The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley

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Almost the only indisputable fact about Colonel Tom Parker is that he was the manager of the greatest performer in popular music: Elvis Presley. His real name wasn’t Tom Parker – indeed, he wasn’t an American at all, but a Dutch immigrant called Andreas van Kujik. And he certainly wasn’t a proper military colonel: he purchased his title from a man in Louisiana. But while the Colonel has long been acknowledged as something of a charlatan, this book is the first to reveal the extraordinary extent of the secrets he concealed, and the consequences for the career, and ultimately the life, of the star he managed.
As Alanna Nash’ prodigious research has discovered, the Colonel left Holland most probably because, at the age of twenty, he bludgeoned a woman to death. Entering the US illegally, he then enlisted in the army as ‘Tom Parker’. But, with supreme irony for someone later styling himself as Colonel, Parker’s military career ended in desertion, and discharge after a psychiatrist had certified him as a psychopath. He then became a fairground barker, working sideshows with a zeal for small-scale huckstering and the casual scam that never left him. And by the height of Elvis’s success, Parker had become a pathological gambler who, at the same time as he was taking, amazingly, a full 50% of Presley’s earnings, frittered away all his wealth in the casinos of Las Vegas.
As Nash shows, therefore, the often baffling trajectory of Elvis Presley’s career makes perfect sense once the secret imperatives of the Colonel’s life are known. Parker never booked Presley for a tour of Europe because of the dark secret that ensured he himself could never return there. Even at his most famous, Elvis was still being booked to play out-of-the-way towns in North Carolina – because the former fairground barker (who shamelessly negotiated as such even with top record company and film executives) knew them from his days on the circus circuit. And Elvis was trapped playing years of arduous seasons in Las Vegas – two shows nightly, seven days a week, until boredom and despair brought on the excessive drug use that killed him – because for Parker he was “an open chit” whose huge earnings prevented his manager’s losses at the gambling tables being called in.
Alanna Nash knew Parker towards the end of his life, and has now uncovered the whole story, improbable, shocking, and never less than compelling, of how this larger-than-life man made, and then unmade, popular music’s first and greatest superstar.

Alanna Nash's biography of Colonel Tom Parker, The Colonel, uncovers a life story even more complicated, dark and entertaining than that of the promoter's greatest talent, Elvis Presley. Nash had unique access to the Colonel and many of those closely connected to him in assembling the facts that underlie her narrative, and the book reads like a mystery as it probes the origins of Parker's power.

Ultimately, Parker was protecting himself in his manipulation of Elvis, Nash argues. Though her evidence is not conclusive, she suggests that Parker (born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk) feared deportation his entire life, but, more importantly, he may have fled his native Holland in 1929 after committing murder. In America Andreas transformed himself into Tom Parker while immersing himself in the worlds of the carnival and circus. This work led him to the promotion of musical acts and, eventually, the creation of his greatest mass entertainment and merchandising bonanza, Elvis. Elvis would become a shield against the demons of Parker's past and fuel his insatiable appetites.

Parker's life remains shrouded to a large degree, despite Nash's efforts. The narrative is at times sensational in its attempts to dramatise the malign aspects of Parker's character, and those coming for a definitive answer as to the cause of Elvis's self-destruction will find new light, but no final answers. Yet Nash's biography will likely remain the best picture we will ever have of the mysterious Tom Parker, and fans of Elvis will appreciate this insider's view into their hero's rise and fall. --Patrick O'Kelley, Amazon.com

Almost the only indisputable fact about Colonel Tom Parker is that he was the manager of the greatest performer in popular music: Elvis Presley. His real name wasn’t Tom Parker – indeed, he wasn’t an American at all, but a Dutch immigrant called Andreas van Kujik. And he certainly wasn’t a proper military colonel: he purchased his title from a man in Louisiana. But while the Colonel has long been acknowledged as something of a charlatan, this book is the first to reveal the extraordinary extent of the secrets he concealed, and the consequences for the career, and ultimately the life, of the star he managed.
As Alanna Nash’ prodigious research has discovered, the Colonel left Holland most probably because, at the age of twenty, he bludgeoned a woman to death. Entering the US illegally, he then enlisted in the army as ‘Tom Parker’. But, with supreme irony for someone later styling himself as Colonel, Parker’s military career ended in desertion, and discharge after a psychiatrist had certified him as a psychopath. He then became a fairground barker, working sideshows with a zeal for small-scale huckstering and the casual scam that never left him. And by the height of Elvis’s success, Parker had become a pathological gambler who, at the same time as he was taking, amazingly, a full 50% of Presley’s earnings, frittered away all his wealth in the casinos of Las Vegas.
As Nash shows, therefore, the often baffling trajectory of Elvis Presley’s career makes perfect sense once the secret imperatives of the Colonel’s life are known. Parker never booked Presley for a tour of Europe because of the dark secret that ensured he himself could never return there. Even at his most famous, Elvis was still being booked to play out-of-the-way towns in North Carolina – because the former fairground barker (who shamelessly negotiated as such even with top record company and film executives) knew them from his days on the circus circuit. And Elvis was trapped playing years of arduous seasons in Las Vegas – two shows nightly, seven days a week, until boredom and despair brought on the excessive drug use that killed him – because for Parker he was “an open chit” whose huge earnings prevented his manager’s losses at the gambling tables being called in.
Alanna Nash knew Parker towards the end of his life, and has now uncovered the whole story, improbable, shocking, and never less than compelling, of how this larger-than-life man made, and then unmade, popular music’s first and greatest superstar.

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