The Colonel And The King - Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, And The Partnership That Rocked The World

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The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership that Rocked the World

From the award-winning biographer of Elvis Presley, The Colonel and the King is a groundbreaking dual portrait of the relationship between the iconic artist and his legendary manager, Colonel Tom Parker, drawing on a wealth of Parker's never-before-seen correspondence to reveal that this oft-reviled figure was in fact a confidant, friend, and architect of his client's success.
 
In early 1955, Colonel Tom Parker—the manager of the number-one country musician of the day—heard that an unknown teenager from Memphis had just drawn a crowd of more than 800 people to a Texas schoolhouse, and headed south to investigate. Within days, Parker was sending out telegrams and letters to promoters and booking agents: “We have a new boy that is absolutely going to be one of the biggest things in the business in a very short time. His name is ELVIS PRESLEY.” Later that year, after signing with RCA, the young man sent a telegram of his own: “Dear Colonel, Words can never tell you how my folks and I appreciate what you did for me.... I love you like a father.”
 
The close personal bond between Elvis and the Colonel proved impossible for outside observers to understand—not during their lifetimes, and not in the decades since. It was a long-standing, deeply committed relationship, founded on mutual admiration and support. As the Colonel wrote to Elvis in July 1973, several years before the star’s tragic death: “Without a doubt you are by far the greatest artist I have ever known, and can be even greater if you just believe in yourself half as much as I believe in you.” From the outset, the Colonel defended Elvis fiercely and indefatigably against RCA executives, Elvis’ own booking agents, and movie moguls. But in their final years together, the story grew darker, and the relationship strained, as the Colonel found himself unable to protect Elvis from himself—or to control growing problems of his own.
 
Featuring troves of never-before-seen correspondence from the Colonel’s own archives, revelatory both for their insights and—particularly with respect to Elvis—their emotional depth, The Colonel and the King provides a unique perspective on not one but two American originals. A tale of the birth of the modern-day superstar (an invention almost entirely of Parker’s making) by the most acclaimed music writer of his generation, it presents these two misunderstood icons as they’ve never been seen before: with all of their brilliance, humor, and flaws on full display.


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It’s fair to say that the curiosity of more than a few people was piqued by Tom Hanks’ portrayal of Elvis Presley’s career-long manager, Colonel Tom Parker, in the Austin Butler-starring biopic “Elvis.” He’s become the archetype for the svengali music manager, although he was neither a colonel nor named Parker but was actually a Dutch immigrant named Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, a shrewd businessman who learned his craft by spending years traveling with circuses. Not least among his skills was in creating illusions, and he left behind countless mysteries and unanswered questions after his death in 1997.

If there’s one writer uniquely poised to unpack those mysteries and questions, it’s Grammy-winning music writer Peter Guralnick, whose biographies of Presley, “Last Train to Memphis” and “Careless Love,” not only add up to more than 1,300 pages but are universally regarded as the definitive biographies of the King. Obviously, the Colonel figures heavily in those books — Guralnick met him on multiple occasions — and the writer’s forthcoming history of that relationship, “The Colonel and the King,” is due in August.

 As this exclusive reveal of the cover shows, amid the thousands of photos of Presley and Parker together, this one seems to say it all: The Colonel almost literally getting in the young Presley’s face, presumably telling him exactly what to do. But as Guralnick shows, there was a lot more to the story. The synopsis says, the book is “a groundbreaking dual portrait of the relationship between the iconic artist and his legendary manager, Colonel Tom Parker, drawing on a wealth of Parker’s never-before-seen correspondence to reveal that this oft-reviled figure was in fact a confidant, friend, and architect of his client’s success.”

Within days of first hearing in early 1955 that an unknown teenager had drawn an audience of 800 people to a Texas schoolhouse, Parker had tracked down Presley and was already hyping his career, sending telegrams and letters to promoters and booking agents: “We have a new boy that is absolutely going to be one of the biggest things in the business in a very short time. His name is ELVIS PRESLEY.”

Much has been said in the decades since Presley’s death about how Parker, without whom the singer’s career would have been infinitely different, ultimately cast a negative influence, convincing him to cash in on his fame (which the Colonel earned half) with a series of dreadful movies and uninspired recordings, allegedly plying him with drugs and other tactics to maintain control.

 How much of it is true? This book is likely to provide more answers than any previous investigation, providing “troves of never-before-seen correspondence from the Colonel’s own archives, revelatory both for their insights and — particularly with respect to Elvis — their emotional depth,” and “presents these two misunderstood icons as they’ve never been seen before: with all of their brilliance, humor, and flaws on full display.”

“The Colonel and the King” is out Aug. 5 on Little, Brown.


 


variety.com/2025/music/news/tcolonel-and...-presley-1236269394/