Colonel Tom Parker and Loanne Parker
Parker's involvement in the music industry began as a music promoter
in the late 1940s, working with such country music stars as Minnie
Pearl,
Hank Snow, and
Eddy Arnold, as
well as film star Tom Mix. During this time he received the honorary
title of "Colonel" in 1948 from Jimmie Davis, the governor of
Louisiana. His involvement with Elvis Presley began when he booked
Presley as the opening act for Canadian singer Snow.
On August 18, 1955, Parker became Presley's
manager officially, by contract, and in November he convinced RCA Records to buy
Presley out from Sun Records for $35,000, big money for its time. With his first
RCA single, Heartbreak Hotel, Presley graduated from rumor to bona-fide
recording star.
It's debatable whether Presley would have
become the superstar he became without Parker, and it's likewise debatable to
what extent Parker's management of the King of Rock and Roll was Svengali-like.
Parker held the reins of Presley's singing and acting career for the rest of
Presley's life and was said to be instrumental in virtually every business
decision that Presley made—including his decision to cut back on recording and
stop touring after returning from his stint in the United States Army in 1960,
in favour of a film career (from 1960 to 1967-68) that was lucrative in terms of
his bank account but, to many critics and no few fans, bankrupting in terms of
Presley's music quality.
It took the energetic
1968 television special, Elvis, and a subsequent series of stellar recording
sessions in Memphis, Tennessee, to restore Elvis Presley's musical reputation.
To his credit, though it's open as to whether he was allowed much choice in the
matter, Parker allowed both to happen with little impediment.
Surviving Elvis
After Presley's death in 1977, Parker became
embroiled in legal disputes with the singer's estate and with his daughter,
Lisa Marie Presley. Parker eventually
agreed in 1983 to sell his masters of some of Presley's major recordings to RCA
for $2 million and to drop any claims he had to Presley's estate. Parker moved
to Las Vegas in 1980 and worked as an "entertainment adviser" for Hilton Hotels,
but the disputes with the Presley estate didn't alienate him entirely from his
most legendary client. Parker appeared at posthumous events honoring Presley,
such as the ceremonies marking the tenth anniversary of the singer's death and
the 1993 issuing of the
United States Postal Service stamp
honoring the King of Rock and Roll.
Presley's enduring legend and the continuing,
often obsessive interest in him, provoked Parker in 1993 to say on the record,
"I don't think I exploited Elvis as much as he's being exploited today."
Personal life
As Presley's fame grew, people became
interested in Parker as well. For a while he lied about his early years,
claiming to have been born in Huntington, West Virginia and that he had run away
at an early age to join a circus run by an uncle. The truth about his early
years was revealed when his family in the Netherlands recognized him in
photographs of him standing next to Elvis; it was confirmed when Parker tried to
avert a lawsuit in 1982 by asserting that he was a Netherlands citizen.
He was actually born in Breda, Netherlands.
Parker fled his native land at about the age of 18, joined the United States
Army, then changed his name to Tom Parker and became part of the circus world
sometime after leaving the Army. He also worked as a dogcatcher and a pet
cemetery proprietor in Tampa, Florida, in the 1940s.
Elvis fans have speculated that the reason he
never performed abroad, which would likely have been a highly lucrative
proposition, may have been that Parker was worried that as a non-citizen, he
would not be readmitted to the United States. However, this argument neglects
the fact that Presley toured Canada in 1957 with concerts in Toronto, Ottawa,
and Vancouver. It also neglects that as a U.S. Army veteran, Tom Parker would
have been entitled to United States citizenship, although whether or not he
claimed it is unknown.
Parker (Kuijk) died on January 21, 1997, in Las Vegas, Nevada, at
the age of 87.
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