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This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. The history of rock and roll, really the history of most

20th century popular music, is filled with stories of unscrupulous managers. One of the men

frequently near the top of the list is Elvis Presley's

longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. He had worked in carnivals and was considered to have a

slippery relationship with the truth and a flair for exaggeration, but a talent for making a profitable

business deal. Parker's name and his background were fictions. He was

really from Holland, not the U.S. He stowed away on a ship to the U.S. and never became a citizen of

America. He served in the military under his false identity, but was never a colonel in the U.S.

Army. Colonel was an honorific, bestowed on him by the governor of Louisiana.

During the time my guest Peter Goralnik was writing his definitive two-volume biography of Elvis Presley,

he got to see Parker's archive, which included his letters, thousands of them.

He knew the colonel and his letters were worthy of a book, and now Geralnik has

written it. It's called The Colonel and the King. The first half of the book is a biography of the

colonel. The second is a collection of his letters, written to Elvis, executives at his record label,

RCA, and other people in the orbit of Elvis's music and movies. Geronik says,

researching this book made him question many of his own preconceptions about Parker and led to

plenty of surprises. Goronik's other books include a biography of Sam Phillips, whose son record

label was the first to record Elvis. Peter Gerellanek, welcome back to

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