Baby, Let's Play House Part 6

"I remember very strongly people praying for him in the churches. And I knew what a deeply religious person he was, so I was talking to him one day and something was said about how they felt about him, and his eyes filled up. He said, 'Well, Marion, the only thing I can say is they don't know me.' Then he laughed and said, 'But it don't hurt to have a few people praying for you.' "

On the other hand, Elvis was soon making more money than he or his parents had ever seen in their lives. It was modest by most entertainment standards-he got only scale for the Hayride broadcasts, and he split his take with Scotty and Bill on the road. But he couldn't believe his good fortune, and in his role reversal, it thrilled him to provide for his parents, whom he saw as his dependents. In late 1954 he wired his parents funds from Houston: HI, BABIES, HERE'S THE MONEY TO PAY THE BILLS. DON'T TELL NO ONE HOW MUCH I SENT. I WILL SEND MORE NEXT WEEK. THERE IS A CARD IN THE MAIL. LOVE, ELVIS. HI, BABIES, HERE'S THE MONEY TO PAY THE BILLS. DON'T TELL NO ONE HOW MUCH I SENT. I WILL SEND MORE NEXT WEEK. THERE IS A CARD IN THE MAIL. LOVE, ELVIS.

On December 8, 1954, he went back into the Sun studio with Scotty and Bill, recording the hillbilly blues of "You're a Heartbreaker" and "Milkcow Blues Boogie." He had the confidence now to loosen up and let things roll. ("Hold it fellas. That don't move me. Let's get real, real gone for a change.") There was a different crackle in the air, Marion noted. Sometimes Elvis would get so tickled by Bill's antics in the studio that "he would roll on the floor and kick his heels and laugh."

By early 1955 no act could follow him onstage, and shortly he would be headlining. ("When we started working with Elvis," says Maxine, "we got top billing over him, but that didn't last long.") Once that happened, both Elvis and his fans threw all caution to the wind. On a tour through Texas booked by deejay Tom Perryman, who also managed the Browns, Elvis and Jim Ed's fellow performers "speculated that J. E. and Elvis must be betting on how many girls they could score with in a single night," as Maxine noted. "Some of us eavesdropped and counted them. Tom came by, saw what was going on, shook his head, and said, 'By G.o.d, those boys are gonna wear those things out if they don't slow down.' "

Often, on the road, girls would sit in the front row where the stage lights fell, and lift their skirts to expose their naked parts. Gladys was there in Arkansas one night when girls stormed the stage and threw their panties at him, and Elvis had to pay for it. Gladys was appalled that young teens would do this to her son. And Elvis was embarra.s.sed because they did it in front of his mother.

"I'm not sure that she handled that real well," Dixie says of Gladys's emotional reaction to Elvis's becoming a s.e.x star. "Of course, she wanted him to be loved and to achieve the fame and the notoriety that he wanted. But at the same time, there was a side of her that wanted to think that her son was still remaining pure and innocent through the whole thing. Kind of a two-sided coin there."

Gladys always asked Maxine to take good care of Elvis, and Maxine tried her best, paying for his dry cleaning and doing his washing, though he went shy on her when she asked for his undershorts. He didn't have but a couple of pairs, and he purposely didn't wear any when he performed. The rumor circulated that he wore a toilet paper roll or a sock in his pants to make himself look bigger, but it wasn't true. Sometimes Elvis, who was uncirc.u.mcised, got aroused, particularly when his pants rubbed him just so.

One night when Elvis's parents came to the Hayride, he walked offstage after taking a number of encores and just about brought the house down. Gladys grabbed him up by the arm and pulled him over to the side of the stage where no one could hear them. "Elvis," she said sternly, "don't you have any drawers?" He thought fast, and said, "No, ma'am, the only pair I own was dirty, and Maxine wouldn't wash 'em."

"Honey, G.o.d, he was huge!" Maxine says. "And it showed. And then when he'd shake his leg, my G.o.d! You could tell he had a hard-on. It looked like it. h.e.l.l, he knew what he was doing. Bill Black went out and said, 'I'm going to buy Elvis some shorts.' And he thought, 'I'll play a trick on him.' He bought him some silk ones, polka dots. He thought Elvis wouldn't wear them, but Elvis fell in love with them and wouldn't even take 'em off. He didn't want me to wash them. He was afraid somebody would steal them. I guarantee you, he wore silk underwear for the rest of his life, when he wore any at all. He loved them."

