The first time Colonel Parker had an opportunity to see Elvis Presley live in concert was on November 24, 1954, when Elvis was appearing at the Municipal Auditorium in Texarkana, Texas. The nineteen-year-old swivel-hipped singer with the pouty good looks and combed-back and slicked-down ducktail had been making a lot of noise in the Deep South that year, which saw the Sun Records release of “That’s All Right,” “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” and “Milkcow Blues Boogie.”
“That’s All Right” caught the attention of Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips, who played the single in constant rotation on his top-rated show, Red, Hot & Blue, on WHBQ radio. It was one of the first programs in the Memphis area to play rhythm and blues and rock ’n’ roll during the 1950s. All the kids listened to Red, Hot & Blue. It played their music, not their parents’. It was considered a big deal for a local like Presley to be featured on the radio. He was about to break out of his Deep South base (mostly screaming teenage girls and male rockers who weren’t jealous of Elvis) to become an international phenomenon, but he needed a little time and a big push from the right kind of power.
Enter Colonel Tom Parker.
By now Tom had enough experience in the music business to master it. At least that’s what someone like Elvis saw—a businessman who knew what he was doing. He’d have had no idea of the crow-and-beetle circus in Holland, the carny years, or the Hillsborough County Humane Society in Tampa., Florida. The Parker formula—under promise, over deliver, scrutinize every tiny detail, and work mule-killing hours—worked for every act.
It might seem as though Parker constantly bumped into good luck, but luck really had nothing to do with it. Ever since he was a child, staying alert and keeping an eye out for opportunity was how he got work and, once he’d secured that work, became invaluable.
So, it wasn’t a coincidence that Colonel Parker was in Texarkana that night. He had received a field report from Nashville promoter Oscar Davis, who was doing advance work for an Eddy Arnold appearance in Memphis’s Ellis Auditorium in October 1954. Parker’s eyebrows raised when Davis described a live appearance Elvis made at a club called the Eagles Nest, which packed the joint nightly.
Davis eventually managed to meet Elvis backstage through Bob Neal, Elvis’s manager, who knew Colonel Parker through his business dealings. Neal was more of a friend than a manager, though.
Neal was a local disc jockey for WMPS—a country station in Memphis—when he first met Elvis in 1954. He liked Elvis and, at the time, felt the two could benefit each other as Neal was looking to expand his reach in the entertainment industry.
“I was thinking one day, and asked Elvis, had he got a manager,” Neal recalled to a Nashville reporter in 1973. “He said ‘No’ and, well, I said, ‘I’ve never been a manager, but let’s try it.’”
And try it they did for about eighteen months. They even had a contract. However, Neal could only do so much for his client. He had no established network outside of the South and Elvis’s bookings were mostly relegated to nightclubs, dive bars, and rodeo grounds. Elvis wanted better bookings and felt it wasn’t an unreasonable ask. That was problematic for Neal, who, in addition to his duties as a disc jockey, ran a music store, and his new role often required him to be away from his wife and children. He did not have the vision nor the time to take Elvis to the top, but he knew someone who did.
That man was Colonel Tom Parker.
Neal knew firsthand of Parker’s connections in the entertainment business, so he had no doubt Parker could take Elvis’s career to the next level and wanted the two to meet. Neal was not territorial when it came to Elvis and wanted only the best for him. The best meant having Colonel Parker represent him, which is exactly what Davis told Elvis that night. So now the Colonel and Elvis knew about each other, but the Colonel needed to see this young man with his own eyes and do it in a way that didn’t tip his hand that he might be interested in signing him to a personal management contract.
When Parker entered the Municipal Auditorium that night in Texarkana, a seven-hour drive from his home in Madison, Tennessee, he didn’t know what to expect, but he liked what he saw.
“They [the audience] were going crazy, especially the young girls,” the Colonel told me one night in his Palm Springs office. “They were screaming and fainting and throwing their clothes on stage.”
