For more than 20 years, Colonel Tom Parker was the man in Elvis Presley’s corner. Elvis signed with him as his exclusive representative on March 26, 1956, and the Colonel managed him from then until Elvis passed away in 1977.
Parker himself passed away in Las Vegas in January 1997. He was 87.
About 160 people came to his memorial service at the Las Vegas Hilton. It was a fitting spot, since that was the hotel where Elvis had played his famous Las Vegas engagements. Parker’s wife, Loanne, was there. So was country star Eddy Arnold, whom Parker had managed before Elvis ever came along.
And so was Priscilla Presley.
She had come to represent the Elvis Presley estate, and she stood up to give a eulogy. Some people might have expected her to keep it short and polite. Priscilla had more to say than that.
She has spoken well of the Colonel in other interviews over the years too. In this short clip from a later interview, she calls him a nice man.
Priscilla talks about the kind of man the Colonel was
A reporter from the Las Vegas Sun was at the memorial and wrote down some of her words that day. “The Colonel is somewhere working up another great promotion,” she said.
She also admitted what a lot of people in that room were thinking. “I think most of us assumed he would live forever.”
Here’s the Colonel himself in a 1993 interview, just a few years before that day.
The Colonel in his own words in 1993
The best line of the day came at the very end. The newspaper didn’t print it, but according to the Colonel’s biographer Alanna Nash, this is how Priscilla closed her eulogy.
“Elvis and the Colonel made history together, and the world is richer, better and far more interesting because of their collaboration. And now I need to locate my wallet, because I noticed there was no ticket booth on the way in here, but I’m sure that the Colonel must have arranged for some toll on the way out.”
If you knew anything about the Colonel, you got the joke right away. He was famous for finding a way to make a buck out of everything, so a free event in his honor was a gag all by itself.
Nash wrote about the Colonel’s whole life in her 2002 book, “The Colonel.” In this interview she talks about the man and his years with Elvis.
Alanna Nash talks about Colonel Parker
Priscilla wasn’t the only one with kind words. Eddy Arnold remembered Parker as a straight shooter. “He was a man of his word,” Arnold said, and “When I talked to him, I knew where I stood.”
And in case you’ve ever wondered, “Colonel” was an honorary title. Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis gave it to him in 1948.
CBS Sunday Morning took its own look at the partnership between Elvis and the Colonel, and it’s a good way to see the two of them together.
A CBS Sunday Morning look at Elvis and the Colonel
Priscilla managed to be honest about what the Colonel meant to Elvis’s story and still leave room for a laugh. Knowing how much he loved a good promotion, he’d probably have wanted that joke printed on the tickets, if there had been any.