{"id":130310,"date":"2025-08-08T23:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T23:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/130310\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T23:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T23:48:08","slug":"colonel-tom-parker-wasnt-the-villain-of-elvis-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/130310\/","title":{"rendered":"Colonel Tom Parker wasn\u2019t the villain of Elvis\u2019 story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Guralnick\u2019s \u201cThe Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership That Rocked the World<\/a>\u201d is this year\u2019s must-read rock \u2018n\u2019 roll biography<\/a>, taking a close look at how Parker, a towering figure and pioneering businessman, piloted Elvis<\/a>\u2019 career from journeyman performer into superstardom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Colonel and the King\u201d offers a powerful addendum to Guralnick\u2019s \u201cLast Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley\u201d (1994) and \u201cCareless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley\u201d\u00a0(1999), the author\u2019s acclaimed two-part biography. Working at the behest of Loanne Miller, the Colonel\u2019s widow, Guralnick had originally planned to publish a selection of the manager\u2019s letters. But as he got to know Miller, Guralnick began to discover a very different version of the Colonel, a multifaceted persona comprised of layers as opposed to mere caricature.<\/p>\n

As Guralnick explained to me during a recent conversation, \u201cI originally pictured him as this lovable rogue, this rapscallion.\u201d But the Colonel who came to light through Guralnick\u2019s latter-day research defied such easy characterization. Born in 1909 in the Netherlands as Andreas Cornelis van\u00a0Kuijk, the Colonel cut his teeth as a junior promoter while working in his uncle\u2019s traveling circus, a fitting milieu for the man who would later take rock music\u2019s Big Top by storm.<\/p>\n

After illegally emigrating to the United States as a shipboard stowaway, the Colonel adopted the name Tom Parker, eventually finding work as a promoter with a traveling carnival. While much of his background was a sham \u2014 even his beloved designation as Colonel was honorary rather than being earned \u2014 he made his name as a promoter by launching the careers of Hank Snow and Eddy Arnold. When he finally laid eyes on Elvis at the Louisiana Hayride<\/a> in the summer of 1955, the Colonel was ready for the big time.<\/p>\n

In his revised portrait of the Colonel, Guralnick has developed, in his own words, \u201ca very different, much deeper, and more nuanced\u201d version of Parker. While popular sentiment has defined the Colonel as a conman who manipulated and exploited Presley, Guralnick has discovered another personality at the heart of the King\u2019s success. Rather than taking advantage of his client, the Colonel bowed to the King\u2019s will, supporting his artistic interests and siding with him when it came to staging his late-1960s comeback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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As Guralnick\u2019s biography demonstrates, the Colonel and the King\u2019s ambitions were fully aligned. In one of the book\u2019s most powerful sections, Guralnick traces the fallout from Elvis\u2019 1968 Las Vegas comeback performances. For his part, the King emerged from the experience with a raging prescription drug addiction that would plague the remainder of his short life. Meanwhile, the Colonel developed a rampant gambling addiction that saw him losing princely sums at the gaming tables. By the time of Elvis\u2019 death in 1977, both men were spiraling out of control.<\/p>\n

As Guralnick demonstrates, for all of his personal failings, the Colonel was devoted to Presley, placing the musician\u2019s ambitions well above his own across the life of their relationship. Indeed, to the author\u2019s great credit, \u201cThe Colonel and the King\u201d finds new levels of poignancy in their extraordinary, genre-eclipsing association.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about Elvis Presley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peter Guralnick\u2019s \u201cThe Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership That Rocked the World\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":130311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,975,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-130310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}