He added that every female on the premises lost control of her heart, senses, tear ducts, and in some cases, bladder, to the heartthrob with the ball-bearing hip joints.
Nothing like this happened at a country performance, no matter who was playing. This was something entirely new. And it was very powerful.
The Colonel remained in the back of the room that night and left before the show was over, making no contact with Elvis. But the memory of the spectacle that took place remained etched in his memory, and when the time was right, he would act.
That moment came to pass on February 6, in between Elvis’s two sets at the Ellis Auditorium in Memphis. Parker, Bob Neal, Tom Diskin, Oscar Davis, and Sun Records’ Sam Phillips met across the street from the venue at a café called Palumbo’s, a nondescript eatery in a brick building on Poplar Avenue. Elvis and some of his bandmates sat in for a portion of the meeting.
Phillips recognized there was something bubbling underneath the surface with rock and roll and helped advance the genre. A former owner and operator of three radio stations in the Deep South, he was also an early investor in the Holiday Inn chain of hotels and an advocate for racial equality. He put his heart, soul, and sweat into Sun Records and Sun Studios, and Elvis was his prized artist. At that gathering, Colonel Parker ruffled a few feathers, most of them belonging to Phillips. Parker explained to Elvis that Sun didn’t have the connections to get him in front of a national audience. Naturally, Phillips got his dander up. Not only did he give Elvis a big break by recording him, but he poured a lot of work into Elvis’s career.
Neal stepped in and wisely eased tensions by bringing up Elvis’s upcoming tour. Davis mentioned that working with Parker could get more of Phillips’s records into more stores, which he liked hearing.
For Elvis, it was not so painful. Everyone seated at the table wanted him to succeed (and all of them played a part in his eventual success). He was most especially impressed with the cigar-smoking Colonel Parker, who agreed to work with Bob Neal until his contract with Elvis expired. Elvis also joined the Jamboree Attractions tour, although he didn’t exactly start on the right foot with Hank Snow.
The Colonel told me that at one of Elvis’s first Jamboree shows, he went on right before Snow, who was the headliner. Elvis did his thing, shaking his hips, as his twinkling eyes, a half smile that pinched his cheek into a dimple, and those pouty lips made for a combustible combination, causing the young girls in the audience to go mad. And when he left the stage after a few songs, he took pretty much the entire audience with him. When Snow finished his set, he cussed Elvis out.
“This is a family show, young man!” Snow lectured. “What you did out there was extremely lewd, and I don’t ever wanna see you do that again, or you’re gone from this tour.”
Elvis was stunned, but he bit his lip. He was an extremely polite young man and had been taught to respect his elders. He let Snow—who was a complete jerk—speak his piece, but he wasn’t going to stop being who he was or hold back on his performances. He knew what audiences responded to, and he wasn’t about to deliver a flat show to appease Snow, whom he probably thought was past his prime. Keep in mind, Snow was a small man who stood no taller than five foot four. He had a little man’s complex and a big chip.
Colonel Parker wasn’t that crazy about him either, but he never let on how he felt. Snow could be abrasive and talked down to a lot of people on tour because they were beholden to him. But that didn’t mean they respected or liked the man.
In the meantime, Colonel Parker still needed Snow to do his bidding, especially where it concerned Elvis’s parents. Snow was Gladys Presley’s favorite singer, and the Colonel planned to cash in that chip when he needed it.
While appearing with Webb Pierce at the Robinson Auditorium in Little Rock, Arkansas, on August 3, 1955, Elvis invited his parents, Gladys and Vernon Presley, to see him perform and to meet Colonel Parker for the first time. Prior to 1971, the age of majority—when one was considered an adult—was twenty-one, and at the time Elvis was still twenty years old, so his parents were legally his guardians and were central to all negotiations. It’s been said that Vernon and the Colonel got along just fine, but Gladys didn’t walk away with a favorable impression. And I get that. Privately, the Colonel was a hoot and a lot of fun, but to outsiders and the media, he came off as glib or flippant. He wasn’t a “glad-handing” type of guy who worked a room. He operated on a need-to-know basis with people and usually played his cards close to the vest. He was a hard-boiled man and was all business, all the time. What you saw was what you got, and not everyone liked that approach.
