A New Look at the Man Who Made Elvis America’s First Rock Star

Biographer Peter Guralnick explains how the legendary Colonel Tom Parker marketed the King like a master

Jeffrey Lee Puckett,

AARP

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Published October 06, 2025

an illustration showing elvis performing and colonel tom parker looking on, with the cover of the book 'the colonel and the king' in the center

“The Colonel and the King,” by music writer Peter Guralnick, looks at how Colonel Tom Parker turned Elvis Presley into America’s first rock star.

Ryan Johnson; courtesy Little, Brown and Company

Acclaimed music writer Peter Guralnick, 81, has already penned a massive two-volume biography of Elvis Presley and another book about Sam Phillips, the Sun Records producer who first recorded the singer. Now he turns his attention to the King’s legendary and ruthless manager, Colonel Tom Parker. (You might know him from Tom Hanks’ portrayal in the 2022 biopic Elvis.)

To write his new book, The Colonel and the King, Guralnick combed through Parker’s massive show business archives and conducted extensive interviews to illuminate the manager’s unique talents — turning Presley into America’s first rock star, then guiding his career transition into movies — while shattering the long-held belief that Parker exploited his client.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

colonel tom parker sitting beside elvis presley

Parker, left, began managing Presley in 1956, and he negotiated a blockbuster deal with RCA Records for the singer.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Colonel is too complex for a single takeaway, but is there anything that you hope longtime Elvis fans glean from this book?

His total dedication to his artists. He believed in Elvis’ art. He believed in Elvis’ vision from the time Elvis was 20 years old, when he first met him. He did everything in service of Elvis’ art to defend it.

He got Elvis signed to RCA Records. He defended him against the record company, [where they] failed to understand his uniqueness.

He put himself at the service of his artist, of Elvis, and he did everything possible to allow Elvis to express himself the way he wanted. He had total belief in Elvis as an artist and as someone who saw a future that Colonel believed in, but neither one of them could articulate because it had never existed before — not just fame, but continual growth and expansiveness.

Do you feel like the record on the Colonel has been as straight as it will ever be set with your book?

the cover of the book the colonel and the king

“The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership That Rocked the World” examines the dynamic between two outsized personalities.

Courtesy Little, Brown and Company

That’s asking me to pat myself on the back to the point where I’m going to have to call up massage therapy. As with all my books, I wanted to give as full and round a picture as possible to allow people to make up their own minds.

Most of all, I just felt that I wanted to call attention to him. There would have been no reason to write the book if Colonel’s achievements, his brilliance, his genius, his wit, his humor, had not been so completely ignored, particularly in recent years. One thing to keep in mind is that until 1967 [when Presley suffered a career slump], Colonel was considered the most brilliant person and the most outstanding manager in the business.

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Colonel’s full wizardry as a manager and marketer really emerges in the book. Did any of his techniques become industry canon?

The main thing was that he pioneered the idea when one thing serves another. The movies served the records; the records served the movies. Synergy and ownership were the two things that he was most dedicated to. He believed in the acquisition of ownership and control at a time when nearly every other manager or artist was prepared to surrender both.

What Colonel was looking to do was to keep increasing the share, whether it was with the movies or records, to the point where he and Elvis and Elvis’ estate owned the television shows, owned all of those things.

He wasn’t just trying to sell records; he was in the Elvis Presley business.

Have you spent any time thinking about what Elvis’ career might have been like without Colonel?

You only have to look at all the other artists of that time and the limitations that were put on them by the absence of vision or ambitiousness. Let’s talk about the first 10 years. I think that Elvis firmly believed that he would never have achieved anything like what he did without Colonel, and Colonel believed that too. And then I think you could argue that nobody could have made more money for Elvis in the second decade than Colonel did. Irrespective of the percentage that he took, the amount of money that Elvis was making was just absolutely extraordinary. [In the 1970s, Presley sometimes earned the equivalent today of $50 million to $60 million annually.]

colonel tom parker standing behind elvis presley

After Presley was discharged from the U.S. Army in 1960, Parker, right, mapped a new phase of the singer's career, focusing on a combination of movies and music.

Lee Lockwood/Getty Images

After decades of research, does Colonel remain a mystery to you in any significant ways?

Oh, you know, he’ll always be a mystery. I keep waiting for him to call me up and cuss me out any day now! He so deliberately cultivated mystery because there were elements of his makeup that he simply could not reveal.

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