Protégé recounts life and business of Elvis’ villainized manager
DeMatt Harkins
“Elvis and the Colonel: An Insider’s Look at the Most Legendary Partnership in Show Business” by Greg McDonald and Marshall Terrill (St. Martin’s Press)
A commonly held belief suggests manager Colonel Tom Parker bullied, exploited and cheated his client, Elvis Presley. However, in “Elvis and the Colonel: An Insider’s Look at the Most Legendary Partnership in Show Business,” Greg McDonald and Marshall Terrill aim to dismiss this characterization as a convenient myth.
Their assertion is based on McDonald witnessing the famed collaboration firsthand for decades. He sat next to Parker as he called to wish President Johnson a happy birthday and was the first to receive a call from the Colonel’s wife when he passed away in 1997. It is from this unique perspective that McDonald tells the story of Colonel Tom Parker.
McDonald spent his childhood in agricultural central California, but he would adopt a nomadic lifestyle with his widower father to follow seasonal work — among them, a stint with Oral Roberts’ traveling tent revival. With the advent of air conditioning maintenance, Palm Springs, California, became a regular summer stop for the McDonalds. One of Greg’s adolescent jobs entailed changing filters in the HVAC units of movie industry second homes. A ring of keys provided full access to the typically unoccupied houses.
One morning, as McDonald went to Jack L. Warner’s presumably empty place, he heard someone coming in from the pool. This person happened to be Elvis Presley, who was borrowing the house before buying his own. They struck up a conversation and bonded over backgrounds in the Assembly of God denomination. This chance meeting would prove to be serendipitous, especially once Parker and McDonald met. After proving to be a reliable jackof-all-trades and family friend, McDonald eventually earned an invitation from Parker and his wife to live with them in order to attend school.
Errands for the Colonel and the King blossomed into a full-blown apprenticeship. McDonald’s first foray into the business involved booking Sonny and Cher for his high school’s homecoming dance within budget. As an adult, he would go on to manage Ricky Nelson for 17 years, serve as president of Transcontinental Records (NSYNC, Backstreet Boys) and produce multiple television series.
However, Parker taking McDonald under his wing proved not an isolated act of generosity. He was returning the favor. Born Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk in Holland, the Colonel experienced a hard but resourceful childhood. As one of nine children, he fended for himself from the onset. Parker took odd jobs at a circus, worked on a farm, and snuck onto a cargo ship headed for New Jersey. As a young teen he learned English from newspapers and strangers while covertly riding boxcars to California and back.
In West Virginia, The Colonel landed a job with a traveling carnival and was formally adopted by the family that owned the carnival. For court records, he chose the name of his favorite cousin, the anglicized version of his own name, and the surname of his new parents: Thomas Andrew Parker. Nonetheless, his wanderlust returned, and he began working on shipping vessels sailing around the globe.
As luck would have it, Parker was working on a freighter full of smuggling rum when it was seized in the Gulf of Mexico. Authorities arrested the captain but let the whole crew free in Mobile. Seizing the opportunity, Parker snuck onto a train headed east and hopped off in Atlanta.