There were other subsequent meetings and a few failed attempts by Colonel Parker to sign Elvis, and it was Gladys who did the rebuffing. She sensed the Colonel was pushing too hard and told her son to wait. People like Gladys have a word for people like Colonel Parker: slick.
That meant Colonel Parker needed Hank Snow more than ever. He asked Snow, who professed to be a clean-living Christian (despite his foul mouth, bad temperament, and cruel treatment of people), to put in a good word for him whenever he spent time with Elvis’s parents.
Bob Neal, who was in the middle, was certainly pushing for the Colonel. He wasn’t getting the type of major bookings he knew Elvis deserved. Plus, he was getting deeper into debt, and Elvis was already in the habit of spending money faster than it was coming in. Neal even offered the Sun Records masters of Elvis’s early recordings to RCA Victor in New York City. Joe Delaney, a friend of the Colonel’s, was with RCA Victor at the time. He recalled this incident in vivid detail.
“Neal offered the masters to Manie Sacks, who was VP of recording at the studio,” Delaney said. “Manie’s reaction was, ‘I don’t know if it’s a man or a woman. I don’t know if it’s Black or White. I can’t understand a damn word it is saying. Send it all back, but with a nice letter.” According to Delaney, Sacks was hardly a visionary. He had also just turned down Frank Sinatra on behalf of the label, feeling his music was on the way out.
The Colonel was highly respected in the business and was certainly better known than Elvis at the time. In his field, Colonel Parker was an established star and Elvis was only beginning. Neal explained to his young star that there wasn’t a better promoter around than Colonel Parker, and not just in the music business but in Hollywood as well. Elvis needed someone with the Colonel’s connections and skills to get his career off the ground because up to that point, no one north of the Mason-Dixon Line had really heard of him.
Elvis alternated working on the Jamboree Tour with Hank Snow and playing separate dates with Bill Black and Scotty Moore that were arranged by Neal. He was still under contract to the Louisiana Hayride and couldn’t venture very far from the northern Louisiana area on most weekends. All the while, Neal was attempting to get the Colonel more involved in the bookings. One of the reasons Gladys was such a big stumbling block was that she constantly worried about her son when he was on the road. She was concerned about accidents and the way fans were reacting to his shows. They shared a deep bond after the stillborn death of Elvis’s twin brother, Jesse Garon, and she worried about him day and night. Some say needlessly. The wild stories coming out of some of the local media weren’t helping matters either. She knew that bigger bookings meant more time away from home for Elvis.
However, Bob Neal persisted, and on August 15, 1955, he, Vernon Presley, and Elvis Presley signed an agreement that would make Colonel Tom Parker Elvis’s special advisor for a period of one year. The Colonel added his signature and his assistant, Tom Diskin, was there to witness the signing.
The agreement also contained several concessions Neal made to the Colonel, including one that would have Elvis playing one hundred personal appearances within one year for the special sum of $200 each. Another stipulation provided that if future negotiations broke down and Neal decided to “freelance” with Elvis, the Colonel would be reimbursed for time and expenses and would have first call on several cities at the special rate of $175 for his first appearance, $250 for the second, and $350 for Elvis’s third appearance in each city. Under this clause, the Colonel received exclusive rights to book Elvis in a total of forty-seven major cities from coast to coast, including New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
Everything seemed to work itself out and go smoothly, because a few months later, on October 21, 1955, the Colonel received a telegram from Vernon and Gladys Presley, indicating they were fine with his representation of their son when it came to any and all recording, television or motion picture contracts. They fully authorized Colonel Parker to execute these deals exclusively on behalf of their son.
