Review of 'The Colonel and The King': Elvis Biographer addresses Tom Parker

The popular perception of Colonel Tom Parker is that he chistered Elvis Presley with a lot of money, forced his participation in some really bad films of the 1960s and assured Presley's servitude to the tasks of the tasks of Presley to Las Vegas with an addiction to the game to coincide with the King's drug habit. But this is not the story that Peter Guralnick seeks to tell in his new book, “the colonel and the king: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and the association that shook the world.”

The book is long in the “Colonel”, a nickname of Parker affirmed as his first name after the governor of Louisiana gave him the honorary title in 1948, and short against the king, who, after all, has been subject to innumerable previous volumes. Some of the best were actually written by Guralnick, including “Last Train to Memphis” and “careless whispers.” Few writers know more about rock music 'n' roll and roots early, or have such passion for the subject. If you have not read Guralnick, you should make a point.

Does that mean you should read “the colonel and the king”? Only if it deeply seeks an exhaustive study of Elvis's manager, who, should be said, directed a fascinating life defined by self -mitology and intentional deception. Guralnick met Parker from 1988 until his death in 1997, and you have the feeling that the author saw his subject also as a friend. The book is not hagiography, because Guralnick investigates so much research and reports for each book that is unable to write a unilateral account of any subject. That said, “the colonel and the king” often reads like a parker apologia, or at least one concentrated effort to clarify some records.

For example, there is the often informed Renquence of Parker to let Elvis travel internationally near the end of his career, for the reason that Parker was not an American citizen and, therefore, did not have a passport. “The theme of very uninformed speculation,” Guralnick writes, suggesting other reasons. “How could Elvis go to Japan, with his strict drug laws?

Author Peter Guralnick is an expert passionate in rock music 'N' Roll and Roots.

(Mike Leahy)

Parker's history as a carnival worker is often used to make fun of him. How could a simple carny know about the music business or qualify it to manage the King of Rock 'N' Roll? But the most lively and revealing parts of “the colonel and the king” actually come before the colonel meets the king, while Guralnick paints an image of a tireless treints desperately for reinventing himself.

Parker Long said Thomas Andrew Parker was born in West Virginia. In fact, Andreas Cornelis Van Kuijk was born in Breda, Holland. When I was a child, he went through “dries.” His father was a man of free and retired soldier. When the young people fell with a family circus and taught their father's horses to make tricks, his father roared that the child “was not his son, which he would never be equivalent to anything and, after beating him to an inch of his life, announced that he would be forbidden to have anything to do with the holy.” When he was a teenager, Parker contrasted the United States from smuggling, was sent back and then made the walk again, this time successfully.

He developed the habit of being adopted not officially by substitute families and then disappearing without a trace, a pattern that continued when he joined the US Army. UU., He aspired and finally received a high honorable high in 1933, with a disability certificate that cited reasons of “psychogenic psychic depression” (Parker said he was discharged from having a bad leg). Finally he ended in Florida, where he became a carny of the businesses throughout the Jack-of all and developed a strong instinct for advertising and early promotion.

Elvis was not Parker's first musical client; First he developed his skills with the superstar premium of Pop Gene Austin, then the country's star Hank Snow. But when Parker witnessed Elvis and Elvis Mania for the first time in Louisiana Hayride in 1955, he was determined to handle it. Then it was to sell it, cunningly and fiercely, to RCA, 20th Century Fox and who would help build the powerful Elvis industry.

“The colonel and the king” is a piece of a book, which weighs 624 pages. That includes around 250 pages of letters noted and from the colonel, which could have been better used, in a truncated way, extended by the entire narrative itself. You also have the feeling that perhaps the author was quite quick to take Parker for his word, considering that Parker himself once joked that he was writing an autobiography called “The Benevolent with Man.”

One can admire the thoroughness and meaning of Guralnick's mission, while wanting more strict results. I found the arch of the story of Parker quite intriguing, even when I got a little tired.

Vognar is an independent culture writer.