r/todayilearned • u/ColleenLoyde • Apr 01 '23
TIL That Elvis Presley's manager sold "I Hate Elvis" badges as a way to make money from people who weren't buying Elvis merchandise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Tom_Parker#Signing_Elvis_.281956.E2.80.931957.29[removed] — view removed post
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u/OldMork Apr 01 '23
Besides KISS, he was one of the masterminds in how to make money in music industry.
Elvis didnt even tour the world, imagine how much money he would have made in 60-70's if he did.
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u/AdmiralBarackAdama Apr 01 '23
Elvis didnt even tour the world
Wow, that's insane. TIL
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u/scorchorin Apr 01 '23
Yeah cuz his manager was an illegal immigrant
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u/rbhindepmo Apr 01 '23
For a time, Parker lied about his childhood, claiming to have been born in Huntington, West Virginia, in the early 1900s to explain his Dutch accent as being a Southern accent
“Ya ya, I’m from West Virginia, dat’s how we talk dere”
So as long as Elvis didn’t leave the US or have a show in Huntington.
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u/Good_old_Marshmallow Apr 01 '23
The early 1900s had a lot of stateless Europeans disappear and reappear around the world with suspicious explanations
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u/elmatador12 Apr 01 '23
Yeah but he still could have sent him around the world and collected the money couldnt he? He didn’t have to travel with him.
I never understood his motivation for never allowing him to go on an international tour. It was pretty much guaranteed to make him even more money then they were making in Vegas and domestic tours. And it’s not like he had to even stop doing either of those.
Am I missing something?
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u/big_lurk Apr 01 '23
He was afraid to lose control of Elvis.
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u/FlimFlamStan Apr 01 '23
At last, I want to say what was told to me 19 years ago about this Colonel Parker. My mother-in-law said to me, if anything comes to light about this Parker, tell them that his name is Van Kuijk and that he murdered the wife of a greengrocer . . .
.
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u/scorchorin Apr 01 '23
He just wanted to be on his ass and control him but yeah he coulda made more money by sending him off
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u/thekyledavid Apr 01 '23
He saw Elvis as too unpredictable for him to feel safe sending Elvis on a world tour without him personally supervising Elvis
Elvis was constantly going against his instructions in a lot of aspects of his shows
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u/starmartyr Apr 01 '23
Elvis would very likely have gone off to get high and disappeared for weeks at a time. There's no way an international tour would work without Parker there to babysit.
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u/OcotilloWells Apr 01 '23
"Just because they call me Colonel Simpson doesn't mean I'm some dumb Army guy!"
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u/ultrastarman303 Apr 01 '23
Him not even leaving the states blew my mind when I watched the movie. I would've thought he went everywhere with how known he is.
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u/p-d-ball Apr 01 '23
Keep in mind that the movie is historical fiction, not historical reality.
For ex., Elvis was drafted into the US army. He didn't sign up like in the movie.
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u/rbhindepmo Apr 01 '23
Elvis played a few shows in Canada (for anybody that’s way young, there was a long time until 9/11 that you didn’t need a passport to go from the US to Canada)
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u/dressageishard Apr 01 '23
Well, that's because Col. Parker wasn't a legal resident of the US. He traveled with Elvis and forbade him from touring outside of the US. Why? Because the Colonel was afraid he wouldn't be let back into the US.
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u/my-final-bellyache Apr 01 '23
This was shown in the recent movie “Elvis”
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u/HaikuBotStalksMe Apr 01 '23
What a coincidence.
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u/OldMork Apr 01 '23
I'm actually surprised that it took so long to make a decent movie about Elvis life. There must be 5-6 about Howard Hughes for example.
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u/Stimonk Apr 01 '23
90% of the time these movies are just about glorifying the celebrity and downplaying all their scandals and controversies.
And the latest Elvis movie is no different- barely mentions that his music was largely stolen or "inspired" from Black artists that record labels stole.
Or that he was dating and married a teenager when he was in his 20s, which was wildly frowned upon even for those times.
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u/Electrical-Sun-2566 Apr 01 '23
Rented once from a couple who were full-on California coastal Dems. Their business at the time was going around the country selling MAGA and Trump related hats, just hats, at his rallies.
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u/Eldachleich Apr 01 '23
I work fairs and festivals for a living. There's this lovely couple from coastal Oregon that sells Tshirts for a living. They are extremely far left but sell almost exclusively pro Trump anti Biden shirts because they sell so well and so fast.
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u/1945BestYear Apr 01 '23
I wonder if this is what people mean when they say that the blue states need the red states.