A few days later, a telegram arrived at Colonel Parker’s Madison, Tennessee, offices from his new client, Elvis Presley, thanking him on behalf of himself and his parents. In the telegram Elvis states that Colonel Parker was the best and most wonderful person he could ever hope to work for. He also promised his undying loyalty—a vow he kept to the end of their partnership—and that he loved Colonel Parker like a father.
Elvis continued to tour with Jamboree Attractions under the direction of Colonel Parker. Hank Snow wasn’t happy with the arrangement, feeling income generated from Elvis should go directly into the company. The Colonel argued that if that were the case, all expenses for Elvis should come out of the company as well. Snow did not agree. He did not believe Elvis had star quality and that his popularity would not last. Therefore, when the Colonel signed on as “advisor” to Elvis Presley, he was signed under the Colonel’s own All Star Shows and not Jamboree Attractions / Hank Snow Attractions. Parker contended that Snow did not want Elvis in his company. The Colonel continued to book both men—Snow under the Jamboree Show banner while Elvis was booked under All Star Shows.
One of the final blows came in late 1955 when Snow came out after one of the shows to sign autographs. He was busy signing for fans when Elvis came out to do the same. The line of fans quickly shifted from Snow to Presley. It was palpable to everyone, including both stars. One of Snow’s fans, to pacify him, only made matters worse.
“They don’t love you ’cause you’re old, Hank,” he said. “But I love you.”
Which wasn’t true. They didn’t love him because he didn’t shake it like Elvis did.
This was rock ’n’ roll’s Big Bang. As John Lennon later said, “Before Elvis there was nothing.”
Elvis was a multiple threat. First off, there was his music. This was a young white boy playing Black music at a time in the South when white disc jockeys wouldn’t touch a Black record (and Black DJs wouldn’t touch a white one). In a 1956 interview with a newspaper journalist, Elvis said, “The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin’ now, man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in their shanties and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind ’til I goosed it up.” The young people were listening to Black music. In the South in the 1950s, that was like a second sun rising in the morning. What in the heck was going on in the world?
And just as shocking was his act. The one Snow decreed “lewd”—that hip-shaking, pelvis-thrusting, quivering, gyrating, ass-grinding series of moves that screamed, “I’m taking Sally behind the barn and when we get back, she ain’t going to be your little girl no more.” Time magazine called Elvis a “sexhibitionist.” FBI psychologists laid out parents’ fears about Elvis: that teenagers could easily be “aroused to sexual indulgence and perversion by certain types of motions and hysteria—the type that was exhibited at the Presley show.” Pentecostal preachers went into orbit a year before Sputnik over Elvis. TV talent shows wouldn’t broadcast him below the waist lest the youth of the day begin rutting in the streets like hogs in heat.
Riots broke out at his concerts. At two shows he performed at the 1956 Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, one hundred National Guardsmen were on hand to prevent crowd trouble. In August 1956, in Jacksonville, Florida, a local juvenile court judge called Presley a “savage” and threatened to arrest him if he shook his body while performing at Jacksonville’s Florida Theatre. His Honor was sure Elvis was “undermining” the youth of America. (Presley stood still at the show as ordered but poked fun by wiggling a finger.) Local officials started denying permits for Presley appearances. Teens just piled into cars and drove elsewhere to see him. Most radio stations wouldn’t play him. The ones that did suffered repercussions from advertisers. His former wife, Priscilla Presley, stated in her 1983 memoir that “his performances were labeled obscene. My mother stated emphatically that he was ‘a bad influence for teenage girls. He arouses things in them that shouldn’t be aroused.’”
Colonel Parker hadn’t just signed a deal with the Next Big Thing. He was present at the formation of the entire rock ’n’ roll universe.
