King Elvis and the Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll (pp. 125-131)

Colonel Tom Parker Roy Buchanan's biographer, Phil Carson,
credited sidemen Scotty Moore and Bill Black for Elvis's initial success,
and blamed Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker, for firing the two sidemen.

Carson made the following comments about Elvis's original trio in his book,
Roy Buchanan: American Axe: ==== [quote on] ====

[Roy] simply had a gift for playing the guitar. He was a sideman, and in the eyes of promoters and record
companies, sidemen were expendable commodities, even when their level of musicianship helped make songs
into hit records. This attitude explained why Elvis Presley unceremoniously dumped guitarist Scotty Moore and
bassist Bill Black in September 1957. The pair had played an integral role, along with drummer D.J. Fontana, in
launching Elvis. Their performances and recordings with the singing star had supplied some of the excitement
that made him The King. After the singer and his band had achieved a degree of success, the sidemen and
had the temerity to point out to Presley and his predatory manager, "Colonel" [Tom] Parker, that the singer's
original agreement with them called for sharing record royalties and increased performance fees. In order to get
Elvis' attention, Scotty Moore and Bill Black threatened to quit, and they were dismissed. Ironically, many
observers believe that, despite Elvis' continued commercial success as a singer, his records and performances
never again possessed the magic conjured by Moore and Black for Sam Phillips' Sun Records in 1954- 57.(1)
==== [quote off] ====

It's interesting that Carson refers to Colonel Tom Parker as Elvis's "predatory manager."

Why would Colonel Parker allow Elvis to drop his great sidemen?

When Elvis first became a star in 1954, he
had something very real to offer.
It was a fragile, almost indefinable quality, but it was definitely real, nothing abstract

.
Whatever it was, it rubbed off on others. But once Colonel Parker got a hold of Elvis,
the young rocker quickly began to falter as an artist.

Who was Colonel Tom Parker, anyway? Writer Alanna Nash
attempts to answer that question in a new book,
The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley.

Nash portrays the Colonel as a psychopathic murderer
born June 26, 1909 in Breda, Holland,
whose real name is Andreas "Andre" Cornelis van Kuijk.

He fled Holland in 1929 shortly after the death of a twenty-three-year-old woman,
Anna van den Enden, the newlywed wife of greengrocer Wilhelm "Willem" van den Enden.

On May 17, 1929, Anna van den Enden was bludgeoned to death
in the kitchen of her home behind her husband's greengrocery shop
at Nieuwe Boschstraat 31. Andre van Kuijk (aka, Colonel Tom Parker)
left Holland for America the same night that van den Enden was murdered.(2)

Nash believes van Kuijk/Parker murdered van den Enden.
Although Nash does not provide absolute proof, she builds a strong
circumstantial case, and she points out that Parker was discharged from the United States Army
on August 11, 1933 by reason of "Psychosis, Psychogenic Depression, acute,
on basis of Constitutional Psychopathic State, Emotional Instability."(3)

While in America van Kuijk took the name Colonel Tom Parker
and immersed himself in the world of carnival and circus
which led him to musical promotion. He first promoted country music artists,
most notably Hank Snow, before managing Elvis. Contrary to popular belief,
Colonel Parker did not discover Elvis.

If anyone should be given credit for that, it would be Sam Phillips.

In addition, Elvis's lead guitarist, Scotty Moore, was Elvis's manager.
So what exactly did Colonel Parker do? Nothing really, except take a hot young
rock 'n' roll artist and turn him into mush.

The Colonel maneuvered his way into Elvis's world, managed to broker
a buyout of Sun Records by RCA, took over management of Elvis from Scotty Moore,
and eventually fired Moore and bassist Bill Black.

Elvis was also drafted and joined the Army on Colonel Parker's watch,
a move that destroyed what little momentum Elvis had left
after firing sidemen Moore and Black.

As an artist, Elvis floundered badly from the day he met the Colonel,
but commercially he became quite successful, acquiring vast wealth.

In December 1968, Elvis made a comeback
with a televised one-man Christmas special which
revitalized his status as a performer.

In 1969, he released a single, Suspicious Minds, which went to Number One.

Throughout the Seventies he became one of the top live attractions in the United States,
often appearing in Las Vegas. (4) Oddly, Elvis did not perform outside North America
because of Colonel Parker's aversion to traveling abroad.

