[37] In February 2013, he was set to appear at the annual fourth tribute to Elvis Presley event, held at the Auckland Botanic Gardens in Manurewa, Auckland. The Disney Channel sitcoms Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody both featured main characters dressing up and acting like Elvis. Yeah, I thought, Oh, this is so weird, many times, Caywood says. Dennis Wise - King for a Night - A Tribute to Elvis Presley Las Vegas Entertainment. [38], Des Perenara, a Maori Elvis comes from Auckland but is now based in Cardigan, Wales. (Photo by Getty Images) Save PURCHASE A LICENSE Get personalized pricing by telling us when, where, and how you want to use this asset. Returning to Ocala, he found his marriage falling apart and began working construction jobs. ODay then arranged for the performers, still bandaged up and looking like mummies with large eyeholes, to be publicly unveiled on a network daytime show, America Alive! $52 million Amount the Elvis estate made in 2008, according to Forbes. Rhyne survived, and overcome by guilt, ODay brought her to Florida to help with her recovery. Drive. Especially interesting are those who do not perform, per se, that is, they don't do an Elvis act, they just 'live Elvis,' dressing as The King and spreading His Word by their example. Finding the right plastic surgeon to tweak Wises lips and cheeks and straighten his nose was tougher. We want to hear it. To this day, you can easily see tributes to ABBA, Rush, or Eighties and Nineties hip-hop. (ODay bragged to a reporter that it was a small but mighty crowd.) >Article Archives
We've recently seen amateurs at the Elvis Tribute Contest in Vegas that blew Dennis away. In an episode of the American sitcom The Golden Girls, the characters of Blanche and Rose are considering hiring an Elvis impersonator for their "Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love Fan Club," yet Rose mixes up the Elvis list with the guest list for the wedding of the character of Sophia. Danny as Kenny Rogers? Wise says. He is played by Frank Wagner. Elvis was only the beginning. ACCESS RIGHTS ONLY. "There are heavily-bearded Elvii, four-year-old Elvii, and Elvis duos; Italian Elvii, Greek Elvii, Fat Elvii, a Lady Elvis, even a Black Elvis. Elvis Has Left the Building a film in which a woman kills multiple Elvis impersonators. It's only fitting that he would
In addition to the classics, Im throwing in some songs Elvis did onstage that arent heard as much. He
Dennis Colt, the first famous Elvis impersonator, circa 1978. I just say, I want plastic surgery done on her nose and his chin and this and that and, oh, by the way, I just happen to have a picture here of exactly what we want done. When the six-hour procedure was finished, Wise was rolled out in a wheelchair, his face covered in bandages. Stinson doesn't skimp on his Graceland shows. repertoire, Dennis can answer most any request. In an episode of Due South, Season one, episode 10, "The Gift of the Wheelman", It's Christmas time and the police station is filled with Santas, elves and Elvises. Collect, curate and comment on your files. Me go in and have my face carved? But I was pretty ugly anyway. And the hype factor, always important to ODay, appealed to him, too: Man, the monster maker himself onstage. An Elvis impersonator is an entertainer who impersonates or copies the look and sound of American musician and singer Elvis Presley. ODays experience with Wise may have ended badly, but it gave ODay a taste of big-time showbiz, and he wanted more. Elvis impersonators set to appear besides Fitter were Brendon Chase, Melissa Perkins and Kerryn Winn. A major post-mortem event in Elvis history occurred in Orlando on Jan. 31, 1978, when Dennis Wise underwent six hours of plastic surgery to look more like The King of rock 'n' roll. Smith was featured several times on Pringle's regular TV show, though Smith only pretended to sing and play along with the music since he actually could neither sing nor play the guitar at that time.[7]. People were calling me from all over the world. In the "Boo Haw Haw" Halloween special of Cartoon Network's Ed, Edd, n Eddy, one of the titular characters named Eddy is dressed-up as a zombie Elvis for trick-or-treating. Ive never missed a year, says Wise. He wound up in one called the Flim Flam Band, where his future wife Effie saw him perform covers in her hometown of Ocala, Florida, in the early Seventies. Soon after he received a call from his brother in Little Rock, Ark. The King is as popular today as he was when he died suddenly at the age of 42 in the Memphis mansion on Aug. 16, 1977. Guess where the money went? Wise wound up suing ODay for negligence (claiming his professional reputation has been damaged) and breach of fiduciary duty, demanding a minimum settlement of $2,500. From 1982 to 1984 he had a nightclub across the street from Graceland in Memphis. He saw his idol in concert four times, the last in Kansas City, Mo., in 1974. There are also several university studies, for instance, Eric Lott's critical essay, "All the King's Men: Elvis Impersonators and White Working-Class Masculinity," published in Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel, eds., Race and the Subject of Masculinities (Duke University Press, 1997). He was there in 2016 for the event,[62] and in there in 2018.