One of the very first things Colonel Parker did on his new client’s behalf was to spring him from his Sun Records deal. Not only did the Colonel recognize the limited reach of Sun Records but also that Sam Phillips wasn’t very generous to his artists. He was giving a 3 percent royalty rate when 5 percent was the going rate. No one even discussed an advance; it was simply out of the question. And he knew they knew it. He admitted it in a 1986 Rolling Stone interview.
“When they left me, I didn’t blame them personally because I knew the stories they had heard,” Phillips said. “And the stories were simply—no matter if I had been giving them 10 percent—‘Man, is that all you’re getting?’ These people were unsuspecting. It was their first contract. Their first adventure into the world of business and a little money. When they got a damned check for $50,000—can you imagine? They hadn’t seen that much money in their lifetime or in their daddy’s lifetime.” He added he didn’t bear them any ill will.
When Johnny Cash eventually left Sun Records in 1961, he suspected that Phillips was shorting him on royalties. Cash’s first royalty check under Phillips was a whopping $3.30, and that was with a couple of hits under his belt.
To be fair, Phillips ran a much smaller operation than most record labels. Elvis never complained about his royalties under Sam Phillips because he was grateful for the opportunity to do what he loved. Phillips also put about sixty thousand miles on his car driving to radio stations and distributors to promote his artists. He had skin in the game, and often the business aspects of running a label drove him to drink. He even checked into a mental hospital at one point. As far as Colonel Parker was concerned, none of that mattered. All he was concerned about was who could offer his client the best deal and give him the long-term support needed to build and sustain a career.
The only label that met those criteria from Colonel Parker’s point of view was RCA Victor. They had history, after all. Parker got Eddy Arnold one of the largest royalty rates ever for a recording star at that time, and Hank Snow’s contract wasn’t too shabby either. The relationship with RCA was stellar and pretty much smooth sailing. Once a contact was signed, sealed, and delivered, Colonel Parker never pulled any funny stuff—no renegotiation tactics, no sudden dramatics, no stunts involving his stars. He lived up to every word on the written contract, and didn’t talk to the label again until the contract lapsed and it was time to strike a new one. He also made sure never to leak to the press what the deal was or brag about how much his client received. He was professional and discreet. For that, the Colonel was greatly respected by music, film, touring, and promotional executives, or anyone who conducted business with him.
As far as Sun Records went, Phillips knew he didn’t have the means to send Elvis where everyone knew he was headed. Southern banks wouldn’t touch the music business, and Phillips refused to go public and lose control. He was painted into a corner.
“I had looked at everything for how I could take a little extra money and get myself out of a real bind,” he told Rolling Stone. “I mean, I wasn’t broke, but man, it was hand-to-mouth. I made an offer to Tom Parker, but the whole thing was that I made an offer I didn’t think they’d even consider—$35,000, plus I owed Elvis $4,000 or $5,000.”
He didn’t necessarily want them not to take it, he added.
RCA Victor would buy out Elvis’s masters from Sun, a deal that Bob Neal could not put together a few months earlier. The negotiations started at $5,000 and finally hit the $25,000 mark. Phillips wanted $30,000, including a $5,000 deposit or he announced he would be shopping the masters himself.
On October 25, 1955, the Colonel received a telegram from W. W. Bullock, vice president at RCA Victor, tendering a recording contract to Elvis Presley. The $25,000 agreement was for three years at a royalty rate of 5 percent of retail price plus two one-year options. RCA would recoup $20,000 from one-half of the royalties.
Phillips had given them until November 14, 1955, to make the deal. The Colonel waited until 7:25 A.M. on the 14th to send this wire to Bullock from his offices in Madison:
Dear Bill,
Your wire received. The option to pick up the Presley contract expires at midnight today. Since Sun Records wants a cash deposit of five thousand dollars ($5,000) to pick up the option by today, time is short. As I have to wire this money from here or you can wire it from up there, either way I am pressed for time. I am very happy to handle everything from here and advise you when the lawyer should meet me. But if for some reason your people rather deal direct this is OK with me.