Betty Amos also looked out for Elvis, dispensing advice and offering to iron his shirts. "I said to him one time, 'Give me your shirt, and I'll take it over to my room and iron it.' He said, 'That's all right.' I said, 'My G.o.d, you're a s.e.x symbol. You're going out onstage with a wrinkled shirt? Give me that thing!' "

In the mornings, after the road shows, she'd see Elvis in the restaurant having breakfast, and he was never alone. "He'd have some little ol' girl over there, his latest. I think a lot of times he didn't care about any of these women he was with. It was just for show. When you're with a different one every day, there's nothing there. But he'd look over at me and I'd look over at him, and I'd raise my eyebrows or shake my head, like, 'That's good,' or 'That's bad,' like a sister is supposed to do. They all looked pretty much the same to me. There were no raving beauties, and there were no ugly girls, n.o.body who really stood out."

Gladys, frightened by the changes in her son, "wanted him to stay at home and be a gospel singer," Maxine remembers. "She was afraid for him to be out in the world the way he was." But she also thought Betty was the perfect girl for Elvis to pal around with, "because I talked about Jesus and G.o.d all the time. And Elvis was completely fascinated by that, and wanted me to talk more about it. I think he wanted to believe really bad."

Betty was a good influence on Elvis, but he was far more interested in Maxine and Jim Ed's comely sister.

Seventeen-year-old Bonnie Brown was a sweet, quiet girl with fair skin, raven hair, and an ample bosom. She, too, was soon performing on the Hayride. The first night, Maxine and Jim Ed introduced her as "our little sister, Bonnie." But as Maxine wrote in Looking Back to See: A Country Music Memoir, Looking Back to See: A Country Music Memoir, "When she walked out on that stage, dressed in her tight-fitting outfit, we thought the guys in the audience were going to tear the place down." "When she walked out on that stage, dressed in her tight-fitting outfit, we thought the guys in the audience were going to tear the place down."

In the beginning, Elvis and Bonnie didn't seem interested in each other, but then one day in West Texas, she was relaxing around the motel pool, killing time before a show. Bonnie had her hair in curlers, and Elvis-still so immature he went around handcuffing people to him-came along and pushed her in the pool. She was livid, but after he dived in after her, she joined in the fun, and they were soon together all the time. "He was crazy about her, and she was about him, too," Maxine says.

Bonnie had never been in love before, and it was serious-she was staying out late with Elvis, and one night, she woke Maxine up to tell her that he had proposed. They wanted to get married, she told her, but they'd both decided to put it off for a while, since they were so young.

The Brown family owned a restaurant and supper club in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, called the Trio Club, where Elvis would sometimes rehea.r.s.e. Now that he was interested in Bonnie, he made a point to stop by more frequently, especially on his way to the Hayride. All the Browns, including Bonnie's parents, Floyd and Birdie, came to regard him as family. Mrs. Brown cooked for him, and, "He couldn't get enough of her banana pudding," Maxine says. "He loved her because she looked kind of like Gladys, and so she took him under her wing."

A lot of times, coming back from the shows, he spent the night with the Browns instead of going on to Memphis. Their baby sister, Norma, would give up her bed, which was situated in Floyd and Birdie's bedroom. The intimacy didn't bother Elvis-in fact, he found it comforting, as it precisely duplicated the sleeping arrangement he'd had with Vernon and Gladys as a child in Tupelo. Maxine knew he didn't sleep much, and noticed his "nervous leg," and how he'd get his toes stuck in the holes of the Browns' bedsheets. "Before morning, they would be torn into shreds. But Mother didn't care. She loved him, and it gave her an excuse to go buy some new ones."

Apart from his pursuit of Bonnie and his professional a.s.sociation with Maxine and Jim Ed, Elvis seemed to relish a stable and secure family atmosphere. He taught little Norma how to play the piano, and a lot of times, when Maxine, Jim Ed, and Bonnie were on the road, he would come and play baseball in the backyard with her after a helping of Birdie's home cooking.

"On the road," Jim Ed remembered, "he would eat a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If he ate three times a day, that is. But that's all he ever ate. His mother was evidently a good cook, and he just waited until he got back home to his mama."

