The man who controlled the biggest career in music history did not come from Hollywood or Nashville. He came from a traveling carnival.
Before he ever met Elvis Presley, Colonel Tom Parker caught plain brown sparrows, painted them yellow, and sold them to the public as canaries. People assume that is a joke. It is not.
His famous act was Colonel Tom Parker and His Dancing Chickens. He placed live birds in a pen floored with straw or sawdust, and hid a hot plate underneath. When the music started and the metal warmed, the birds hopped, and the paying crowd saw poultry dancing to a tune.
In a carnival, he worked at a palm-reading booth and reportedly sold hot dogs with no sausage inside, betting that nobody would chase him.
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Parker would even find newly widowed women and go knocking on their doors. He claimed their late husband had ordered an expensive Bible as a final gift. Grieving women paid inflated prices for a loving gesture that had never happened.
Almost nothing he said about himself was true. He was not a colonel, since that title was honorary, given in 1948 by the Governor of Louisiana.
He was not American either. He was born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk in the Netherlands, entered the country without papers, and worked as a dog catcher and an elephant groom.
In 1955 he met a young singer from Memphis, and every carnival instinct paid off. Parker did not sell the music. He sold Elvis, stamping his name on bracelets, lipstick, sneakers, and even teddy bear perfume. His cut started at 25 percent and climbed to 50 percent. Fans still say the King became his final dancing chicken.
He was also the reason the King of Rock and Roll could never leave the country and perform, because since Tom was an illegal immigrant, his going out of the country would mean he could not step back in.
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