I have nothing to gain by handling this deal other than to protect all of us. I only want to go on record that today is the last day to get this deal as per Sun Record agreement. Tomorrow he may go up again. Personally, I believe the price too high, however, the talent is there, and we should make money. The deal involves forty thousand dollars ($40,000). Thirty-five thousand ($35,000) to Sun Records. Five ($5,000) to Presley. Three television guest appearances and complete promotion coverage. I did manage to stop the release till we know what we are going to do today so hurry as the banks close here at two p.m.
Regards, Colonel Tom Parker
That afternoon the Colonel received a short wire from Bullock in New York. It didn’t sound promising: Cannot wire your request. Will call you Tuesday morning.
The lights must have been on late Monday night in the RCA Victor offices in the Big Apple. At 9:56 the next morning, the Colonel received another telegram from Bullock. It authorized Parker to exercise the option for the Sun Record-Presley, instructing him to advance $5,000 to Sun Contracts (Phillips) immediately and masters to be transferred to RCA for an additional $35,000 and a $5,000 bonus to Elvis Presley to be executed on or before December 1, 1955.
With that authorization, the Colonel called Sam Phillips to tell him they had a deal. He even took $5,000 out of his personal account and sent it on its short trip to Memphis with a personal note:
Enclosed is my cashier’s check as promised by me on the phone a few minutes ago, for $5,000 as per agreement between your company, Bob Neal, and myself. Regarding Elvis Presley’s contract, I will work out the rest of the details as soon as possible and will wind everything up. Thanking you for your help and with best wishes.
Sincerely, Colonel Tom Parker
At 4:43 the same afternoon, the Colonel received a telegram from Sam Phillips stating that upon his receipt of the $5,000 certified check, their deal would be legal and valid.
The Colonel continued to fire off correspondence to New York. Later the same evening he wrote to RCA Victor’s lead attorney, H. Coleman Tily III. The second sentence in his letter had to be the understatement of the year:
It was good talking to you today. I have been busy.
After receiving your wire, or rather the wire from Bullock, I went down to the bank and had a cashier’s check made out for five thousand dollars. I called Sam Phillips and asked him if I should wire the money or mail the check airmail. He said mailing the check was OK with him. This I did this afternoon. Now we will have to get the time and dates worked out when you should come down here to Nashville and go with me to Memphis to close everything off properly. The sooner the better.
You did not mention the three guest shots on TV in the wire. They must be part of the contract with the Presleys or I will be in the middle. There are many details to be worked out to protect this setup and it would be best for you to plan to come here first and we go on to Memphis from here. Let me know when to set this up so we can get it over with. We should move fast to catch some of the fall business for RCA.
When you make out the check for my refund on the five thousand, be sure and mark the check as a refund to me so it does not look like I am being paid by RCA. I am very proud to advance the money for RCA as I am a stockholder anyway.
Enclosed is the option agreement. It should be okay. Did the best I could to handle this without you being here to help me.
Sincerely, Colonel Tom Parker
The next morning the Colonel wrote another letter to RCA executives in New York, this one directed to Steve Sholes, who headed up RCA’s Country and Western recording division, with a copy to Bullock:
As you know, I have deposited the escrow money with Sun Records out of my bank account for your company until we can get together next week. May I suggest for your consideration that it may not be a bad idea after all the negotiations have been completed, that you take the master to “I Forgot to Remember to Forget” and make a special nationwide release on this. This is one of the strongest numbers on the market present with hardly any coverage, but it is number 7 on the best-sellers. I am not trying to tell you what to do, of course, but I know that you are open for suggestions.
It will take a great deal of coordination and mutual understanding to get the most out of this new contract. I will support this with all my ability as long as I feel that the association is mutually beneficial.