In 1957, the Colonel admitted to his twenty- three-year old assistant, Byron Raphael,
that he was afraid to leave the United States. Parker reportedly told his young assistant:
"You know, Byron, we're never going to be able to take Elvis abroad to do personal appearances."

Raphael thought this was an odd statement because Elvis was so popular internationally.

Raphael explained: "By that time [1957], Elvis was already the biggest star in Japan,
and also in Germany. And the offers from Europe were for many millions of dollars, even then."(5)

Nevertheless, Parker refused to book Elvis overseas. Parker had a problem with his
immigration status from years earlier, but had never bothered to get it fixed. The big question was Why?

Alanna Nash described the essence of Parker's fear of foreign travel in her book,
The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley.

The following is an excerpt:

==== [quote on] ==== It wasn't that Parker couldn't leave the country.
Through the years, he accumulated many influential friends in all ranks of government
--including President Lyndon B. Johnson--who could have solved his problem with a single phone call.

The truth of the matter was that Parker didn't want to leave the country.

And not even the promise of money beyond his wildest dreams could stir him from his spot.(6) ==== [quote off] ====

Elvis's obsession with the Kennedy assassination If history teaches us anything, we should know
that the United States government-- particularly the FBI--does not care for rock 'n' roll,
and it particularly did not care for the King of rock 'n' roll, Elvis Presley.

But the Bureau eventually had another reason besides rock 'n' roll to dislike Elvis.

It is not widely known, but in the Seventies, Elvis was obsessed with the assassination of President Kennedy.

Elvis's stepbrother, Billy Stanley, revealed Elvis's preoccupation with Kennedy's murder
in a 1989 book, Elvis, My Brother, by Billy Stanley and George Erikson. The following is an excerpt:

==== [quote on] ==== Elvis, like any major entertainer or politician, had a deep-seated fear of assassination.
The Sharon Tate murders had happened very close to Elvis's Trousdale Estates house in 1969.
Afterward Elvis had told me, "Man, that could have been me. That could have been you. That could have been my family!"

He was obsessed with John F. Kennedy's assassination; he had videotaped the Zapruder film of the event
and watched it for hours and hours, speculating about what really happened.

He was shocked by the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, crying,
"Oh man, when is this thing going to end?"

The fear that some lone madman, hidden in crowds of thousands of fans,
would find him an easy target was one that he would have to overcome every time he walked onto a stage.(7) ==== [quote off] ====

Elvis reportedly believed Lee Harvey Oswald did not murder President Kennedy.

He also believed and Robert Kennedy's death was the result of a conspiracy.

The following is an excerpt from The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley, by Alanna Nash:

==== [quote on] ==== The upbeat mood was shattered barely three days later when Robert
Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles. His murder threw Elvis into an emotional spiral. Already a conspiracy
theorist--reinforced, perhaps, by the Colonel's Sam Cooke story--Elvis showed [Steve] Binder that he was "quite
well read" on the subject. "He told me all the books to read... he was convinced it was not Oswald who killed
[John] Kennedy, and he was obsessed with the plot to assassinate RFK."(8) ==== [quote off] ====

Elvis died on August 16, 1977, while the House Select Committee on Assassinations was underway.

The Committee's primary objective was to re- investigate the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

On November 9, 1977, high-ranking FBI official William Sullivan was shot and killed
--reportedly by Robert Daniels Jr, age 22, of Libson, New Hampshire--while hunting near his home in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire.

Sullivan was struck in the neck with a .30-caliber high-powered rifle.

Sullivan had just completed a preliminary meeting with investigators for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. (9)

He was also in the process of writing a book highly critical of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

If writer Alanna Nash's revelations about Colonel Tom Parker are correct
--that Parker was a Dutch murderer on the run--then it is quite possible he was working for the FBI
to keep tabs on Elvis.

Under Colonel Parker's management, Elvis lost his edge which made him less threatening to the FBI
as a performer who might encourage youth rebellion.

By 1977, Elvis had become a different kind of threat.

He was a superstar with an international following, and he was obsessed with the assassinations of President Kennedy
and Robert Kennedy. He was so obsessed that he watched the Zapruder film for hours at a time.

With a man like Colonel Tom Parker managing Elvis--
a man quite possibly on the run for murdering Anna van den Enden in Holland in 1929,
a man who quite possibly worked for the FBI--then murdering Elvis would have been an easy task.