According to Maxine, Elvis's love affair with Bonnie ended as quickly as it began. "One night, she went out to dinner and he was in this booth, all loved up with this other girl. He didn't know Bonnie was there, and she said, 'That's the end of that.' "

In time, Elvis could be cavalier when relationships ended, but he seemed to romanticize any girl who showed him the door. Three years later, before Elvis went into the army, Vernon would tell Maxine that Elvis was still in love with Bonnie, and wanted her to wait for him to return from the service. But though Bonnie pined for him, she wouldn't be burned twice.

"Elvis Presley was a highly s.e.xed young guy," remembered Bill Randle, a top disc jockey in Cleveland, Ohio, who first met Elvis in February 1955 and worked with him several times in the next two years. "He was a randy rooster, actually, in that kind of colloquial terminology. And he was very active s.e.xually. All these very well developed young women and excited groupies would congregate around backstage, and Elvis Presley's car was used not only to sell the records out of the trunk between the intermissions, but also it was a s.e.xual a.s.signation place. There was a lot of activity in that car."

At the Hayride, Elvis wasted no time on a broken heart, and, in fact, from the beginning, he'd set his sights on another girl, an energetic, doe-eyed beauty named Carolyn Bradshaw. With dark hair and eyes, she resembled a glorified Gladys, though she was far smaller, standing only four feet ten inches tall and weighing ninety-five pounds. She took a lot of ribbing about being a shorty. Betty Amos was five foot seven, and when she held her arm out, Carolyn could stand under it. "Cute little thing," as Betty terms her. "Now, I was a big doll, but Carolyn was a little doll." And Elvis wanted to meet her.

"One of the first questions Elvis asked me when I met him was, 'Is Carolyn Bradshaw gonna be on the show tonight?' " Horace Logan remembered. And he had another question: "Is she as good-lookin' in person as she is in her pictures?"

"When he saw her in person," Logan wrote in his book, Elvis, Hank and Me: Making Musical History on the Louisiana Hayride Elvis, Hank and Me: Making Musical History on the Louisiana Hayride, "I think he was even more taken by her."

Carolyn Bradshaw would epitomize three romantic ideals in Elvis's heart, fueling his obsession with virgins, beauty queens, and tiny brunettes with china doll faces. Physically, she was, in fact, the prototype, the first Priscilla.

She was born in Arkansas as the youngest of eleven children of a cotton farmer who died when she was seven. After the eighth grade, she and her mother, Eugenia, moved to Shreveport, where Carolyn's older sister, Jo, was already working. The three shared a small apartment, and on Sat.u.r.day nights, Carolyn started attending the Hayride. Jo, also a beauty, dated Johnny Horton.

Though she studied acting and dance, Carolyn's real ambition was to be a famous singer. After she belted out Hank Williams's "Jambalaya" onstage with Jim Reeves at the Reo Palm Isle Club in Longview, Texas, the vivacious fifteen-year-old was hooked on both the applause and the attention. "When you come from a family of eleven . . . well, I don't think they knew I was there until I was five years old." Her manager, Fabor Robison, who ran his clients' careers with a steel hand, signed her to his own Abbott label, recording her one Top Ten hit, "The Marriage of Mexican Joe," an answer song to Reeves's "Mexican Joe," in 1953. That same year, at age sixteen, she joined the Hayride cast and went on to win the 1954 Louisiana state t.i.tle of "Pet.i.te Miss Physical Culture."

Her hit song, coupled with her good looks, promised a bright future. She did a tour of California with Reeves, trading her white-fringed cowgirl outfits for c.o.c.ktail dresses and high heels, and landed a three-month stint on Cliffie Stone's radio and television shows as a fill-in for pregnant girl singer Bucky Tibbs. She was still on Stone's Hometown Jamboree Hometown Jamboree when Elvis first came to the Hayride. when Elvis first came to the Hayride.

"When I left that show and came back to Shreveport, n.o.body knew I was coming, so I just went backstage to visit with all of the group. The girls were telling me about this new guy on the show, Elvis Presley, who'd been there two or three times by then. They were going on and on about him, and I was thinking, 'Who is this upstart?' And somebody said, 'Well, you just wait and see.' And then the following Sat.u.r.day night, there he was, and I saw. And boy, did I see. He was magnetic, just awesome, even then."

Carolyn was only an average talent-she relied on a strong regional tw.a.n.g and a fiery delivery to carry a song. But she tried hard and had a lot of guts, and "I had such fun doing it onstage that I don't think people cared whether I could sing or not." Her fresh-faced appeal made her popular with the boys, who greeted her with wolf whistles and queued up for her autograph.