[63]. The voice, the lip curl, the jumpsuit he's a dead ringer. It took a long time to get over that.. When the band broke up my brother returned to the mainland but I stayed on in Hawaii a couple of years. >Las Vegas Leisure Guide. Chips Moman had asked James to come to Memphis to write songs for American Sound Studio. To make himself feel better about the idea, ODay ran it by his mother: What if his younger brother, whod passed away at 21, had been an entertainer and died and had been resurrected by way of plastic surgery? ODay had what felt like a foolproof method of making the operation seem as routine as possible. On their way out of Nevada after the tour ended, a few of the singers and band members made a pit stop in the desert. The Complete History of Elvis Impersonators in 10 minutes [from the documentary Almost Elvis] BlueSuedeFilms 1.65K subscribers Subscribe 43K views 14 years ago The complete history of Elvis. [59][60] Like Alphonso Keil before him,[61] Angel regularly performs at the Parkes Elvis Festival, an event that now attracts 20,000. Dennis can recreate the songs, moves and looks from all Era's of Elvis' career, 50's, 60's, and 70's. His heavy show schedule of an average of 200 shows a year with tours in Colorado, California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Florida, Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa in the past year alone proves that Dennis is the most sought . As incredible as it may sound, Elvis Presley would have celebrated his 74th birthday today probably quietly at Graceland lest he throw out a hip. It was late 1977, Elvis had just died, and maybe there was a market for a tribute act. [48] His single "Love's Not Made of Time" by "God Will Rule" was produced by John Centinaro,[49] who would work with another Elvis impersonator, Johnny Charro. It's almost like being in your zen, your spot.". SUMMERS: So it is deep cuts and classics all weekend at the Birmingham Hilton. (When the ceremony was over, they had some difficulty eating the wedding cake.) His brother had arranged an
He died at age 64 in July 2008, after battling cancer. first song, he got the job. The requisite jumpsuits and jewelry are there too. 29 cents Cost of the Elvis stamp issued in 1993. Ultimately, just as in the living-person rock business, money changed everything. In the mid-1970s, Andy Kaufman made an Elvis impersonation part of his act. The main character of Cartoon Network's Johnny Bravo is heavily influenced by Elvis along with James Dean and Michael Jackson. Bandstand.". When I take these people in, they already have a basic resemblance to the person I want them to look like, he said. Some ETAs record CDs to sell at their shows, which of course contain many of the Elvis standards, but could also include some of their own songs as well as songs of other artists. He almost never talked about his previous life or Rock and Roll Heaven with family (including a son, Andrew, who performs solo and with an Eighties tribute band around D.C.). In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Elvis impersonators are a type of pedestrians commonly spawned in the Las Venturas (which is modelled after Las Vegas) area of the map. Jesus Christ thats some twisted shit, says Croces son A.J., who was only a grade schooler when ODay hired an upstart to be resculpted as Croces father. He said, Give me something! and a nurse came over and plunged this needle into me. Wise soon went under. We started playing in clubs in Joplin and in Oklahoma and Id do a little Elvis skit in the act, Wise says. Only after Elvis' untimely death on August 16, 1977, did impersonating Elvis start to become popular in the mainstream. Wise was doing an Elvis show in Hawaii. Wise still feels he and ODay could have gone all the way with the act: He had Disney World, all these people calling us he had it in the palm of his hand and let it go, he says. However, some ETAs may utilize both a live band and karaoke (either one or the other, in most cases depending on the type and size of the venue). True impersonators don't 'do Elvis' for monetary gain, but as missionaries to spread the message of The King. Its got to be wrong. (Actually, they didnt go on the road so fast: The first gig, at a club in St. Petersburg, Florida, perhaps aptly named J.P. Bottoms Lounge, never happened. Almost Elvis[29] is a 75-minute 2001 documentary film that follows a variety of professional Elvis impersonators such as they prepare for a large annual contest in Memphis, Tennessee. He would sit around talking about things like that. He could visualize things happening or ways to promote them. (Read the full story, which has plenty of photos.). "You're no longer the other guy, you're the 'King.' ), For Caywood, Gamble, and Wise, the scars have healed or are now barely detectable; Gambles mustache covers up his lip cut. Professional Elvis impersonators, commonly known as Elvis tribute artists (ETAs), work all over the world as entertainers, and such tribute acts