The Death of Elvis

Elvis's girlfriend, Ginger Alden, found his body in the bathroom of his home--Graceland--
in Memphis on the morning of August 16, 1977. He was taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital
where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death is still a matter of controversy.

Dr. Jerry Francisco, Shelby County medical examiner--the physician who signed the death certificate--stated
publicly that Elvis died of "cardiac arrhythmia," that several prescription drugs were found in his blood stream,
but did not contribute to his death, he would have died regardless of the drugs.

Francisco further described the cause of death as "hypertensive heart disease,
with coronary artery disease as a contributing factor."(10)

Dr. Eric Muirhead, chief of pathology at Baptist Memorial Hospital,
reportedly claimed Elvis died from an accidental overdose,
or "polypharmacy, the lethal interaction of a number of drugs taken concurrently."(11)

Surprisingly, Elvis's father, Vernon Presley, reportedly believed Elvis was murdered.

The following is an excerpt from The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley,
by Alanna Nash, which describes the confusion over the cause of death of the King of rock 'n' roll:

==== [quote on] ==== ...[What] had killed Elvis Presley? Dr. Elias Ghanem told friends he was certain Elvis
had fallen off the toilet and suffocated in the shag carpet, and pointed to his lolling tongue as proof.

Others speculated that Elvis had mistaken the codeine tablets given to him by his dentist for Demerol
and had ingested all ten, suffering an allergic reaction. But a grief-stricken Vernon believed his son
had been murdered, either by a member of the entourage or, he suspected, by Parker himself,
especially in light of Elvis's growing interest in finding another manager
and the Colonel's monumental gaming debts, his association with nefarious circles,
and his inability to sell Elvis's contract in California.

For that reason, Vernon authorized both a private investigation and an autopsy.

On October 18, Dr. Eric Muirhead, chief of pathology at Baptist Memorial Hospital, took a team to Graceland
to explain the autopsy report to Elvis's father. According to The Death of Elvis: What Really Happened,
by Charles C. Thompson II and James P. Cole, the toxicology report showed that Elvis died of a drug overdose,
or polypharmacy, the lethal interaction of a number of drugs taken concurrently.

Vernon was told that at the meeting, the authors contend.

The following day, October 19, the Memphis Commercial Appeal ran a story by an enterprising staff
journalist named Beth Tamke, who reported that Vernon had been told that tests ordered by Baptist Memorial
Hospital showed at least ten different drugs in the singer's system.

Tamke's story went on to speculate that the interaction of the drugs might have affected Elvis's heart
and caused his death. But to reporters who contacted him later, Vernon insisted it was too early to say
whether drugs played a role in his son's demise, and added a baffling statement:
"I can't straighten it out by telling another lie."

On October 21, Dr. Jerry Francisco, Shelby County medical examiner, appeared at a news conference
and passed out a press release that said Elvis died of "hypertensive heart disease, with coronary artery disease
as a contributing factor."

According to Francisco,
who had signed the death certificate the day before, Elvis died of cardiac arrhythmia,
although he conceded that no fewer than eight drugs had been present in Presley's body.

"Prescription drugs found in the blood were not a contributing factor," Francisco said.
"Had these drugs not been there, he would still have died."(12) ==== [quote off] ====

Colonel Parker's behavior at Elvis's funeral was quite odd, and inappropriate, to say the least.
The following is an excerpt from The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley,
by Alanna Nash:

==== [quote on] ==== While the Colonel had business on his mind the day of the funeral,
several of the mourners gathered in Graceland's music, dining, and living rooms for the 2:00 P.M. service on
August 18 [1977] found his behavior more peculiar than ever, beginning with his dress: a Hawaiian shirt and a
baseball cap, from which protruded unruly tufts of gray-brown hair."If Elvis looks down and he sees the Colonel
all dressed up, he's gonna say, 'What the hell is that?'" Parker explained later. "This is the way I always dress.
Informal. No point putting on airs now." When he saw Tom Hulett dressed appropriately in a tie and black suit,
the Colonel told him to go change into his usual jeans and loafers.But what galled everyone was that Parker
refused to be a pallbearer, and, as Jackie Kahane remembers, "every time he would go past the coffin, he
would avert his eyes." Larry Geller also found it strange. He remembers the Colonel being stoic." He didn't talk
to many people, and he was way in the back. He certainly wasn't sitting in the front room, and he could have
been right down there with Grandma [Minnie Mae Presley] and Vernon if he'd wanted." Afterward, Geller
expected Parker to have a private moment at the casket before the lid came down for the last time and a white
hearse trailed by seventeen white limousines carried the body to Forest Hill Cemetery. "But it never happened.
He wouldn't walk up. He didn't even look. You could almost see him struggling not to look."...Years later,
Parker boasted that he never once wept at the funeral. "No, sir. If anybody had seen my eyes mist up for a
second they must have had their hands in my pockets."(13) ==== [quote off] ====

