TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The history of rock and roll - really, the history of most 20th century popular music - is filled with stories of unscrupulous managers. One of the men frequently near the top of the list is Elvis Presley's longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. He had worked in carnivals and was considered to have a slippery relationship with the truth and a flair for exaggeration but a talent for making a profitable business deal. Parker's name and his background were fictions. He was really from Holland, not the U.S. He stowed away on a ship to the U.S. and never became a citizen of America. He served in the military under his false identity but was never a colonel in the U.S. Army. Colonel was an honorific bestowed on him by the governor of Louisiana.
During that time, my guest Peter Guralnick was writing his definitive two-volume biography of Elvis Presley. He got to see Parker's archive, which included his letters, thousands of them. He knew the colonel and his letters were worthy of a book, and now Guralnick has written it. It's called "The Colonel And The King." The first half of the book is a biography of the colonel. The second is a collection of his letters written to Elvis, executives at his record label, RCA, and other people in the orbit of Elvis' music and movies. Guralnick says researching this book made him question many of his own preconceptions about Parker and led to plenty of surprises. Guralnick's other books include a biography of Sam Phillips whose Sun record label was the first to record Elvis.
Peter Guralnick, welcome back to FRESH AIR. So I want to hear what some of your preconceptions were about Colonel Tom Parker.
PETER GURALNICK: I think my biggest preconception - it wasn't a negative preconception. It was just the idea the colonel was a character. He was someone who could rise above any troubles that were sat in his way and who - you know, who simply was going to be unfazed. And in writing this book, from reading his letters, from speaking at length with Loanne - his widow, Loanne - from getting to know Colonel better overall by immersing myself in the material, I came to have a much deeper view. And I felt like in some ways - and I'm not trying to disown what I wrote before, but in some ways, I wouldn't write it like that now. He just was a much deeper character and his vulnerability, his sensitivity and his - and the openness of his feelings is something that I could never have imagined and that I tried to describe and elucidate in this new book.
GROSS: I think the colonel is often blamed for Elvis' most shlocky recordings and for, like, the big-white-suit Elvis in which he became a parody of himself. But you write about how Colonel Tom Parker always insisted that it was Elvis who would choose the music that he recorded, that the record company couldn't dictate that. It was different in the movies 'cause that was a whole different deal than his RCA recording contract, and, you know, it was understood that the movie director was handling that. But how true did he stay to that about letting Elvis choose his own music?
GURALNICK: Colonel had absolutely nothing to do with the music. He did not have one single thing other than to defend Elvis' ability to make the music he wanted to make. And Colonel defends Elvis against the record company, against everybody's attempt to homogenize his music, his presentation. He defended him against the movie companies. He defended him against the talent agency, William Morris. And when somebody came to him and said, we're very concerned about the way that Elvis is presenting himself - at RCA, Bill Bullock and Steve Sholes came to him March of '56, right after Elvis had begun there, and said, you're violating the agreement that we had. We thought we were all agreed we wanted to take Elvis into the mainstream. And Colonel, in essence, responded with nothing. He just said, my artist knows his business, and he will do what he will do. But basically, he had nothing whatsoever to do with music other than to defend Elvis' choices.
GROSS: Well, let's hear an example of him defending one of Elvis' choices. And this is right after he signed to RCA. I think it's, like, his first recording session when Elvis made "Heartbreak Hotel," which is really one of my favorite of Elvis' recordings. And what RCA wanted him to record were songs like "Wham Bam Hot Ziggety Zam (ph)," which sounds like a follow-up song to Perry Como's "Hot Diggity Dog," and "Shiver And Shake." I don't know what that would've been. But "Wham Bam Hot Ziggety Zam," that really could not have been a good song (laughter). And Elvis wanted to do "Heartbreak Hotel." How did the colonel defend Elvis against RCA?