Some of the female cast members were jealous of her, particularly since she'd been dating Tibby Edwards. "He was little, sweet, and cute, and all the girls went gaga over him," says Nita Lynn, a girl her age and Carolyn's best friend on the show. Carolyn knew how high-tempered women could be, so she didn't let it bother her. But even that hadn't prepared her for the female reaction to Elvis.

"We had our fans at personal appearances and at the Hayride, but they didn't just absolutely lose their mind over any of us, and they did over Elvis. I think I was more in a state of mild shock than anything else. I've never seen anybody, man or woman, with that kind of magnetism."

The first time they spoke, "He looked down at me with this little half-grin and those sleepy eyes, and I just loved it. He had a nervous way of standing, but he was easy to talk to, and he laughed a lot, and I thought, 'Wow, I see what the ladies are talking about!' He was just my type, really s.e.xy. There's just no other word for it."

He kept company with her from that first night, when a group of the Hayride cast-Ginny Wright, the Rowley Trio, and his rival-to-be, Tibby Edwards-went over to Bossier City for a bite after the show. In the next few days, he'd start taking her to all the usual hangouts-Murrell Stansell's Bantam Grill, where he played the pinball machine (and where steel guitar great Jimmy Day teased Elvis about how much Carolyn could eat), and Harry's Barbecue, a favorite of George Jones and Faron Young. Of course, they went to the movies, Elvis, or "El," as she called him, borrowing the Browns' car for a date at the Strand Theatre.

"She really liked him," remembers Shreveport radio personality Louise Alley, who lived across the hall from the Bradshaw family in the apartment house, and b.u.mped into the polite young man ("Excuse me, ma'am") on the stairs as he came to pick her up for a date.

Carolyn always found Elvis "extremely respectful," though affectionate.

"He was an ideal date, almost, and the best kisser. The only thing is that he was very, very restless. There was one movie that I really wanted to see, and he kept getting up and going out. He couldn't even sit still. Finally, I gave up and said, 'Let's just go. You're not enjoying this.' So we left. I've often wondered what created that. I think there was just an emptiness in his life."

When he first took her out, Carolyn excitedly called her friend Nita Lynn. "You will never guess who I'm dating! Elvis!"

Nita was currently on tour with Johnny Horton and Paul Howard and His Arkansas Cotton Pickers, and she hadn't kept up with the news. "Who?"

"Don't tell me you haven't heard of Elvis Presley?"

"I'm afraid not, but the name is enough to choke a horse."

"He's a cat!" Carolyn said, meaning he was a cool cat. "He played the kind of music that wasn't the three-chord Hank Williams songs we played, and he moved on stage," as Nita later wrote.

Soon, he asked Carolyn to go steady. In her view, "El and I were well-matched. We had a lot of interests in common, and shared things, and talked." Nita believes Elvis would have married Carolyn, "because he was just madly in love with her. You could tell when he was around her." But they didn't have deep conversations, and Carolyn didn't know anything about Dixie Locke, or even about his romance with Bonnie Brown. Confusion arose at the end of 1954 when Carolyn, a one-man woman, heard from Pappy Covington that Elvis was not honoring his promise to her. "That was the one time I was really upset. Pappy was like my own father, and he said, 'I don't want you to get your heart broken, so just understand that Elvis is going to be seeing a lot of women.' "

"All of his romances were short," says Hayride announcer Frank Page. "Carolyn's name kept coming up as being his girlfriend, and I thought maybe she might be something special to him."

But he couldn't seem to change his ways. In fact, once Carolyn's friend Nita got back to Shreveport, Elvis would discreetly try to put his arm around her her shoulders, but she'd have none of it. "After a few times, I threw his arm from around me and told him, 'Listen, Elvis. You keep your hands to yourself!' " That brought guffaws from the musicians, since most girls encouraged Elvis's affections. But Nita found him c.o.c.ky, and she didn't like some of his language, either, especially when he took the Lord's name in vain. It wouldn't be long before a high school princ.i.p.al in Mobile, Alabama, stopped Elvis's show because he told an off-color joke. shoulders, but she'd have none of it. "After a few times, I threw his arm from around me and told him, 'Listen, Elvis. You keep your hands to yourself!' " That brought guffaws from the musicians, since most girls encouraged Elvis's affections. But Nita found him c.o.c.ky, and she didn't like some of his language, either, especially when he took the Lord's name in vain. It wouldn't be long before a high school princ.i.p.al in Mobile, Alabama, stopped Elvis's show because he told an off-color joke.

