A New Book Casts Elvis and the Colonel in a New Light

The story of Elvis Presley is the history of America in the last half of the 20th century, so improbable explosively that we can still understand a quarter of the path through the 21st. You can award Elvis blame or credit for opening the ears of white listeners to black American music, but there is no doubt that he has advanced the doors. As a merchants, we are who we are because of this – mixed, spoiled, sometimes in the throat of the other – but essentially in search of the agreement by the salvation of an agreement. The history of the rise and the fall of Elvis has not faded with public imagination, proving to be irresistible for filmmakers like Sofia Coppola and Baz Luhrmann. If anything, at a time when algorithms seek to determine our taste – and, more and more, AI seeks to feed this taste – Elvis’ gifts and its fall remind us that human bankruptcy, with all the suffering and joy that it gets dripped, is the only place from which the true grandeur can emerge.

However, history also tells us that Elvis has had help. Even Elvis would not have been Elvis without Colonel Tom Parker, an engine and Shaker born in the Dutch who felt a lightning when he saw this legend for the first time charismatic-but green that cynicism is cooler than serious enthusiasm, made us believe that Parker was watching Elvis, he only saw signs of dollar. But there are more to the two men than that, and there is probably only one living person who could disentangle the complicated truth: with Colonel and King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and the partnership that rocked the world, The scientist veteran of pop Peter Guralnick music, the most ardent and most compassionate biographer of Elvis, argues that Parker was hardly the monster he was generally done. Of course, Parker liked to make money, probably even more than he loved real money. But he also loved Elvis, with a mixed love that was opportunistic and tender to an equal measure. Their ambitions were messed up; The two were almost mystically persuasive and stubborn too. They got up together and, although the colonel survived the man whom he always called “my boy” within 20 years, they collapsed together. Guralnick’s vision on Parker is both clear and sympathetic, but above all, it is persuasive. You leave by thinking differently of a person you think you had already nailed. And isn’t that what a biographer is?

Guralnick met and started an almost fragmentary with Parker in 1988. He was committed in his magnificent and final biography Elvis in two volumes, Last train for Memphis (1994) and Carefree love: the outlet of Elvis Presley (1998), and the two men corresponded sporadically until 1996 (Parker died in 1997). After the publication of Last train for Memphis, Guralnick was invited by Jack Soden, the CEO of Elvis Presley Enterprises, to examine the part of the Elvis Presley archives containing all aspects of the commercial transactions of Parker, linked to Elvis and others, from gas revenues to legal documents to contracts. Guralnick also had access to the letters of Parker, a draft of playful, enthusiastic, energetic, fanciful missives which retrace the contours of the rise of Parker, in tandem with that of Elvis. The first section of Guralnick’s book tells the story of Parker’s life, with a good dose of skepticism on all that Parker can – or may not have – done. The second section contains the letters, with notes of annexed Guralnick. You could call the second half of the repetitive book – it repeats part of the tradition covered in the first. But it is probably more precise to call it a strengthening. Seeing the way of doing Parker affairs, stated in his own words, strengthens all that Guralnick has already told us about him. All this is part of the power of the book, which dissipates certain myths and revels in the glory of others. This is the only way to honor the spirit of the brilliant and elusive Parker.

If you saw the passionate and extremely entertaining film of Luhrmann Elvis,, You can feel that you know a part of the story of Parker, but not necessarily the truth. The first section of Guralnick’s book begins by explaining, in detail, how Andreas Cornelis Van Kuijk, born in Breda, Holland, in 1909, reinvented himself as Colonel Tom Parker – not really a colonel, but an extraordinary mytoral. Young Andreas was not integrating into school. His father, a delivery man, did not understand him and apparently mistreated him. Andreas found ways to escape, first just emotionally. As a child, he loved the circus so much that he gathered one of his family, where he interpreted acrobatics and enlisted a small collection of sparrows and trained beetles, as well as a rabbit, like additional attractions. When he tried to make his father’s work traits part of the act, his father beat him. However, Andreas seemed to have the gift of taking care of bad situations, winning the confidence and friendship of people almost wherever he went. In the spring of 1926, he came to America as a point, to be taken and returned. He ranked a second time, successfully, a few months later, on a ship to Hoboken. Barely 17 years old, he not only started a new American life, but has launched a large-scale self-relevance.

Parker enlisted in the American army in 1929, recognizing his Dutch birth, and was parked in Hawaii, a place he would love to love. But the army’s ordered life was not for him. He took off and became director of the carnival, learning the company from bottom to top, ending up launching into the management of artists. He passed the first quarries of the Crooner Country Eddy Arnold and the singer-songwriter of the singer-interpreter of Canadian origin Hank Snow. But when he saw a newcomer to the Louisiana Hayride in 1955, he was a swelling. Guralnick clearly writes: “It was amazing the speed at which it happened.” If Parker had already started to distance himself from his Dutch past, in a flash, he had practically erased it. He mixed his other commitments. The young Elvis Presley has become his past, his present and his future.

From there, Guralnick builds a convincing affair that as a clever dissatisfaction as Parker, he never acted in a way that failed to serve the best interest of his client. The transactions he concluded have been mutually beneficial; The more Elvis there, more he do. But Parker assiduously avoided getting involved in Elvis’ artistic or personal choices. He only intervened when he saw his client adopt a self -destructive behavior: after Elvis made a coarse joke on stage during a first show, Parker dismissed him to reprimand him, and Elvis, a good boy of heart, listened. In recent years, he has tried to intercede through the father of Presley, Vernon, to stem the scandalous expenses of Elvis, knowing that his client could not reimburse the money he poured – or pour, in particular to the many hangers which had started to attach like Bernacles.

The colonel – although the article “Le” is often annexed to his title, Parker had adopted “colonel” alone as his official name – Push Elvis so strong, in particular by signing it for a series of demanding but lucrative Las Vegas shows, that he led his client, his friend and his substitution son in the consumption of self -destructive drugs? One may wonder how much this parker could control. Be that as it may, Guralnick argues that the decline of Elvis has made parker an almost unbearable amount of pain. By writing this book, Guralnick won the confidence of the second wife and widow of Parker, Loanne, who fills certain heartbreaking details. After a disastrous show at Hartford, in Connecticut, in 1976, Parker had tried and had not spoken in Elvis behind the scenes; The star was “too groggy to answer,” he told Loanne immediately afterwards. “What can I do?” He said to her. “The real Elvis … is clear and intelligent, but the person I saw tonight did not even recognize me. No one knows how much I miss the real Elvis. If only I knew how to bring it back. I miss my friend so much. ” Guralnick continues to tell what Loanne said to him: “And then he started to cry – he seemed unable to control himself, while tears sank.”

It was not Colonel’s daily style. He was elusive, charming, eccentric and cunning. He was also tireless. When he bought Elvis to the man who had discovered him, Sam Phillips of the Sun record company, he led a good diamond deal. But if he hadn’t done it, the Elvis that we know – the only Elvis that we can imagine – would not have existed. And what kind of people would it be?

Parker had his own demons: he was a compulsive player, who endangered his close personal relationships. And although members of his family in Holland have tried to reconnect with him over the years, he has rejected their efforts – these people belonged to an old identity that he had long paid. But above all, he was fiercely faithful to his friends and colleagues. Although he started his relationship with Loanne before her first wife, Marie, died, he made sure that Marie was well taken care of through her long periods of illness. Under his flair for Flimflammery, there was a nucleus of integrity, even if, like all human beings, he vacillated here and there.