I know you will be happy to know that radio, television, motion pictures, endorsements, publishing, and theaters will be handled on an exclusive basis by me with no interference from Elvis’s manager. Bob Neal will be associated with us in a capacity as manager and he will be in charge of personal appearances pertaining to one-nighters but will work closely with us. However, at the same time, I will have final decision pertaining to the above-mentioned details with the exceptions of the one-nighters, which are part of Bob’s contract with the Presley family. This will enable me to be more available to pursue the television, radio, and motion picture possibilities for Elvis.
I am now waiting for word from Memphis so Mr. Tily can meet with me and we will go to finish up all the details. Until that time, nothing should be released. I am planning to have Hank Snow in a picture with Elvis Presley for a publicity release—Hank welcoming Elvis to the RCA Victor family, which, of course, I will inject Sam Phillips, Bob Neal, and Tily in, fitting in with the situations in Memphis, when they are completed.
We are to receive three guest appearances on television coast-to-coast—the first one within 60 days after the signing of the contract. This has been a hard job for me for the past month to negotiate. It was a pleasure to do this for RCA and I know we will all benefit by it in the long run.
Colonel Tom Parker had just negotiated what would be one of the biggest deals in the history of the recording business—one that would eventually yield RCA Victor over a billion dollars over the course of several decades—and give Elvis a flagship record label that would cater to his artistic output until his untimely death. During Elvis’s first year with the label, RCA sold 12.5 million singles and 2.75 million albums. The powerhouse label had its first real superstar.
On November 21, 1955, Elvis Presley officially became the newest and brightest member of the RCA Victor recording family when he signed the contract authorizing the release of his Sun master recordings and naming RCA as his new recording company. The contract was also signed by Vernon Presley (Elvis was still underage at twenty), Bob Neal, the Colonel, and H. Coleman Tily III for the company.
Elvis took his RCA bonus money and went on the first of his many spending sprees, buying presents for everyone. He bought his parents a new pink Ford and, for his mom, some expensive jewelry. He also bought her two Mixmasters so she could have one at each end of her kitchen counter. Finally, he went out and bought himself some new clothes. Things were looking up, thanks to Colonel Parker.
After signing Elvis to his new contract, an RCA spokesman was quoted as saying, “We got pretty excited around here. We hadn’t seen anything that weird in a long time.”
Although some of the RCA executives may have thought Elvis a bit strange, they quickly discovered his manager was not one to be trifled with. Early in the agreement, an RCA executive strongly expressed his disappointment that Elvis had failed to show up at a cocktail reception in San Antonio, Texas, for many of their selected dealers.
“You’ll be hearing from New York,” the executive warned Colonel Parker. “We have to have cooperation on these things.”
As predicted, Colonel Parker did get a call the next day from the main office, wanting to know why Elvis was a no-show.
“Well, I don’t recall any clause in our contract that says Elvis has to appear at a cocktail party for dealers,” the Colonel replied with great aplomb. “However, if you would like to talk about a separate agreement that covers all of this subject, just let me know.”
That not only ended that conversation quickly but let RCA Victor know that anything outside their contract would cost them extra where it concerned Elvis Presley. The Colonel saw everything in black and white. The i’s had to be dotted and the t’s crossed. He had lived on bread and water, and sometimes lived without bread or water. The world was not paved with free money. There were no free rides and no mercy. That extended to corporate record labels, movie studios, and television networks.
Colonel Parker’s relationship with RCA was long, esteemed, and very cordial. Every time a new executive joined the company, the Colonel was among the first to call and welcome that person into the “family.” The only RCA executive he had frequent disagreements with was Steve Sholes, who wanted to tell Elvis and the Colonel how and what to record. This unsolicited advice truly bugged Elvis. Doing what any respectable manager would do, the Colonel picked up the phone, called Sholes directly, and in no uncertain terms told him to back off. I can tell you from being in the same room with the Colonel when he made those calls, you did not want to be on the other end. He “took care of business” and then some.