Carolyn never confronted Elvis about the others, but she wondered what his parents thought about his s.e.xual behavior. She met Gladys and Vernon only once, backstage, and her heart sank when she realized Elvis had never told them about her, that they reacted as if she were just another singer on the Hayride. But she saw how Elvis's dynamic attraction for women troubled his mother. "She was very quiet and reserved and didn't smile very much. His father smiled a little bit more, but neither of them had much to say. If I had been his mother, I would have been very afraid of where it all was leading."

Still, Carolyn forgave him for keeping company with the other girls, because she still wanted to see him. She'd have to be sure that he was dedicated and faithful before she completely gave her heart, though. And coming from a family of "pretty devout Presbyterians, I had some strong moral values." But she tried to keep a positive att.i.tude. She was an independent girl, and if things didn't work out, they could both go on to greener pastures.

"She was very sharp and s.p.u.n.ky," offers Ginny Wright. "And her mother watched her real close. Carolyn was still going to school at that time, so her mother wouldn't let her book too much. She told Fabor, 'My daughter's too young to be going out on the road and keeping those hours.' "

But Carolyn did go over to East Texas on the package shows sometimes, and at least one photograph, taken at the Hawkins (Texas) High School gym in December 1954, attests to their few appearances together. The next day, she was either still on the road, or couldn't raise her head off the pillow to go to school. That prompted the truant officer to visit her mother a time or two ("I gave that poor lady such grief"), but she still insisted on being part of it all. With Bill or Scotty behind the wheel, Elvis and Carolyn would harmonize in the backseat, working up gospel songs like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Elvis would sing ba.s.s, and something about the way he looked when he sang it tickled her, and they'd tumble with laughter.

"The Memphis Flash," as Horace Logan called Elvis in his Hayride introductions, was still green in his stage prattle ("Friends, I'm too p.o.o.ped to pop!"), replying he was, "Sick, sober, and sorry," when Logan asked him how he was getting along. But he was already outgrowing the radio show, and soon Elvis would be too big for its package shows, too, particularly after Bob Neal's management contract took effect in January 1955, and the records charted higher, and he toured nearly every day of the year.

Elvis would let Carolyn know when his shows were close enough for her to attend, and he and Scotty and Bill would swing through and pick her up. That posed a problem.

"Mom didn't care a lot about my seeing musicians, and a lot of our dates were en route to and from his appearances. Boy, this almost drove her crazy."

It all made Carolyn's head spin, too. Everything was happening so fast-Elvis was like a comet streaking across the sky. By March, he was headlining, and by May, he created riots wherever he went. By June, he'd outgrown Neal as his solo manager, and by July, he'd hit the national charts. Come October, he would be too big for the little Sun label, and that meant he'd be ready for a national launch in 1956. And where would that leave them them?

"I think the potential was there for us to fall in love, but the pull of fame, and the reality of how popular he was becoming meant the relationship didn't have a chance to develop. He was getting so busy that I never knew from one time to the other how long it would be until I would see him again."

Finally, she concluded that any time might be the last time. And after a few months, the romance flamed out.

"It wasn't like we broke up or said good-bye. We didn't even get to say good-bye. He was just whisked away and out of my life."

And just as Elvis's career was in its stratospheric rise, Carolyn's stalled.

"She was a beautiful young lady," in the view of Tom Bearden of the Hayride's Rhythm Harmoneers. "She had some projection, and she presented a good entertainer appearance." But she never found the right songs that fit her style, and she was said to rebuff the s.e.xual advances of her manager, who lost interest in the female singers who refused to sleep with him. Without a competent manager, and with her mother limiting her personal appearances on the road, she was never able to advance to the next level.

"At the time, all I wanted to do was sing," she says. But then, after her professional and personal disappointments, she just wanted out. In late 1955, at the age of eighteen, she left the show and her recording career, and moved to Memphis, working at first for Bob Neal.

In recent years, an amateur singer who uses the surname Presley has said that he is one of twin sons of Carolyn Bradshaw and Elvis Presley. But his birth date suggests otherwise, and he has provided no proof of his parentage. Carolyn dismisses his claims in two words: "He's crazy."