remain in great demand due to the unique iconic status of Elvis. [3], Many impersonators sing Presley's songs. When I heard that, it struck me as funny. [55] During the 1960s, he played drums with Sonny Day and The Sundowners. Ramona Caywood then Mona Caywood Moore was playing bar gigs in Ohio, in a band called Stage Fright, when she received a call from a friend in the business. Caywood had a small implant in her chin that just made it look a little more pointy so minor, like outpatient stuff., Gamble had the most minimal work done: The surgeon basically made a cut above his lip to make it look as if hed had surgery. As she later told the Orlando Sentinel, the whole show gave her the creeps due to real weird girls who started hanging out during my shows, biker types. She complained to ODay about her female-Elvis role, but he wasnt listening: Nothing I said seemed to sink in, Rhyne said. choose a career that pays tribute to the King of Rock and Roll. If I could still do two shows a night, six nights a week, Id do it, Wise says. Many other Elvis impersonators appeared while Elvis was still alive, evolving mainly out of small town talent competitions which took their influences from major music artists of that time. The new-tech twist is the hologram, which has brought Michael Jackson, 2Pac, Frank Zappa, and Whitney Houston back to a semblance of life. It was his seventeenth and last number-one single in the United States. Get our roundup of longform stories every Saturday. He Used Plastic Surgery to Raise Rock Stars From the Dead, These Musicians are Supplying Ukraine With Drones, Burt Bacharach, Master Pop Composer, Dead at 94, New Bootleg Series Installment Maps The Long Road To Dylans Resurrection. "It is indeed one place minstrelsy ends up; where 19th-century white guys imitated what they thought of as slave culture and Elvis took from R & B performers, the impersonators copy the copy, if you willit's minstrelsy once-removed. Decades before hologram tours, one rogue '70s promoter found another way to put Elvis, Janis, Jim Morrison, and other late icons back onstage. By coincidence, Wise had a brother, Dennis, who knew how to sing like Elvis. In Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel, eds., "The Pedant's Return: Why the Things You Think Are Wrong Are Right" By Andrea Barham. But a drinking problem that had developed on the road soon overtook him. And he has four . During
According to Caywood and Gamble, no one was getting paid much, if anything at all, and what pay existed wasnt always equal. ", and Miley's brother Jackson, in Hannah Montana, impersonated Elvis twice: The first time was to fool a gossip reporter, as a coverup, after Miley accidentally blabbed the Hannah-secret to her; and the second time was when Miley and Lily impersonated Dolly Parton and Miley's "Mamaw" Ruthie, respectively, after it came out that Ruthie and Dolly (portrayed by Parton herself) had a fight over Elvis Presley. It was such an odd thing. On "the thriving phenomenon of Elvis impersonators", see also Gilbert B. Rodman, Elvis After Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend (1996). Growing up in Baltimore, he played drums in a few local bands. of Elvis Presley. The TV appearance was a mixed bag: Dr. Joyce Brothers, the star psychologist and talk-show regular, accused ODay of being a Manson-style cult leader. New York-native Erin Feinberg is a master observer of musical subcultures, and has snapped diehard tribes of metal-heads, prog-rockers, and punks. "The King" of Rock and Roll has been gone for more than 30 years, but on any given night in Las Vegas the spirit of Elvis Presley lives on. Thomas into a local club, took the money, and then disappeared; it turned out he didnt actually rep Thomas at all. Once the artists are gone, theyre gone, says Pezzuti. America," "Today," "Oprah Winfrey," "The Mike Douglas Show," "48 Hours",
He needed those people if we were going to play in Las Vegas, says Caywood. There are also three "how to" guides, Be Elvis! ODay heard about a local Florida band whose lead singer, Jesse Gamble (then Jesse Bolt), was a good Presley mimic, and even already owned a blue jumpsuit. Somebody hit him in the face and knocked him out. I was like, What? But his mind worked that way. Wise heard a story maybe apocryphal that ODay had booked pop star B.J. I dont see a morbid aspect, he said. [52], During the early 1990s, Sam Leilani from Reseda, L.A. made the news briefly. In the Digimon Adventure anime, one of the main villains, Etemon has the character of an Elvis impersonator. Dennis Wise knows exactly where he was when Elvis Presley died Aug.16, 1977. When Wise reexamined his contract at the time, he realized hed signed with ODay for 50 years and that ODay was entitled to half his earnings. I feel weird saying this, but basically I was the hit of the show, says Caywood. Wise is the ultimate fan and the ultimate Elvis performer, with more
Impersonator impresario Ed Franklin boasts, 'We've had every type of Elvis there is in the world. Recalling those early performances, the groups Janice Joplin impersonator, Mona Caywood-Moore, was quoted saying, they were bombs, man.