In "The Colonel," Alanna Nash, the author of "Golden Girl: The
Story of Jessica Savitch," explores in depth the amazing story of
Colonel Tom Parker, the man behind the legend and the myth of Elvis
Presley. The result is a book that reads like the most riveting of
real-life detective stories -- one that will completely change your
view of Presley's life, success, and death.
While scores of books have been written about Elvis Presley,
this is the first meticulously researched biography of Tom Parker
written by someone who knew him personally. And for anyone truly
interested in the performer many consider the greatest and most
influential of the twentieth century, it is impossible to
understand how Elvis came to be such a phenomenon without examining
the life and mind of Parker, the man who virtually controlled
Elvis's every move.
Alanna Nash has been covering the story of Elvis Presley and
Colonel Tom Parker since the day of Presley's funeral in Memphis,
Tennessee. She was the first journalist allowed to view Presley's
body, a compelling and surprising sight. But the profile of Parker
attending the funeral in a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap was
even stranger, and led her to investigate the man behind the
myth.
It has been known for twenty years that Thomas Andrew Parker
was, in fact, born in Holland as Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk. But
Nash has dug much deeper and, in a masterpiece of reporting,
unearthed never-before-seen documents, including Parker's army
records and psychiatric evaluations, and the original police report
of an unsolved murder case in Holland that lies at the heart of the
Parker mystery. In the process of weighing the evidence, she
answers the biggest riddle in the history of the music industry, as
it becomes clear that every move Parker made in the handling of
Elvis Presley -- from why he never allowed Elvis to perform in
Europe, to why he didn't halt Elvis's drug use, to why he put him
in so many mediocre movies, and even the Colonel's direction of
Presley's army career -- was designed to protect Parker's own
secrets.
Filled with startling new material, her book challenges even the
most familiar precepts of the Presley saga -- everything we
presumed about Parker's handling of the world's most famous
entertainer must now be reevaluated in the light of information
Nash reveals about Parker, who cared little for Presley beyond what
the singer could do to bolster the Colonel's precarious position as
an illegal alien.
Elvis Presley, as one of Parker's unwitting victims, paid a
major price for the Colonel's past and his overwhelming need to be
more important than his client. As a result, Presley was never
allowed to reach his potential and died in drug-induced frustration
over his stunted and mismanaged career.
In this astonishing, impeccably written, and vastly entertaining
book, Nash proves that the only figure in American popular culture
as fascinating as Elvis Presley is Colonel Tom Parker, the man who
shaped Elvis, who in turn helped shape us.
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