force-feeding terrible materials down his throat. Whereas Parker was a hawk when it got here to contract negotiations, he had no say in any creative selections and fended off file and movie executives with designs on grabbing Elvis’ ear.
“He completely removed himself from Elvis’ creative life,” says Guralnick. “It was a partnership of equals, but Parker didn’t get involved in that aspect of Elvis’ career.” For a lot of Elvis followers of lengthy standing, Parker’s hands-off method as revealed in his letters shall be laborious to sq. with the singer’s enlistment within the Military in 1958 and his subsequent posting to Germany, which, so the standard knowledge tells us, killed the primary important part of his profession and kick-started the descent into terrible Hollywood films that successfully turned this erstwhile pressure of nature right into a B-movie hack.
Parker endorsed Elvis’ Military transfer — his shopper wasn’t about to be a draft dodger — however the determination to push Elvis into films was a bilateral technique that each males agreed was the easiest way to generate earnings at a time when Presley was reeling from his mom’s demise and fretting about cash — as was Parker. “It was actually financial and psychological,” says Guralnick concerning the left flip that modified Presley’s profession. “And so the Colonel needed to reassure him, to say, ‘things are even better now than when you went into the Army, and when you get out you’ll be making even more money.’”
However even “Clambake” and “Harum Scarum” couldn’t douse Presley’s musical artistry and fireplace. His triumphant 1968 comeback TV particular kick-started a creative renaissance. The hits returned: “In the Ghetto,” “Suspicious Minds,” “Burning Love.” In 1969, Parker booked Elvis for a triumphant collection of dates on the Worldwide Resort in Las Vegas. The draw back of this was that Parker picked up a nasty playing behavior, whereas his shopper quickly turned depending on prescribed drugs. Presley and Parker grew distant, as Presley insulated himself with sycophants and his habits each on and offstage grew more and more erratic.
Parker was solid adrift by Elvis’ demise in 1977, retreating to his Palm Springs dwelling. Ten years later, he was introduced again into “Elvisland” by Priscilla Presley and Elvis Presley Enterprises President Jack Soden, coordinating an Elvis pageant on the Las Vegas Hilton and promoting all of his memorabilia to the property. However he by no means regained his standing on the prime of the Elvis hierarchy, a lot to his dismay.
In assessing Parker’s legacy, Guralnick thinks that all of it comes all the way down to “the great music he helped Elvis bring to the world — not through any musical contributions of his own, obviously, but by creating the conditions necessary to ensure Elvis’ creative independence from the start. Not to mention all the joy he himself delivered and derived from what he always liked to call the Wonderful World of Show Business.”