According to Shirley Dieu, a friend of Priscilla Presley since the 1970s, "Anybody who's ever claimed that Elvis fathered her child has been tested, and they've all come out negative." Shirley was surprised, and told Priscilla so. "She laughed and she said, 'Can you believe it? I'm just as shocked as you are. You would think there's got to be more children out there. But nope. Never. Not a one.' "

However, that doesn't mean that there isn't a child who hasn't come forward. Horace Logan wrote in his book that he knew of at least one woman in Houston who had a daughter by Elvis during the Hayride days. Houston was one of the first big cities to embrace Elvis, and he appeared around the area frequently on package shows with other of the Hayride stars during that time.

"You're bound to remember me, Mr. Logan," the woman said when she called him twenty years later for help with concert tickets. "Elvis and I were always together when he was playing in Houston in '55." Logan didn't remember the woman, but he didn't doubt her story. And when she told him that her daughter was unaware that Elvis was her father ("I thought maybe if she could see him I might be able to get up my nerve"), he advised her to let sleeping dogs lie.

"I could hear her crying softly," he wrote, "as I hung up the phone."

Ann Raye (left), (left), Elvis, and Mae Axton, at the third annual Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Celebration, Meridian, Mississippi, May 25, 1955. Ann, who turned sixteen the following day, tried to get her father to manage Elvis. "I knew just his looks were going to get him somewhere." Elvis, and Mae Axton, at the third annual Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Celebration, Meridian, Mississippi, May 25, 1955. Ann, who turned sixteen the following day, tried to get her father to manage Elvis. "I knew just his looks were going to get him somewhere." (Courtesy of James V. Roy (Courtesy of James V. Roy)

Chapter Six.

"A Great, Big, Beautiful Hunk of Forbidden Fruit"

On a mild October night in 1954, Bob Neal invited country music promoter Oscar Davis to the Eagle's Nest in Memphis to see his new act. Davis, a short, silver-haired man who dressed to the nines, was in town promoting an Eddy Arnold show at Ellis Auditorium on behalf of Colonel Tom Parker, Eddy's former manager, who still did some of Arnold's booking. Like Parker, Davis was an old carny who'd seen everything. As a vaudeville promoter, he once even toured a girl "frozen alive" in ice. But the faded impresario hadn't seen anything like Elvis, and he told Neal, "Bob, this guy is incredible. I'd like to meet him." Two nights later, Bob brought Elvis backstage, where Davis told the young singer how impressed he'd been, and that he hoped they could work together. Davis to the Eagle's Nest in Memphis to see his new act. Davis, a short, silver-haired man who dressed to the nines, was in town promoting an Eddy Arnold show at Ellis Auditorium on behalf of Colonel Tom Parker, Eddy's former manager, who still did some of Arnold's booking. Like Parker, Davis was an old carny who'd seen everything. As a vaudeville promoter, he once even toured a girl "frozen alive" in ice. But the faded impresario hadn't seen anything like Elvis, and he told Neal, "Bob, this guy is incredible. I'd like to meet him." Two nights later, Bob brought Elvis backstage, where Davis told the young singer how impressed he'd been, and that he hoped they could work together.

The next day, Davis returned to Nashville and drove straight out to Madison, Tennessee, to see the Colonel, who was in the middle of lunch with yet another carny, Charlie Lamb, who'd gone legit as a country music journalist.

"It was really Oscar who found Elvis," Lamb says. "He came over and said, 'I saw the darndest act you ever imagined, this kid who does this twisting around and so forth.' The Colonel's eyes popped open, and he said, 'Where was he? Who is he?' And the Colonel got up from the table and pulled his car out and left. He still wasn't back when I went out there the next day."

D. J. Fontana, the staff drummer for the Hayride, sometimes went out on the road with Elvis, and he remembers Parker showing up in Texas and Arkansas. "We would see him walking around, hanging back in the shadows, but he never would say nothing. A lot of people just didn't want to deal with him."

However, Bob Neal, now Elvis's official manager, jumped at the chance. He recognized Parker as a "razzle-dazzle character" but knew the Colonel had clout, and that he was an uneducated genius, a brilliant tactician. He also saw that Parker could put Elvis on the package tours that he took out to other parts of the country, into New Mexico, for example, beyond the Hayride's reach.

