A major milestone was reached in Elvis Presley‘s career 70 years ago today when he left Sun Records and signed with RCA as part of a complex deal carefully negotiated by Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Sun wasn’t eager to lose Presley, but the tiny label was in a state of deep financial distress, and the deal brought them $35,000 ($422,000 today) that they needed in order to stay afloat. “Altho Sun has sold Presley primarily as a country and western artist,” read a report in Billboard, “[RCA] plans to push his platters in all three fields – pop, R&B, and country and western.” It was a magnificent plan that transformed Presley from a regional star into one of the most famous people in America.
It never would have happened without the business acumen of Parker. He’s often cast as a villain due to the 50 percent commission he took from Elvis’s earnings, the bad movies he guided him into, his failure to book shows outside the U.S., and his lack of musical vision. But music scholar Peter Guralnick — who authored the indispensable Elvis biographies Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley — tells a more complex, nuanced story in his latest book The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership that Rocked the World.
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the RCA signing, Guralnick has put together a playlist that traces the life and career of Parker, and provides commentary about each one.
“My Blue Heaven” (Gene Austin)
When Gene Austin arrived in Tampa in January of 1939 with his new, self-financed movie, Songs and Saddles, he was at loose ends. Austin had been a genuine pop superstar in the ‘20s (his 1927 hit, “My Blue Heaven,” later to be revived by Fats Domino, was the biggest-selling single of all time until Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”), but by 1939 he had suffered a number of significant reversals. Tom Parker, who had recently quit the circuses and carnivals, was living in Tampa doing small independent promotions. He attended every one of Austin’s shows at the Park Theatre and, correctly assessing the situation, volunteered to serve as Austin’s manager. Austin already had a manager, but seven months later he didn’t, and, stranded in Atlanta, he summoned the 30-year-old Parker. Parker, still years away from becoming a Colonel and with no previous experience in the music business, came to the rescue and within a week had the show turned around. For the next two years he managed Austin brilliantly, rescuing him from oblivion, but not from the debts he had incurred. They remained lifelong friends.
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“Wabash Cannonball” (Roy Acuff)
Roy Acuff was Tom Parker’s first country artist. He started working with Acuff while he was still field agent and animal control officer at the Hillsborough County Humane Society, a job that, with his love of animals, he enjoyed as much as any he ever held in his life. He promoted several shows of Roy Acuff’s in 1942 and 1943 under the auspices of legendary showman J.L. Frank, his one true mentor in the business. He also promoted Roy Acuff’s Own Flour and organized cooking demonstrations in theaters where his star was appearing. Acuff invited him to move to Nashville and become his manager, but Roy Acuff was already a big star and Tom Parker had already set his sights on a younger, still unproven artist named Eddy Arnold.
“Walkin’ the Floor Over You” (Ernest Tubb)
But before that could happen, once again through J.L. Frank, Parker took Ernest Tubb out on tour in early 1945. Not only was he tour manager and principal advance man, he also served as the comedian on the show. “As soon as Ernest walked out on the stage,” recalled Nelle Poe, who with her sister, Ruth, was one of the featured acts on the show, “Tom would start down the aisle, brushing people’s shoulders off with a little broom [and] Ernest would just stop and stand there with his guitar and look through the crowd like he didn’t know what was going on.” Parker told Nelle that he was going to Hollywood and would do great things there some day. He maintained a friendship with both Tubb and Acuff throughout his life.
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“I’ll Hold You in My Heart (Till I Can Hold You in My Arms)” (Eddy Arnold)
A #1 hit in late 1947, this served in effect as the beginning of Eddy Arnold’s annus mirabilis. Colonel Tom Parker (it was at the end of this year that he received his honorary appointment from the governor of Louisiana) had taken Eddy to an unparalleled position in country music in the three short years he had managed him, with Arnold topping the country music charts for fifty-three weeks in a row in 1948. Over the next five years Eddy Arnold not only became country music’s reigning superstar (a position unrivaled until Garth Brooks’ rise in the 1990s) but one of the RCA label’s top pop stars as well, something Colonel took full advantage of in renegotiating his recording contract.
