James L. Dickerson - Colonel Tom Parker: The Curious Life of Elvis Presleys Eccentric Manager

Cover

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COLONEL TOM PARKER

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ALSO BY

JAMES L. DICKERSON

Faith Hill: Piece of My Heart

Dixie Chicks: Down-Home and Backstage

Last Suppers: If the World Ended Tomorrow, What Would Be Your Last Meal?

North to Canada: Men and Women Against the Vietnam War

Dixie's Dirty Secret: The True Story of How the Government, the Media, and the Mob Conspired to Combat Integration and the Vietnam Antiwar Movement

Women on Top: The Quiet Revolution That's Rocking the American Music Industry

That's Alright, Elvis: The Untold Story of Elvis' First Guitarist and Manager (with Scotty Moore)

Goin' Back to Memphis: A Century of Blues, Rock' n' Roll, and Glorious Soul

Coming Home: 21 Conversations about Memphis Music

I'm So Sorry: The Stories Behind 101 Very Public Apologies

Country Music's Most Embarrassing Moments

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The Curious Life of Elvis Presley's Eccentric Manager

JAMES L. DICKERSON

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Disclaimer:
Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the netLibrary eBook.

First Cooper Square Press edition 2001

This Cooper Square Press hardcover edition of Colonel Tom Parker is an original publication. It is published by arrangement with the author.

Copyright 2001 by James L. Dickerson

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Cooper Square Press

An Imprint of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

150 Fifth Avenue, Suite 817

New York, New York 10011

Distributed by National Book Network

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dickerson, James.

Colonel Tom Parker : the curious life of Elvis Presley's

eccentric manager / James L. Dickerson.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-8154-1088-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Parker, Tom, 1909- . 2. Concert agentsUnited

StatesBiography. I. Title

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.481992.Manufactured in the United States of America.

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To my mother, Juanita Dickerson Caldwell

and

To my sister, Susan Dickerson McCaskill

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I would like to thank the following people and organizations for helping me with this book: Ed Frank of the Mississippi Valley Collection at the University of Memphis; my former research assistant, Ginger Rezy; the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at the Vanderbilt University Library; Frances Preston, Brenda Lee, Marshall Grant, Bobbie Moore, Paul Lichter, Al Dvorin; Diane Grey at the Tampa Tribune ; Carl Sedlmayr Jr., Laura Sedlmayr, Hal Kanter, Evelyn Black Tuverville, James Reid; John Bakke at the University of Memphis; the Public Library of Nashville and Davidson County; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Joan Jacka at the Nevada Gaming Control Board; Debbie Taylor at the Tampa Humane Society; Sharon Toon at the Selective Service System; the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library; Loretta Bowman, county clerk, Las Vegas, Nevada; Ave M. Sloane and Marian Smith at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service; Mark Medley at the Country Music Foundation; Frank Coffey, Chips Moman, D. J. Fontana, Donna Presley Early; Sgt. Dan Grossi of the Tampa Police Department; Claudia Anderson at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; my editor at Cooper Square Press, Michael Dorr; and special thanks to Scotty Moore.

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T ampa shone like a beacon in the night to young Tom Parker.

It was the Las Vegas of its time: A place where you could buy anything for the right price, where vast financial empires could be built on one-trick ponies, midnight hustles, and high-stake shell games, where all it took to make a big score was a dream grand enough to capture the imagination.

Nature has joined Tampa and St. Petersburg at the hip with an enormous inland saltwater bay, but they are two very different cities. St. Petersburg, with its sandy Gulf of Mexico beaches, has long been Florida's west coast playground for the rich and famous. Tampa has a more austere, working-class foundation. For most of its early history, it was best known as a landing port for Colombian banana boats.

From the time the region was first explored in the 1500s by Juan Ponce de Len and Hernando de Soto, Tampa has had a dual reputation: First, as a natural paradise fed by mineral springs with miraculous healing qualities, and second, as a wide-open port city, where gambling, prostitution, and drinking were tolerated at sensible levels, as long as they were kept a respectable distance from the well-manicured neighborhoods of polite society.