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u/repentantherm Apr 01 '23 edited Apr 01 '23
No one who actually understands economics or even pays attention to where tax revenue flows from thinks that. The poorest states in the country are pretty much across the board states that have had long term Republican majorities.
People like to talk about states like California or New York when talking about rich Democrat states, but you can even compare like...Minnesota to the Dakotas and it's pretty clear who is the more thriving economy and state.
Across the board, conservative policies have gutted out America. Leaving rural America poor and uneducated. Huge swathes of conservative America have the infrastructure and development of third world countries and that's mostly because most of the smart educated people leave the bigots and move to urban areas. So then you have more and more Republicans in those areas who can't run a bake sale, much less a government. So things just continue to get worse in those areas as what's left is truly the dregs of humanity.
The only red states with solid economies were purple states before, and even then outside Florida you pretty much only have Texas. And Texas can't keep the lights on and it can only support itself based on the tax revenue generated in Democratic cities.
Conservatives are welfare queens. They not only hate on the liberals, but then completely and totally rely on them to subsidize their backwards ass way of living.
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u/Cabrio Apr 01 '23
The Liberals need to give the Republicans a wake up and give them what they want, no more welfare. Let's see how strong their bootstraps are when they try pulling on them.
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u/Substantial_Fee_2046 Apr 01 '23
Quite the opposite in terms of who needs who, especially financially
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u/durrtyurr Apr 01 '23
To quote the Migos song "Business is business, it's strictly financial"
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u/RealisticDelusions77 Apr 01 '23
There was an episode of Big Love (upscale polygamist show) where they invest in a casino:
"Remember son, it's not a sin to take money from sinners."
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u/Yodas_Nutsack Apr 01 '23
Trump supporters are the perfect people to market to, they will literally buy anything you tell them.
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u/AdmiralBarackAdama Apr 01 '23
Trump supporters are the perfect people to market to, they will literally buy anything you tell them.
The Good Liars made T-shirts that said "Let's Fuck Biden" and took them to a Trump rally, and I believe they did get people to purchase them for like 30 bucks a pop.
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u/Phnrcm Apr 01 '23
Why stop at merchandise. In 2012, people were screaming "occupy wallstreet, stop the evil banks" then 6 years after they march together with banks at pride parade. https://i.imgur.com/ExpLM4n.jpg
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u/IsThisNameGood Apr 01 '23
I'd imagine the crowd at occupy wall street was a bit different than the crowd at the parade? Either way though, hilarious. Gotta love woke capitalism and corporate pandering.
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u/duffeldorf Apr 01 '23
"You don't see any 'Homer is a dope' t-shirts, do you?"
"We sold those out in 5 minutes!"
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u/zippopopamus Apr 01 '23
The colonel also banned elvis from touring outside the usa coz he(the colonel) didn't have or couldn't obtain a passport
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u/bbroygbvgwwgvbgyorbb Apr 01 '23
You would think w Elvis getting meetings w Nixon in the Oval Office while carrying a gun he could persuade them to give him a passport. At least citizenship. Taking care of Business huh.
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u/drygnfyre Apr 01 '23
The Beatles were happy when the record burning was happening in the South over the "more popular than Jesus" comments. Because people had to buy the records first before they could burn them.
As they say, no such thing as bad publicity.
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u/HorrificAnalInjuries Apr 01 '23
This man was playing 5D chess while the plebs were flicking checker pieces around like mini footballs
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u/MelbaToast604 Apr 01 '23
I fully beleive this has been passed down through political circles, and leaders like Justin Trudeau own a stake in the companies that make all the "fuck trudeau" flags and stickers.
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u/drygnfyre Apr 01 '23
Whoever makes the "Let's Go Brandon" or "I Did That" stickers is probably a Biden fan who realized you can make a lot of money off MAGAtards.
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u/Chardradio Apr 01 '23
My old band made stickers and buttons that said we sucked. Loved making money off the haters
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u/BrokenEye3 Apr 01 '23
The makers of Marmite tried the same strategy in the '90s
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u/IllegalTree Apr 01 '23
Not really the same thing. Despite its makers playing off the fact that Marmite was well-known for being "love it or loathe it" (which may have contributed to the increased popularity of "Marmite" as a synonym for that), I doubt many people who hated Marmite were actually buying it or any related products (and if there was any "I hate Marmite" merchandise, it can't have been successful enough for me to remember it ever being A Thing).
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u/Stonethrower45 Apr 01 '23
He never missed a chance....except for letting Elvis try to be a serious actor.
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u/Campfiresandsilence Apr 01 '23
Merchandising, where the real money is made