GURALNICK: Well, first of all, Elvis brought the song into the studio. Mae Axton had written the song or co-written the song, gave it to Elvis at the DJ convention a couple of months before the session, a month and a half. And Elvis said, OK, I'm going to do it. And Steve Sholes, who was his A and R man, brought in the songs you mentioned and several others. But Elvis said, this is the song I'm going to do, and this is going to be my first single. When Steve Sholes, who supervised the session - he was a very respected A and R man, and he had done a good job for Eddie Arnold and for Hank Snow. But he and Elvis did not hit it off. Elvis insisted on what he wanted to do. He wanted to bring The Jordanaires into the session. Steve Sholes didn't get The Jordanaires. Elvis was furious or terribly upset.
Steve Sholes brought the results of the session, including "Heartbreak Hotel," back to New York to RCA, and everybody in the RCA home office said, this is terrible. Go back to Nashville. This is a disaster. Go back to Nashville and do the session again. Well, there were many reasons why he couldn't do that. So they put out "Heartbreak Hotel" as a single, the song that Elvis had brought to the session. They didn't do anything at first. There was no commitment to it. And there was a great deal of pressure on Colonel from Steve Sholes and his boss, Bill Bullock, to try to bring Elvis to heel, have him do the things that would make him into a more homogeneous kind of artist, somebody more middle of the road. And Colonel resolutely refused. And finally, the single "Heartbreak Hotel" picked up sales. It went to No. 1 on pop, country and maybe No. 2 R&B.
And then RCA was forced to put out an album, which again there had been terrible conflict about. In the end, Steve Sholes had to include, I think, half a dozen Sun sides, which hadn't been released on that first album, and that went to No. 1. So basically, the colonel's strategy was proved out, which was that Elvis knew what he wanted. He knew his music. He knew his business. And Colonel was going to defend him to the last bit.
GROSS: So let's hear "Heartbreak Hotel," and I believe it's Chet Atkins on guitar and Floyd Cramer at the piano.
GURALNICK: Yeah. It's Chet Atkins and also Elvis' guitarist, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black and...
GROSS: Oh, great. OK. Here's "Heartbreak Hotel."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEARTBREAK HOTEL")
ELVIS PRESLEY: (Singing) Well, since my baby left me, well, I found a new place to dwell. Well, it's down at the end of Lonely Street at Heartbreak Hotel, where I'll be, I'll be so lonely, baby. Well, I'm so lonely. I'll be so lonely, I could die. Oh, although it's always crowded, you still can find some room for brokenhearted lovers to cry there in their gloom. They'll be so, they'll be so lonely, baby. They'll be so lonely. They're so lonely, they could die. Now, the bellhop's tears keep flowing, and the desk clerk's dressed in black. Well, they've been so long on Lonely Street, they'll never, never look back. And they get so, they get so lonely, baby. Well, they're so lonely. They're so lonely, they could die.
GROSS: So that was Elvis' "Heartbreak Hotel," recorded in 1956. Parker got his start in carny shows, a profession famous for come-ons and outright cons to get you to buy a ticket. So let's talk about his origin story, because it includes carny shows, and it includes lying about who he was. His whole identity was totally fictitious. So tell us where he grew up and what his real name was.
GURALNICK: His real name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk. And he grew up in Breda, which was a fairly provincial town not too far from Rotterdam but very different from Rotterdam. He was raised in a family in which clearly he stood out. He loved his mother dearly. As he described it and I think everybody else described it, he was abused by his father. But there was some traumatic event that led to his never wanting to revisit either his family or his country again.
But his main motivation was he wanted to go to America, and at 16, he tried once. He was sent back by the immigration authorities. He tried again several weeks later, and he made it. And from that point on he considered himself an American. And his story, even though he was born in Holland, is perhaps as American a story as you could ever encounter. And in an age which prizes self-invention, there is no one who was more an exemplar of self-invention than Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk. I don't know that he really lied about - he went into the Army. He took on the name of Tom Parker.
GROSS: There was a fair that would come to his town in Holland every year and it had a family circus within the fair. And he was so taken with the circus, he started his own little circus with, like, a handmade newspaper tent. And he trained, like, insects and animals to perform.
GURALNICK: Yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: I just think that's really interesting. But he ended up working in carnivals. What do you know about the carnival work that he did in Holland and in the U.S.? Because carnies have such a reputation for being conmen.
GURALNICK: Well, again, I think Colonel would dispute that. The only thing that Colonel believed in, in his entire life - he did not believe in organized religion - he believed in the wonderful world of show business, of which both the carnival and the circus were an intrinsic part. And he believed two things about it. He believed that in the world of the carnivals and the circuses, your acceptance and your identity were based not on birth, not on education. They were based on character and on integrity, on being trusted.
And he thought that, you know, all of his life he felt that the most authentic people, the realist people, the most honest people were fellow veterans of that carny and circus world. The other thing he believed about show business, and the carnivals and circuses as much as any of them, was what they brought to their audiences. When he first started going out with the country shows with Roy Acuff, with Ernest Tubb and then with Eddy Arnold, they were blazing new territory. They were going into places that had never seen a live show before. And Colonel believed that what they brought to these places was something of inestimable value.
GROSS: What's the story behind his discharge in the military? Because another story that circulates about Colonel Tom Parker is that he was discharged as a psychopath, that he was in military prison for a while because he tried to desert. I think that's the story. So what is the story?
GURALNICK: His first enlistment, which I think was - was it two years or three years? I'm not sure. But it was a very happy time. He spent a good deal of it in Hawaii, where he was adopted by a family named Coferat (ph), who remained his close friends all of his life, and like all of these extended families that he developed over the course of the years. He then was transferred to Florida. And right after he wrote to his mother that he thought he would not reenlist, he reenlisted. And I would say what happened was he immediately regretted it.
Not long after he reenlisted, he went AWOL for five months. When he returned - and this is the mystery. Why, in heaven's name, would he ever come back? Why not just fade into the woodwork? I mean, this is a guy who, as you say, had invented his identity, who was perfectly capable of, you know, living a life which didn't have to do with, you know, the rules of society. Why would he come back after going AWOL for five? But he came back, and he was then thrown into prison. He was kept in isolation for two months. And when he came out - now, you can interpret this any way. When he came out, he was very disturbed. And they sent him to Walter Reed.
It's interesting because Howlin' Wolf was discharged from the Army for the same reason, Chester Arthur Burnett, the great blues singer Howlin' Wolf, as a psychopath. And just like Colonel Parker, the behavior, you know, that the Army psychiatrist judged to be psychopathic was never repeated, never showed up in any way again, nor did it with Colonel. But really, the question is, was he so desperate to get out of the Army that he behaved in a way that would get - he got an honorable discharge. He was honorably discharged, and he was always proud of that.
GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Peter Guralnick, who wrote the definitive two-volume biography of Elvis Presley and now has a book about his longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker, that includes many of the letters Parker wrote, including letters to Elvis. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF CYRUS CHESTNUT'S "LOVE ME TENDER")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Peter Guralnick. His new book, "The Colonel And The King," is a biography of Elvis Presley's longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Tom Hanks played Parker in the 2022 film "Elvis."
Early on in Elvis' career, once he started doing, like, TV, especially "The Ed Sullivan Show" - and he became known as Elvis the Pelvis because of these, like, gyrations that were considered, like, way too sexual for TV and for a show like "The Ed Sullivan Show," which was a family show - the colonel kind of defended him and thought like, hey, this is great. This is great publicity. It's not a problem. You don't have to change.
GURALNICK: Well, yeah, he defended him, just as he would've defended Elvis if Elvis said I want to stand in one spot and not move around one bit. But I think you mentioned Ed Sullivan. Ed Sullivan said, I'll never have Elvis on my program. He then got beaten in the ratings by Steve Allen and he then went to Colonel or William Morris and said, OK, I will have this artist, and, you know, that's a legitimate thing to do. And he made a $50,000 offer for three appearances, which was an extraordinary offer - an unheard of offer at that time. And Harry Kalcheim, the William Morris agent, came to Colonel with the offer, and Colonel said, that's fine, but Ed Sullivan agreed to these terms, and these terms have to be written out. And the terms are that my artist is in full charge of the songs that he performs, the manner in which he performs them, the musicians with whom he performs them, and his entire presentation. And without those conditions being met, he didn't care if it - it could have been $100,000, but he was going to defend his artist's independence and right to determine his - make his own artistic choices. And that's the reason why Elvis and Colonel were such an extraordinary partnership because they were working hand-in-glove towards the same common end.
GROSS: So let's talk about Elvis in the movies. He had a screen test with the producer Hal Wallis in 1956. Elvis was only 21. Whose idea was it to do movies? Did that come from the studio, from Elvis, from the Colonel?
GURALNICK: It came from Elvis. That was Elvis' highest ambition was to be a movie star along the lines of Marlon Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift. And that's what Colonel promoted. You can even see the letters that Colonel writes at the beginning, where he is promoting Elvis to William Morris as someone who wants to make a James Dean type of movie. And again and again, in those first few years, he writes to each of these studios saying, Elvis wants to make a serious movie. He wants to make a movie in which he's regarded as a serious actor. And they're very interesting letters, and to some degree, he succeeded. I mean, the movies improved. "KING CREOLE" was a huge improvement, for example, over the previous - over the first movie, "Love Me Tender," where Elvis really didn't know what he was doing, but did his best. But it continued even past that point.
GROSS: There's some not very good songs in his films, but there's some really good ones, too. And one of them is from "KING CREOLE," which you just mentioned. It's called "Trouble." It's such a great performance. Can you talk about the song and what you think makes it great and the difference between how it's performed in the movie and how it's performed on the recording?
GURALNICK: Well, the interesting thing with "Trouble," it was written by Leiber and Stoller, and it's just one of those stop time blues, which, you know, Elvis was always so drawn to. So, I mean, it's a blues, and that's what it is. But once they had recorded the soundtrack - and it's a wonderful soundtrack, and it's - this movie is set in New Orleans and it's with a New Orleans sound, I mean, a musical sound. I'm not sure of all the musicians, but the point is the idea was to be true to the New Orleans setting. And then there was a debate. And I'm not sure that anybody was - came down really strongly one way or the other. But there was a strong impulse at RCA, let's say, to re-record the soundtrack, to re-record the songs that Elvis had already recorded, like "Trouble," but to record them as rock and roll, not as New Orleans music. And Elvis, through Colonel, in a decision that Colonel fully supported, but it was Elvis' decision, said, no, the movie is about New Orleans. The music is New Orleans music, and the music should reflect - regardless of whether my audience will go along with it, the music should reflect the authenticity of the setting, and, you know, they kept the New Orleans musical settings.
GROSS: So why don't we hear the record that was recorded in the studio and released, 'cause that's pretty great. This is Elvis' recording of "Trouble," a song from the film "KING CREOLE."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TROUBLE")
PRESLEY: I never looked for trouble, but I never ran. I don't take no orders from no kind of man. I'm only made out of flesh, blood and bone. (Singing) But if you're going to start a rumble, don't you try it on alone. Because I'm evil. My middle name is misery. Well, I'm evil. So don't you mess around with me. I'm evil, evil, evil as can be. I'm evil, evil, evil as can be. So don't mess around, don't mess around, don't mess around with me. I'm evil. I'm evil. Evil. Evil. So don't mess around, don't mess around with me. I'm evil. I tell you, I'm evil. So don't mess around with me. Yeah.
GROSS: So that's a song from the film "KING CREOLE," the Elvis musical. Well, on that note, we have to take a short break. So let me reintroduce you.
My guest is Peter Guralnick. His new book is about Elvis Presley's longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. The book is called "The Colonel And The King." We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONE NIGHT (SECOND 'SIT-DOWN' SHOW - LIVE)")
PRESLEY: (Singing) One night with you is what I'm now praying for. The things that we two could plan would make my dreams come true. Just call my name...
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Peter Guralnick. He's the author of the definitive two-volume biography of Elvis Presley. Now he's written a book about Elvis' longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Many people consider Parker to have been unscrupulous and manipulative, but very good at making a profit. Guralnick says the research for the book led him to challenge many preconceptions about Parker, including some of his own. The book is called "The Colonel And The King." The first half is a biography of Parker. The second half is a collection of his letters, many of which were written to Elvis. Guralnick is also the author of a book about Sam Phillips, whose Sun record label was the first to record and release Elvis' music.
So let's play another song. And I want to play "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" which was the one song that Colonel Tom Parker ever suggested that Elvis record because the colonel tried to stay out of the music part and leave that to Elvis. But, you know, he loved the song. It was his wife's favorite song. And as you've said, it was an example of how Elvis wanted to sing more adult material. This was recorded at the same session as Elvis' first album after coming out of the Army, the album "Elvis Is Back!" But this wasn't included on the album. Why not?
GURALNICK: Because singles were not included on albums at that time. It wasn't a universal belief, but it was a very strong belief in the record business that you kept the single separate from the album and that including the single on the album was like giving away the single. I think they were wrong (laughter). But it was a very - as I say, it was a very common belief. And that's why it wasn't on - none of the singles, you know, "It's Now Or Never." I mean, none of the singles recorded at the "Elvis Is Back!" sessions were included on the album.
But the album is one of the greatest achievements of Elvis' career, artistic achievements. And, I mean, it's an astonishing achievement because it covers the full range and gamut of all of Elvis' - the kind of music that Elvis liked. You know, it has blues with "Reconsider Baby." It has rhythm and blues with "Such A Night." And then it has the ballads, to which Elvis had always been drawn. And I think the extended version of the album with the singles included is really one of the great audio documents of Elvis' career.
GROSS: All right, so let's hear "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" which was recorded as part of the first sessions after Elvis got out of the Army.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?")
PRESLEY: (Singing) Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we drifted apart? Does your memory stray to a bright summer day when I kissed you and called you sweetheart? Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare? Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there? Is your heart filled with pain? Shall I come back again? Tell me, dear, are you lonesome tonight?
GROSS: That was Elvis' "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" recorded after he got out of the Army. So Elvis Presley resumed his movie career after he got out of the military. And one of the movies he made was "Viva Las Vegas," which had songs by Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus. And it includes a song that the first time I heard it, which was not that long ago - maybe I didn't notice it so much in the movie. I don't know. But it really struck me when I heard it a few months ago because it's such - it's so unlike Elvis' repertoire. It has a very, like, bluesy jazz feel. But I mean like jazz blues, as opposed to blues, blues. And it's very behind the beat, which is kind of unlike Elvis. It's almost as if, like, Elvis had been listening to Chet Baker, which, like, I don't know (laughter).
GURALNICK: Could be (laughter).
GROSS: You think?
GURALNICK: Well, I think Elvis, as Sam Phillips said, had ears all around his head, so...
GROSS: (Laughter) Right. So this is part of a dream sequence in the movie. Do you want to say anything? I know you really like this song a lot.
GURALNICK: I think the extraordinary thing about it is it's almost like it could have come out of Gene Kelly's "An American In Paris." I mean, it's on such a different level, not just of anything in "Viva Las Vegas," but of almost anything in any of Elvis' movies. It just - it has a - aside from the Chet Baker, you know, aspect, it just has a feel to it. And you feel that Elvis is caught up in it in the way that he was caught up in those early movies he made - in "King Creole" and "Loving You" and "Jailhouse Rock" to a lesser extent - but, you know, where he is genuinely just in the moment in a way that in so many of the movies he wasn't.
One thing I should point out is that, you know, it's a Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman song. It is actually fairly similar to a number of songs that Elvis recorded in the aftermath of the "Elvis Is Back!" sessions, where he recorded these beautiful, beautiful ballads by Don Robertson and by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, and where he becomes almost more of an interpreter of song than he had been before. And they just - these are songs that have been largely overlooked and largely overlooked by me when I was a kid, certainly. I just thought, oh, what's he doing that for? But I think they're among the most beautiful recordings he ever made. But, you know, I don't think anything surpasses "Everybody (ph) Needs Somebody To Lean On."
GROSS: So let's hear "I Need Somebody To Lean On," which is a song from "Viva Las Vegas."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I NEED SOMEBODY TO LEAN ON")
PRESLEY: (Singing) I need somebody to lean on. I need somebody to tell my troubles to. No use denying I'm close to crying. But what good, tell me what good would my crying do? I need somebody to help me, help me forget all those worries on my mind. And when I'm lonely, if someone would only want to be sweet and kind.
GROSS: That was Elvis singing the ballad "I Need Somebody To Lean On," a song written for him for the film "Viva Las Vegas." So let's talk about the period when, like, the colonel was out of control with his gambling and Elvis was out of control with his drug addictions. In September of 1973, the colonel and Elvis basically fired each other. What happened between them?
GURALNICK: Well, basically, Elvis, on stage, insulted the Hilton family, who were his employers, who owned the hotel and who - you know, with whom he had a one-point-something-million-dollar annual contract. And Colonel felt it was totally wrong. This is the kind of thing you never do in public. This is the kind of thing - in show business, you never air your differences in this way, and you never treat people in this manner. So that was what instigated it.
GROSS: Yeah. So in September of 1973, the colonel even writes a letter to Elvis' father saying, I have tendered my resignation, effective immediately. And Elvis was really angry at the colonel, but their relationship continued.
GURALNICK: There was virtually no contact between them for nearly three months until around Christmastime, when Colonel heard from Vernon and, I think, from Red West - from Sonny West that Elvis wanted to be in touch with him. And Elvis then did get in touch with him. And Elvis wanted to go back on the road, and that was the beginning. It was picked up again as if nothing had happened. But there was no telling - there was never a response from Elvis or his father. Elvis' father Vernon was part of every business conference that Elvis and Colonel had, and he was the only other person besides Elvis and Colonel who knew Elvis' business. But in any case, they picked it up again, and they went on as they had been.
GROSS: Let's take another break here, and then we'll talk some more. My guest is Peter Guralnick, who wrote the definitive two-volume biography of Elvis Presley and now has a book about Elvis' longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It includes many of the letters Parker wrote, including letters to Elvis. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Peter Guralnick. His new book "The Colonel And The King" is a biography of Elvis Presley's longtime manager Colonel Tom Parker.
Elvis died August 16, 1977. This was the day before his sixth tour of the year was scheduled to begin. It's a lot of tours, especially if you're addicted like Elvis was and visibly getting sicker. Could the colonel have prevented that, do you think? Do you think the colonel should have tried to have Elvis work less or try to do something to help him get off these drugs?
GURALNICK: You can see all through the last few years Colonel trying to get Elvis off the road, not on the road. It was not Colonel who was putting him on the road. It was Elvis' need for money. I mean, there was always a crisis. You know, Graceland was - had to be remortgaged. Taxes needed to be paid. You can see this in the letters that Elvis' father, Vernon, writes to Colonel just begging Colonel to come up with some money. Surely, you can come up with some money from RCA. We desperately need money - for all the money that Elvis was making, an extraordinary amount of money. So it wasn't - it was - it wasn't Colonel's doing that he was on the road.
But I think one thing that has to be understood is that everybody around Elvis - not everybody, but so many people around Elvis tried hard to intervene in their own way. I mean, I don't know if you've ever been part of an intervention. I haven't, but I can only imagine how difficult it is. And the fact that you say we're going to stage an intervention does not in any way suggest you're going to have any success. And everybody from Dr. Nick to Red West to Jerry Schilling to Elvis' father Vernon, all of them - and Colonel - all of them attempted, in different ways, to intervene. And you can find evidence of this all the way through. And each of them had one thing in common - they all worked for Elvis, including Elvis' father, and all got the same response. If you don't like what I'm doing, there's the door. So that's the reason why none of these interventions worked or could work.
GROSS: You met the colonel because you were working on your Elvis biography. Just explain a little bit how you met him.
GURALNICK: I met him because I went to the Elvis birthday celebration. I'd never been before, and I didn't go again for many, many years. But Colonel was advertised as making an appearance there, and it was really his rapprochement with the estate, and this was in January of '88. And I really hadn't begun the book - the Elvis biography - or I had just begun it, I guess. But I thought, well, I'll probably never meet the colonel. I'll - you know, he'll never do an interview. I might as well absorb, you know, some of his aura, let's say.
