This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

Greg McDonald got his start in show business as a teenager after meeting Elvis Presley

and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, while changing their air conditioning filters in Parker's

Palm Springs, California home. Greg went on to manage Ricky Nelson for 17 years

and worked under Colonel Parker and Elvis

shortly after Parker began managing Elvis in the 1950s.

Here's Greg with the Colonel and Elvis Christmas story.

Colonel Parker loved Christmas.

He had always had a Santa suit, and he loved entertaining kids and families.

Even at the Las Vegas Hilton, he would sit out there in the Santa suit and entertain all of the Hilton employees' children, several thousand

of them. And the bad news was he passed that Santa suit down to me and he had me do the Santa Claus

routine every year, which is very, and if you've ever played Santa Claus, you know it's very hard.

It's not easy. It's a tough day. But he did that. He always

had a little present for the kids. You know, we'd give him an Elvis teddy bear, all kinds of

different trinkets that the Colonel. Colonel loved him make up little merchandising gadgets.

In 1971, RCA had set up, and the kernel had set up a session in Nashville at RCA Studio B,

and they wanted a Christmas album.

Well, Elvis wanted to record, but he wanted to do other songs.

He wanted to go in and do some Bob Dylan covers and some Peter Paul and Mary stuff, which was

hotter at that time. And Elvis, of course, his Christmas album in 1958 was the biggest

Christmas album ever.

...