On January 15, 1955, Parker and his lieutenant, Tom Diskin, traveled to Shreveport to watch Elvis-outfitted in a rust-colored suit, a black-dotted purple tie, and pink socks-captivate the Hayride audience. Afterward, at the Captain Shreve Hotel, they met with Neal and hammered out an arrangement by which Parker would work in partnership with Bob on Elvis's bookings.

Already, Parker schemed to take total control of Bob's new sensation. But until Bob's management contract expired the following year, the Colonel was careful not to show his hand, even though it was obvious that Neal didn't know what he had: "I always felt that Elvis was going to be a big artist, but I didn't really realize the true scope. n.o.body had ever been that big." On the other hand, Parker, a shrewd dealer with uncanny knowledge of human nature, knew what brought people into the big tent.

Born in Holland as Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, he had entered the United States illegally in 1929, and after a stint in the U.S. Army, folded into the carnivals at the height of the Depression. It was there, between hawking his now infamous foot-long hot dogs (a hint of meat at each end, with lots of slaw in the middle), that he honed the merchandising and marketing skills he would later apply to the recording industry.

His entree into the music business was Gene Austin, the 1920s crooner ("My Blue Heaven") who needed an advance man for his tent show, the Star-O-Rama Theater, in the late 1930s, the last hurrah of his career. Parker segued to booking country shows-particularly Pee Wee King and Roy Acuff-while employed as the field agent for the Hillsborough County (Florida) Humane Society in Tampa. Acuff later flirted with the idea of letting Parker manage him. But eventually, the bandleader thought better of it and told Parker to keep his eye on King's young vocalist, Eddy Arnold.

The two teamed up in 1945 ("I was just a poor, hungry guy who owned a guitar," Eddy said), and Parker worked around the clock on his behalf. While continuing to operate out of Tampa, he acted as Arnold's booking agent and manager, using the two-fingered hunt-and-peck system to type letters on flamboyant stationery festooned with Arnold's photograph. Soon the Colonel (his t.i.tle was honorary, bestowed by Jimmie Davis, the singing governor of Louisiana, in 1948) was prosperous enough to move to a stone house outside of Nashville. Ever the showman, he kept a team of miniature ponies in the backyard.

Their a.s.sociation made Arnold one of the biggest stars ever to come out of Nashville, with a repertoire of number one records, radio shows, and two Hollywood movies. But Parker's brash, rough-hewn style clashed with Arnold's sophistication and polish. And in the early 1950s, Arnold learned that Parker, who took a 25 percent commission for exclusivity, was working with other artists on the side.

Both Arnold and Parker had encouraged Texas fireball Charline Arthur to come to town (Elvis would pay plenty of attention to her wild stage movements, allegedly borrowing a few), and Arnold wasn't threatened by his interest in developing the teenage Tommy Sands. But when the Colonel began booking dates for Hank Snow, Arnold dissolved the majority of their business dealings in 1953, Parker still getting the best of him with a financial settlement.

With his own Jamboree Attractions, the Colonel began booking Grand Ole Opry stars, placing many of them on New York radio and television shows through his a.s.sociation with the William Morris Agency. He also managed the 1954 "RCA Victor Country Caravan," showcasing Chet Atkins, Minnie Pearl, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and the Davis Sisters. Headlining was Hank Snow, already a star but soon to become bigger with the network television appearances that Parker arranged for him. The two made a deal to expand Jamboree Attractions to give Snow part ownership, rechristening the business Hank Snow Enterprises-Jamboree Attractions.

All along, however, Parker saw it as a temporary arrangement. He was always looking beyond country music for the Next Big Thing, someone he could call, in carnival parlance, "my attraction." He found him in 1955.

"When Tom was driving to New York to finalize what he needed to do about Elvis," recalls David Wilds, whose father, Honey Wilds, made up half of the blackface comedy duo Jamup and Honey, "he and [his wife] Marie stopped and spent time with us. I was about eleven, and I remember sitting in our living room and hearing Marie tell Mother, 'Tom's found this wonderful boy, just the most remarkable thing. Honey, he sings s.e.xy hillbilly.' My mother looked kind of bug-eyed, and Daddy thought Tom had lost his mind, being gone over Elvis Presley. He thought it was the biggest mistake Tom ever made."

