The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story Of Colonel Tom Parker And Elvis Presley - Couverture souple

Nash, Alanna

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 155652546X ISBN 13 : 9781556525469

Editeur : Chicago Review Press, 2004

Synopsis

A meticulously researched biography, this story profiles "The Colonel" Tom Parker, the man behind Elvis Presley, in a compelling new light. Filled with startling material found in never-before-seen documents, including Parker's army records, psychiatric evaluations, and police reports, this investigation challenges even the most familiar aspects of the Presley saga. Parker, who handled every aspect of Elvis Presley's career and much in his personal life, is revealed as an overwhelmingly selfish man who sought to hide his own illegal alien status rather than further the art of a great musician. Astonishing and impeccably written, this entertaining book proves that the only figure in American popular culture as fascinating as Elvis Presley is Colonel Tom Parker, the man who shaped Elvis, and in turn shaped music history.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

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.

Biographie de l'auteur

Alanna Nash is also responsible for the best Elvis book to date (Uncut magazine): Elvis Presley: Revelations from the Memphis Mafia.  A feature writer for the New York Times, she lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Chicago Review Press
• Date d'édition: 2004
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 155652546X
• ISBN 13: 9781556525469
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 416
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible