Review “The Colonel and The King”: The Elvis biography treats Tom Parker

The popular perception of Colonel Tom Parker is that he devoted to Elvis Presley from a lot of money, forced his participation in some of the really bad 1960s, and guaranteeing the late Pressley slavery to Las Vegas with gambling addiction to suit the king’s habit. But this is not the story that Peter Gallancic is looking to tell in his new Mammoth book, “The Colonel and The King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the partnership that shook the world.”

This book is long on “Colonel”, a Parker title called his first name after the Louisiana ruler gave the honorary title in 1948, and stories of the king, who, after all, was the subject of countless previous volumes. Some of the best are actually written by Guralnick, including “The Last Train to Memphis” and “Whispers of Neglect”. A few writers know more about rock and roll music and early roots, or have a passion for the topic. If you haven’t read Gurralnick, you should clarify a point for it.

Does this mean that you should read “the colonel and the king?” Only if you have been strongly seeking a comprehensive study of the Director of Elvis for a long time, which, it must be said, lived a wonderful life determined by self -illness and deception. Gorlnick Parker has known from 1988 until his death in 1997, and you will feel the feeling that the author also saw his topic as a friend. The book is not hagiography, because Gurralnick does a lot of research and reporting every book unable to write one -sided account for any topic. However, the “colonel and the king” often read like Parker apologizing, or at least focused effort to put some records directly.

For example, there was a frequency that was reported in Parker to allow an international tour near the end of his career, for the reason that Parker was not an American citizen and therefore had no passport. “The subject of many unprepared speculations,” Jorlnick writes, indicating other reasons. “How can Elvis go to Japan, with its strict drugs laws, how can he pass through all customs stations that he must wipe in Europe if this is not one small round in the country, without his prescribed medications? Who would have carried these drugs?”

Parker wallpaper is often used as a carnival factor for its mockery. How can merely know Carney about musical works, or qualify him to the host of rock and rock music? But the most vibrant and most detected parts of “The Colonel and the King” already come before the colonel meets the king, as Gueralnick draws a picture of an unbeatable burning to re -invention himself.

Parker Long claimed that he was born Thomas Andrew Parker in West Virginia. In fact, Andreas Cornellis Van Kejik was born in Breda, the Netherlands. As a boy, he went to “dry”. His father was a Levre and retired soldier. When the drought of youth fell with a family circus and his father’s horses knew that the tricks did, his father chanted that the child “was not his son, and that he would never rise to anything, and after beating him within one inch of his life, he announced that he would prevent anything related to stables.” When he was a teenager, Parker smuggled himself to the United States, then he successfully sent the trip, this time successfully.

He usually developed that it was informally adopted by alternative families, then he disappeared without a trace, which was a pattern that continued when he joined the American army, AWOL went and finally received an honorable emptying in 1933, with a disability certificate cited as “psychological depression” (Parker claimed to be emptied because of his bad leg). It ended in Florida, where he became a curry of all tubes and developed a sharp instinct for advanced advertising and promotion.

Elvis was not the first music agent in Parker; He developed his slides first with early pop star Jin Austin, then the countryside star Hank Snow. But when Parker first witnessed Elvis and Alvis House in Louisiana Hyseed in 1955, he was determined to manage. Then it was to sell it, frankly and tax, to RCA, the twentieth century Fox, and who will help anyone build the great Elvis industry.

“The Colonel and the King” is a large piece of book, weighing in 624 pages. This includes about 250 pages of letters expressed to and from the colonel, which may have been better used, in a lump form, spread all over the narration correctly. You also feel that the author may have been quickly taking Parker to his word, taking into account Parker himself jokingly that he was writing a self -photography entitled “The Beevale Con Man”.

One can admire the University of Gallank and feel the task with its desire to get more strict results. I found the story of Parker very interesting, so I am a little tired of it.

Voguear is an independent culture writer.