By the time he hooked up with Elvis, Parker could brag that he was one of country music's premier booking agents and advance men, even as many still saw him as a carny operator out for a quick buck. In addition to Pee Wee King, Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl, and Jamup and Honey, at one time or another his stable included Ernest Tubb, Benny Martin, Rod Brasfield, the Duke of Paducah, Clyde Moody, George Morgan, Slim Whitman, and the Carter Family. For a short spell, he also managed June Carter on her own. Now he was only too happy to get as many clients as possible on the Hank Snow Enterprises-Jamboree Attractions tours.

In February 1955, Elvis went back into the recording studio to cut his fourth Sun single, "Baby, Let's Play House." The Arthur Gunter song, heavy on playful innuendo and full of pent-up s.e.xual energy, would be the first Elvis record ever to chart, climbing to number ten on the Billboard Billboard country and western chart, and number five on the country disc jockey chart, hanging on for a surprising fifteen weeks. country and western chart, and number five on the country disc jockey chart, hanging on for a surprising fifteen weeks.

On February 6, three days after his recording session, Elvis realized a lifelong dream when he performed two shows at Ellis Auditorium, where he had taken his fantasy curtain calls only a few years before. He was at the bottom of a bill that included hillbilly star Faron Young and gospel great Martha Carson, but the posters boasted "Memphis' Own Elvis Presley," and he was proud to make good in his hometown.

After the first show, he looked up in the autograph line, and there stood Billie Wardlaw. A flood of emotions came over them both, and they laughed to cover them up. Elvis took one of his new Sun Records promotional pictures and thought a minute, finally writing across it, "To Billie, My Little Ex-."

Between shows, Bob Neal arranged a meeting between Sam Phillips and the Colonel across the street at Palumbo's Restaurant. Parker brought his right-hand man, Tom Diskin, and things started off friendly enough with the four of them as they discussed how to further the career of the act that brought them together. Then the Colonel looked at Phillips and dropped the bomb: The boy could not realize his dreams on a small-time label like Sun. In fact, Parker had already met with RCA Victor, where he'd done business for Eddy Arnold and Hank Snow, to see about purchasing Elvis's contract. When Phillips protested, the Colonel turned a deaf ear. The papers might not be signed yet, but it made no difference whether Phillips wanted wanted to sell Elvis's contract. The Colonel was now in control, and Elvis was changing labels. to sell Elvis's contract. The Colonel was now in control, and Elvis was changing labels.

On February 16, 1955, Elvis played the Odessa Senior High School Field House in Odessa, Texas, where fifteen-year-old Roy Orbison could hardly believe what he saw onstage. "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. . . . There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it." Odessa, Texas, where fifteen-year-old Roy Orbison could hardly believe what he saw onstage. "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. . . . There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it."

Four days later, Parker sent Elvis out on his second Hank SnowJamboree tour of the month, billed as a "WSM Grand Ole Opry" show, with the added attractions of the Duke of Paducah, and Nashville music legend Mother Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters, Helen, June, and Anita. They would tour together again for three weeks in May, but Anita never got over his fevered gyrations, or the crowd's reactions to them.

"We went out there and watched him, and I said, 'My Lord!' The boy had talent, but I couldn't believe the audience! It was not just young girls-there were people with gray hair out there screaming. Every night, the girls would try to tear his clothes off of him. His b.u.t.tons were always gone, and Mama would take the b.u.t.tons off of all our clothes and put them on his. So we were always b.u.t.tonless!"

Elvis had a huge crush on Anita, who played stand-up ba.s.s and sang soprano. Whenever Anita was around, said Red West, Elvis was like "a kid with six pair of feet." He did anything he could to get her attention.

Meanwhile, Elvis's relationship with Dixie was still limping along, and he had promised to take her to her junior prom on May 6. But he had shows right up until then-the night before, in fact, a pack of girls chased him across a football field in Mobile, Alabama.

"I was so afraid he was not going to get back in town for my prom, and his mom and I had been shopping, and she had bought my dress." However, Dixie was more fearful that they would never realize their plans for the future. One day he was unknown, and then "just overnight he was there. It was phenomenal."

He showed up at her door not in the dark blue suit of his own senior prom, but in a handsome white tuxedo jacket, and in Bob and Helen's brand-new Lincoln, which he'd borrowed for the evening. They double-dated with Dixie's best friend, Bessie Wolverton, and Elvis's cousin, Gene Smith.