THE COLONEL AND THE KING by Peter Guralnick

Every great story needs a great villain, and in The Elvis Presley Story the villain has always been Colonel Tom Parker, his manager. Just look at the evidence: he conned poor old Elvis out of 50% of his earnings, maybe more; he was a bully, unsophisticated and uncultured, steering Elvis away from his R&B roots towards MOR and innumerable schlock films, neutering his sexuality in the process; he bartered Elvis’ health-sapping Las Vegas appearances to pay off his gambling debts; and, finally, to hammer the nail into the coffin, he wasn’t even who he said he was, concealing his real identity as – wait for it – an illegal immigrant.   

That, at least, is the commonly held narrative, and also the theme of the “authorised” 1922 biopic Elvis The Movie, with Tom Hanks as, to quote my own review, the “scheming, Machiavellian Parker, thoroughly dislikable, overweight, lumbering, ugly and speaking with a nasty quasi-Boer accent born of his Dutch ancestry, of which Elvis was forever ignorant.”

        Peter Guranlick, Elvis’ premier biographer, however, believes otherwise. The only minor criticism of his magnificent, definitive two-volume Presley biography, Last Train To Memphis (1994) and Carless Love (1999), was that he was too easy on Parker. In this third book – a coda if you like – Guralnick goes out of his way to fully redeem Parker’s reputation, painting a portrait that is the complete opposite of his (un)popular image, an avuncular, wise and witty man who was kind to animals, stood by his friends, always kept his word and was scrupulously honest. Indeed, so robust is the author’s defence of Parker, so persuasive his tone, that I’m inclined to believe him. 

        The story is told in two parts. The first, subtitled How Much Does It Cost If It’s Free? – the proposed title for a book Parker intended to write but never did – is a 300+ page biography that avoids focusing on Presley and instead offers fascinating details on aspects of Parker’s life hitherto unexplored, many of them heart-warming. The second, occupying the final 250 pages, tells his story through a selection from the “tens of thousands” of letters he wrote (and a handful he received); to Elvis and his family, business associates, friends and foes, the earliest eulogising Elvis before he managed him, the majority pushing his point of view with regard to Elvis’ career, many of them illustrating Parker’s quirky sense of the absurd. Some of these letters are alluded to in the biographical section of the book. 

Parker’s upbringing in his native Breda in Holland had been explored before but never in such detail, and the same goes for his early life in the US as a “carney”, a general labourer on travelling fairgrounds and circuses where he was always willing to turn his hand to any task, no matter how unpleasant, and learnt show business from the ground up. He was particularly adept at working as an “advance man”, arriving a week or two in a town before the carnival, setting up deals with local businesses and making absolutely sure its entire population was aware of the coming attraction, thus maximising profits, a skill he maintained with Elvis. I found these pre-Elvis chapters absorbing – there was a likeable streak of eccentricity in Parker’s character, a restlessness, a need to make up his own rules as he went along and not to accept the status quo. Above all, he got things done.

Introduced to the music world through a fairly brief relationship with crooner Gene Austin, he quickly became known as a mover and shaker, moving on to manage Eddy Arnold and, later, Hank Snow. Elvis – a “promising new singer” – was drawn to his attention early in 1955 and after watching him on the Louisiana Hayride Colonel booked him onto a Snow tour that opened in Roswell, New Mexico, on February 14. He stole the show, just as he did on two tours of Florida that followed. The reaction from teenage girls was explosive, and when Mae Boren Axton, a former school teacher (and co-author of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’) who was working for Parker, spotted a former student in the audience, she inquired what was it about Elvis that she liked so much. “Awww Miz Axton,” she replied, “he’s just one great big beautiful hunk of forbidden fruit.” 

Parker moved swiftly. By the end of the year, flying by the seat of his pants, he had edged out Presley’s manager, won over Elvis’ sceptical parents, negotiated a release from Sun Records and transfer to RCA, overseen more chaotic concerts, arranged more TV appearances and set the wheels in motion for Elvis’ first movie which turned out to be Love Me Tender. He worked 16 hours a day, every day, and Elvis sure appreciated it: “You are the best and most wonderful person I could ever hope to work with,” wrote Elvis in a letter addressed to Parker on November 21, 1956. “I will stick with you thru thick and thin… I love you like a father.”

Which pretty much sums up the relationship from then on, though Guralnick is at pains to point out that, creatively, Elvis was in charge, while when it came to business Parker ruled the roost. In amongst what follows are details of complex royalty and advance deals with RCA and various film companies in which Parker, forever astute, invariably comes out on top. He never forces Elvis into doing anything he doesn’t want to do – thus contradicting the widely held belief that Parker stifled Elvis’ artistic ambitions, and reveals how the spendthrift in Elvis was most often to blame for placing earnings before art. 

        Furthermore, according to Guralnick, Parker did not interfere with the production of Elvis’s Comeback Special in 1968 (though he hated the word ‘comeback’, insisting Elvis never went away), the reason why Elvis never toured outside of the US was not Parker’s lack of a US passport but the customs risk to whoever was assigned to carry his drugs, and the impetus behind the notorious sell-out of his back catalogue to RCA in 1973 came from Elvis and his father, not Parker. And the 50/50 income split applied only to joint ventures agreed upon late in Elvis’ career. 

The story gets darker towards the end as Elvis’ weight and health problems interfere with Parker’s innate sense of responsibility towards the paying public. The hopelessness of the situation, the breakdown of the marriage if you like, may have led Parker to become addicted to gambling, squandering his fortune on Vegas roulette wheels, an inexplicable reversal of type for a serial winner. He’s stoic when Elvis dies and bitter when the Estate seeks to free itself from his clutches. Towards the end he’s on speaking terms with its CEO and in the end even Priscilla comes around to appreciating all that he did for her late husband. By this time, too, he and Guralnick have become friends, insofar as Parker could ever befriend a journalist. 

It’s not easy to come to terms with the idea that Colonel Tom Parker was a saint but Elvis And The Colonel succeeds. The book is illustrated throughout with photos, many I’d not seen before, and beautifully written, as you would expect from Peter Guralnick.