“I Don’t Hurt Anymore” (Hank Snow)
Colonel was fired unceremoniously by Eddy Arnold after nearly 10 years of working together. (It’s a long story. Read the book!) Not surprisingly, this was a devastating blow to him (though the relationship was subsequently repaired and he continued to book Arnold on a limited basis throughout his career), but within weeks he had recovered and set up the RCA Records Country & Western Caravan, an all-star package tour featuring all of RCA’s country stars. It was in this way that he came to manage Hank Snow, one of the stars of the Caravan, who had the current #1 country hit with “I Don’t Hurt Anymore.” Not long afterward Colonel booked a young unknown named Elvis Presley on one of the first tours he and Snow did together.
“Heartbreak Hotel” (Elvis Presley)
Mae Axton, a longtime associate of Colonel’s in Florida (she advanced many of his country shows) presented Elvis with this song, which she had co-written with local singer Tommy Durden. Elvis loved the song (“Hot dog, Mae, play it again!”) and promised it would be his first single on his new label, RCA. Sweeping aside the recommendations of RCA vice president and a&r man Steve Sholes, it was, and despite RCA’s lack of faith in this untried, unproven young artist’s choices and with the full support of his manager (he had total faith in his artist’s choices, he declared again and again), the record went to #1 on the pop and country charts, and #3 on the r&b.
“Hound Dog” (Elvis Presley)
Colonel had NOTHING to do with Elvis performing “Hound Dog,” as he proudly, and truthfully, proclaimed he had nothing to do with any of his artist’s musical choices. But Elvis was of two minds about recording the song. It had been the highlight of his live act since he first heard it performed by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys in Las Vegas three months before, but Elvis was not sure that the excitement, or the dynamism, or something could be captured in the studio. Guitarist Scotty Moore urged him to give it a try, and although we don’t know in exactly what manner, Colonel lent his support. Interpret this as you like, but on the afternoon of the session, which of course he did not attend (Colonel never attended sessions – the music was his artist’s business), he dashed off a brief note to RCA Vice President and General Manager Larry Kanaga, offering a tongue‑in‑cheek prediction of his own. “I think,” he wrote, “our recording of ‘Hound Dog,’ which I manipulated from the start, will be a big seller; it may even be big enough for you to make a special emblem to use a ‘Hound Dog’ [as the official RCA insignia] instead of the ‘Victor Dog.’”
“Trouble” (Elvis Presley)
The big question at RCA after Elvis had recorded the New Orleans-style soundtrack for his fourth (and best) pre-army film, King Creole, was whether Elvis should re-record the music in a more conventional rock setting for record release. Colonel replied that Elvis was firmly committed to retaining the New Orleans flavor and to keeping “the songs on record just like they are in the picture. He very well realizes that these recordings in the picture are not his regular style of recording and under any other circumstances we most likely would not release another like this without a special reason. [But] the instruments on the sound track fit in with the story.” And Colonel, of course, fully supported his artist’s decision.
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“Are You Lonesome Tonight?” (Elvis Presley)
The only song that Colonel ever asked Elvis to sing. It was his wife Marie’s favorite song in Gene Austin’s version – though Austin never recorded the song, it must have been a highlight of his live act. Colonel thought it would be good for the new audience that Elvis was determined to seek out (check out his operatic “It’s Now or Never” from the same session). “That was the only song I ever recommended to him,” Colonel mused to me in 1993. “He cut that for me as a favor— he thought he was doing me a favor.” But in fact, unbeknownst to Colonel, Elvis had been singing the song in informal sessions with friends in Germany for the last year or so– and with great feeling. It was probably one of the few times Elvis ever put one over on the Colonel. And he never let him in on the joke.
“If the Lord Wasn’t Walking by My Side” (Elvis Presley)
Elvis was completely absorbed in his spiritual studies with Larry Geller between 1964 and 1966. He had not in fact cut anything but soundtrack albums during that time and was far behind in his contractual commitments to RCA when he entered the studio to cut the album How Great Thou Art in May of 1966. Colonel had done everything he could to get Elvis back in the studio, but in the end it was a business deal that did it. In late 1965, he negotiated a $2.1 million deal with RCA at a time when Elvis’ singles sales had dropped by something like 40% over the last five years. At the heart of the deal was a commitment to record a new gospel album, something he was certain would appeal to Elvis. And in fact Elvis seized upon the project and began rehearsing songs for the session with Red West and Charlie Hodge right away. On this song he sings a duet with his childhood idol, Jake Hess (formerly lead singer with the Statesmen Quartet, Elvis’ favorite gospel group), and you can sense the exuberance and sheer sense of release in his delivery of the song.
