Colonel Tom Parker is the most infamous manager in rock history. Widely regarded as a profligate conman who derailed the career of his legendary client Elvis Presley, his name is a byword for crass showbiz exploitation and mercenary greed.
He is, and always will be, the arch-villain of the Elvis saga. Right? Well, no. Not really. The truth of the matter is far more complicated than that, as pre-eminent music critic/historian Peter Guralnick argues in his painstakingly researched and undeniably persuasive biography The Colonel and The King.
Guralnick is a leading authority on all things Elvis. His books Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love are definitive accounts of the King’s life. So when he begs to differ with received wisdom, I’m inclined to listen. And I certainly came away from this weighty tome – almost half of which is devoted to copious letters written by Parker over the years – with a more nuanced view of its slippery subject.
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One of Guralnick’s great gifts as a biographer is his ability to strip away layers of myth to reveal the three-dimensional human being underneath. That’s a tall order when it comes to an inveterate self-mythologiser like Parker, but Guralnick more or less succeeds against the odds.
Born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk in the Netherlands in 1909, Parker – his ‘Colonel’ title was honorific – stowed away to the United States in the late 1920s and forged a colourful new life as a travelling carnival promoter and talent manager.