On the same day Elvis signed his RCA Victor contract, the Colonel and Bob Neal renegotiated the terms of their personal financial agreement. Hereafter, the Colonel would receive one half of Neal’s commission after deducting 5 percent for expenses from gross receipts. If Neal were making a 25 percent commission, 5 percent would be deducted for expenses and they would equally divide the remaining 20 percent. This agreement worked both ways for contracts negotiated for Elvis by Neal and for contracts negotiated by the Colonel. Exempt from this latest commission-sharing agreement, however, were any contracts signed by the Colonel for appearances in any of the forty-seven cities covered in the August 15 agreement.
Elvis had agreed to the above arrangement but was still only twenty at the time. On January 25, 1956, just two weeks after turning twenty-one, he appeared before V. H. Ellis, a Nashville notary, to confirm that the agreement signed on November 21, 1955, remained legal and binding.
Because of Hank Snow’s unwillingness to have Elvis permanently on his show, agreements between Snow and Colonel Parker were dissolved. Elvis’s popularity was soaring and Snow’s prediction that he would fade into the sunset quickly came back to haunt him. Any future Hank Snow bookings by the Colonel as an independent agent through his All Star Shows would be as follows:
Weekdays—Bookings up to $750, Parker would receive 15 percent commission. Bookings over $750, Parker would receive 50 percent commission.
Weekends—Bookings up to $1,000, Parker would receive 15 percent commission. Bookings over $1,000, Parker would receive 25 percent commission.
Snow requested that Colonel Parker produce a detailed breakdown of all receipts of payouts, along with gross and net earnings. The Colonel quickly replied that since all matters between them had been settled, he could see no purpose an audit would serve.
“Of course,” the Colonel wrote to Snow, “I would expect you to bear the cost of it and would also have to be made at my convenience. If an audit is made, I would also want you to furnish hotel bills, car expenses, plane tickets, and other expenses for which you have refunded out of our business, and which bills and receipts you did not turn over.”
Snow quickly dropped the matter but advised the Colonel that his new manager, Mae Axton,7 would handle all his future bookings. Despite their business differences, Colonel Parker and Hank Snow stayed in close contact and several letters in my files indicate they remained friends for several decades. In December 1957, Colonel Parker wrote a letter to Snow suggesting he get in touch with a Mr. Philpott of Ralston Purina, as he had recommended him to open a new mill in Canada the following spring. This was strictly a friendly gesture, and he made it clear he wanted no payment or commission for it. Snow later sent the Colonel a box of cigars as a gift of appreciation for the tip.
On March 15, 1956, Bob Neal’s contract with Elvis ran out, and he was officially out of the picture, though they remained friendly. This cleared the way for the first of several exclusive contracts between Elvis Presley and the Colonel. This contract, created by Colonel Parker and signed by both parties on March 26, 1956, modified and expanded the November 21 agreement between the Colonel and Neal. It gave Colonel Parker sole and exclusive authority to operate as Elvis’s “Advisor, Personal Representative, or Manager” in any and all fields of public and private entertainment.
Elvis’s concert earnings multiplied as soon as the Colonel took over management full-time. Through much of 1955, records show he was making between $175 and $250 for each performance. On November 22, one day after Neal signed a new agreement with the Colonel, it shot up to $1,000 a performance. In July 1956, Elvis received $2,500 against a percentage. By the end of the year, Elvis’s asking price per performance had shot up past the $10,000 mark and was climbing rapidly.
On Elvis’s twenty-first birthday, the Colonel and Marie Parker invited him to their house for dinner. The Colonel had placed a $100 bill under his plate as a birthday gift. Elvis was delighted.
It was the first $100 bill Elvis had ever seen.
I wasn’t there that night, but I can almost hear the Colonel assure Elvis there would be many more of those Benjamins in his future. And there would be. Some of them were spent on a twenty-three-room mansion, pink Cadillacs, guns, jets, luxury vacations, jewelry, and feeding and watering an entourage … among other things.