Tom Parker

b. Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk, 26 June 1909, Breda, the Netherlands, d. 21 January 1997, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Since his death, there still remains bitter division about Parker. Was he Sam Katzman’s ‘biggest con artist in the world’ or merely an unsophisticated fairground barker sucked into a vortex of circumstances he was unwilling to resist? Arguments supporting either view might be construed from the icy ruthlessness formidable to those accustomed to Tin Pan Alley’s glib bonhomie, and his blunt stance in negotiation on behalf of Elvis Presley, his most famous managerial client. ‘Don’t criticize what you can’t understand, son’, Presley said in the Colonel’s defence. ‘You never walked in that man’s shoes.’ Parker was an illegal immigrant from the Netherlands, without passport or papers, who settled into carnival life in the 20s working the rural highways of America. Over the next decade, he evolved into a cigar-chewing huckster of spectacular amorality - exemplified by his practice of snaring sparrows, painting them yellow and selling them as canaries. With duties that included palm reading, he served the Royal American, the Union’s top travelling show, for a while before a seemingly steady job as promoter for a charity organization in Tampa, Florida. Extremely potent fund raisers, he discovered, were shows headlined by a popular C&W artist - and so it was that Parker came to commit himself full-time to the genre by moving to Nashville, where he became Eddy Arnold’s personal manager. Once, when this vocalist was indisposed, an unruffled Parker allegedly offered a substitute attraction of two unhappy ‘dancing chickens’ who high-stepped around a cage to ease feet scorched by an electric hot plate hidden under their straw. After Arnold left him, the Colonel (an honorary title conferred by the Tennessee Militia in 1953) took on Hank Snow - and it was in a support spot on a Snow tour of the deep south that 19-year-old Presley was noticed by his future svengali. Via connections nurtured during proceedings concerning Arnold and Snow, Parker persuaded RCA Records to contract his new find. A few months later in March 1956, the boy committed himself formally to Parker for life - and beyond. From that month, ‘Elvis has required every minute of my time, and I think he would have suffered had I signed anyone else’. While facilitating Presley’s captivation of a global ‘youth market’, the Colonel’s instinct for the commercial and economic machinations of the record industry obliged RCA to accede to his every desire, such as the pressing of one million copies of every Elvis release, regardless of positioning research. Moreover, to the team fell an average of eight per cent of approved merchandise associated with Presley - and, when the time came for the King to act in films, producer Hal Wallis grew to ‘rather try and close a deal with the Devil’ than Parker. To publicize one Presley movie, Parker was not above hiring dwarfs to parade through Hollywood as ‘The Elvis Presley Midget Fan Club’. He was also behind the taming of Presley via the stressing of a cheerful diligence while on national service; the post-army chart potboilers; the overall projection of Presley as an ‘all-round entertainer’, and, arguably, the moulding of his reactionary leanings. Nor did Parker object to Katzman dashing off a Presley vehicle in less than a month, each one a quasi-musical of cheery unreality usually more vacuous and streamlined than the one before. This was almost all fans saw of the myth-shrouded Elvis until his impatient return to the stage in 1968, whether the Colonel liked it or not. After Presley’s death in 1977, there were rumours that Parker would be devoting himself professionally to Rick Nelson, but only Presley’s posthumous career interrupted a virtual retirement in Palm Springs. Parker was a consummate showman and media manipulator, who clearly enjoyed turning down million of dollars whenever his charge was asked to headline some grand concert package. His handling of merchandising rights during the early part of Presley’s career has been compared favourably to the business dealings of later star makers such as Brian Epstein. The obsession with commerce and disavowal of artistry dominated the Colonel’s thinking, however, which mainly explains the singer’s appalling film-related output during the early/mid-60s. After Presley’s death, Parker’s business empire was threatened by the star’s estate - in the form of Elvis’ ex-wife Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie Presley. Parker fought tenaciously to protect his empire before settling in June 1983. Thereafter, he surrendered claims to all future Elvis income, but received two million dollars from RCA, and 50 per cent of all Presley’s record royalties prior to September 1982. In January 1993, Parker made one of his rare public appearances, signing autographs to promote the newly issued Elvis Presley postage stamp. He spent the last years of his life in his beloved Las Vegas, where he could feed his gambling addiction.