And so I was sitting with Sam Phillips, whom I knew pretty well at that point, and his sons Knox and Jerry. And Sam said, I'm going to go over. And Sam hadn't seen Colonel in probably, you know, 25 years. And he never knew Colonel particularly well. He disapproved of him, but he didn't know him. And they had very different values, although I think as time went on, Sam came to appreciate Colonel much more after that point and spoke of it. But so Sam said, I'm going to go over and see Tom. He ain't no damn colonel. I'm going to go see Tom.
So I trailed along behind him like a good little reporter, and I met Colonel. I shook hands with him, and then I wrote to him right afterwards. And then I immediately got a response, and that began a correspondence which went on for the next - almost the next 10 years. And it also led, much to my surprise, to an invitation the following year to his 80th birthday party, which was an incredible event at which I met all the people in the shadows, all the people behind Elvis, none of whom I'm sure would ever have talked to me if I hadn't gotten the Colonel's imprimatur by being at that party, you know, for his friends. He wrote a letter to you, and I want you to read the letter.
GURALNICK: In this letter, which he wrote to me in July of 1990, I had sent him - this was early on in my writing the - "Last Train To Memphis." And it was very difficult to piece together what had actually happened in those early days when Colonel first came into the picture, how he played his part, how he got Elvis away from Bob Neal - from Elvis' manager Bob Neal, just what happened. And so I put together something that was really theoretical, and I sent it to him, soliciting his input.
So he wrote back (reading) friend Peter, your letter dated July 4 received and carefully read. I do not wish to waste my time to make corrections regarding the most misinformed information I have ever read in all my career in show business. And he then proceeded to waste some of his time feeding me information that might be useful to me. After that, he wrote, (reading) if this helps you any, fine. If not, this is all I can do. The true story of my entire career has been documented for me and at some future date will be included in my memoirs, which will either be handled by me or my estate as there is a lot still to be added as I expect to be around for some time. Good luck from your friend, and then it's signed Colonel, but underneath, in all caps, THE COLONEL.
GROSS: (Laughter) He never did write that memoir that he said he'd been writing for decades.
GURALNICK: He couldn't. And the reason he couldn't was early on in his management career, Colonel had come to feel that the artist always wears the white hat and the manager wears the black hat. And if there's any blame to be cast, it should always fall on the manager. He recognized that if he were to tell the true story - and he couldn't conceive of telling the story if it weren't true - he would be knocking off Elvis' white hat, and he simply wasn't going to do that. You know, he was always going to take the blame, and that was what had left.
But really, the truest thing he said, was he said to Bob Hilburn several years after Elvis died, and he said it - murmured it, I think, after the formal interview was over - he says, yeah, I really loved him. And he truly did. I mean, he loved him from the moment he met him, and I think it was a love that was reciprocated by Elvis.
GROSS: Let's close with a song that you really love by Elvis. It could be one of his hits or a song that a few people know that you'd like them to know, you'd like to introduce them to.
GURALNICK: Well, this is an old standby for me. I mean, it's "Trying To Get To You," a song that Elvis first recorded in '55 for Sun. He never finished it. I always say it's the best unfinished song he ever recorded at Sun. It was released by - on that first RCA album. But it has a spiritual quality, which I think stayed with Elvis all of his life. He recorded it - I mean, sang it in '77 as much as he sang it in '55. And it's just a song that I think if you listen to it, you just hear how it hits with him and how he hits it and how he brings it to an entirely different level.
GROSS: Peter Guralnick, thank you so much for coming back to FRESH AIR and congratulations on your book.
GURALNICK: Well, thanks. I really enjoyed it.
GROSS: Peter Guralnick's new book about Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's longtime manager, is called "The Colonel And The King."
After we take a short break, John Powers will review the new British crime drama "Code Of Silence," about a deaf woman who's asked to help in a police investigation by reading lips. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF GARY BURTON'S "MOVE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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