Tommy Sands, the Elvis prototype
When Colonel Tom Parker was fired by Eddy Arnold in 1953, he immediately started working with young hillbilly singer Tommy Sands. Aged...
Elvis has left the building
During the early 1950s, Colonel Tom Parker was exclusively managing the hugely successful country singer Eddy Arnold. But Parker had...
Elvis Presley, quiet crusader
Throughout his long career, Elvis Presley's manager advised him to steer clear of any political or controversial subjects when being...
Colonel Tom's secret club
Above all things. Colonel Tom Parker loved "playing the game". By nature he was a practical joker and would happily spend $10 to con you...
Tommy Durden at the crossroads
Tommy Durden was, by common consent, the nicest man you could ever meet. The youngest of ten children, born in Georgia, Tommy fell in...
The first songbook
During the 1940s and 1950s, Songbook Folio sales were a regular part of a country musician's income. His publishers would print a...
Marty Robbins, Tom's friend
Although we now think of it as a definitive Elvis recording, for most Southern listeners in 1955, "That's All Right" was a hit song for...
The Bob Luman connection
Elvis Presley was not the only Southern white boy playing with the blues in the mid-1950s. In Texas, for example, Bob Luman knew there...
The Boren family
Mae Boren Axton's full birth name was Nannie Mae Boren which is exactly and precisely the same name as her mother. She was the...
Eddy Arnold's gold record
During the 1940s, Tom Parker assembled a team around Eddy Arnold that he would eventually use with Elvis Presley in the 1950s. In order...
