Joseph Carmine Esposito was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 22, 1938. After graduating from high school, he was drafted into the Army. He completed his basic training at Fort Hood in Texas. He met Elvis Presley in 1959, when both men were serving at an Army base in Friedberg, West Germany.
After his service ended, he became Presley's right-hand man, close friend, and road manager for nearly two decades. When Presley was pursuing a film career, Esposito had small parts in several of the movies including a carnival man in It Happened at the World's Fair and a gambler in The Trouble with Girls. He wrote several books about Presley including Good Rockin' Tonight: 20 Years on the Road and on the Town with Elvis written with Elena Oumano.
After Presley's death, Esposito worked for the producer Jerry Weintraub as a road manager for several performers including Michael Jackson and the Bee Gees. He was later a partner in a food company, a limousine-service operator in Los Angeles, and a casino host at Wynn Las Vegas. He died from complications of dementia on November 23, 2016 at the age of 78.
030