The Dentist, Dr. Lester Hofman

According Alanna Nash, Elvis went to the office of Dr. Lester Hofman, his dentist,
on evening of August 15, 1977--several hours before his dead body was discovered in his bathroom
--to have a crown fixed.

Apparently it was not an emergency visit.

He merely wanted the problem crown taken care of before he started a tour the next evening.

The mysterious trip to the dentist occurred after 10:30 PM.

This seems quite odd,
especially when there was such a controversy about the cause of death.

The following is an excerpt from The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley,
by Alanna Nash, which describes Elvis's late-night trip to the dentist:

==== [quote on] ==== On the sweltering evening of August 15, 1977, Elvis Presley slipped out
of his blue silk lounging pajamas and, with the help of his cousin Billy Smith,
climbed into a black sweat suit emblazoned with a Drug Enforcement Agency patch, a white silk shirt,
and a pair of black patent boots, which he wore unzipped due to the puffy buildup of fluid in his ankles.

At 10:30 [P.M.], after a night of motorcycle riding with girlfriend Ginger Alden,
the singer stuffed two .45- caliber automatic pistols in the waistband of his sweatpants.

Then he donned his blue-tinted, chrome sunglasses to slide behind the wheel of his Stutz automobile.

With Alden, Smith, and Smith's wife, Jo, in tow, Elvis steered his way to the office of his dentist,
Dr. Lester Hofman, in East Memphis. A crown on Presley's back tooth needed fixing, and he wanted to
tend to it before he left the following evening for Portland, Maine, the first date of a twelve-day tour.(14)
==== [quote off] ====

The trip to the dentist is quite peculiar. Most doctors would not see a patient--even a superstar
like Elvis--late at night unless it was an emergency. From Alanna Nash's description of the visit,
it was not an emergency. Elvis apparently had a loose crown or something of that nature,
but it apparently could have been done any time. So why did Dr. Lester Hofman allow his patient
to come to his office after 10:30 P.M.? This is incredibly strange. Is it possible that Hofman called Elvis
and made the late-night appointment, or did Elvis schedule it? Is it possible that Hofman slipped Elvis
a drug that could trigger or mimic a heart attack? Given the controversy over Elvis's death,
and the fact that Elvis's own father thought he was murdered,
Dr. Lest Hofman should have been a prime suspect.
Yet to my knowledge, no one has ever raised the possibility that Dr. Hofman might have been involved.

[END OF EXCERPT] SOURCE NOTES:
(1) Phil Carson, Roy Buchanan: American Axe, p 54
(2) Alanna Nash, The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley, pp. 39-40
(3) Photocopy of discharge paper, dated August 19, 1933, for Thomas Parker, from Army
Medical Center, Washington, DC, Office of the Detachment Commander; signed by Major A. G. Heilman,
assistant Detachment Commander. Photocopy of Parker's discharge paper is included in book by Alanna Nash,
The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley. (4) Encyclopedia Britannica:
Presley, Elvis (5) Alanna Nash, The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley,
pp. 37-38 (6) ibid, p 38 (7) Billy Stanley and George Erikson, Elvis, My Brother, p 144 (8) Alanna Nash, The
Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley, p 236 (9) Multiple sources: (1) Jim
Marrs, Crossfire, p. 564; (2) New York Times notice: "Man is fined in death of former FBI official", January 15,
1978; (3) Daily log entry from Maryann K. Monteiro, New Hampshire State Police, Nov. 9, 1977, "Hunting
accident of Nov. 9, 1977, Telephone calls and radio transmissions" (10) Alanna Nash, The Colonel: The
Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley, pp. 313-314 (11) ibid, p 314 (12) ibid, pp. 313-314
(13) ibid, pp. 312-313 (14) ibid, p 305

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