My mother has been singing with him for j. "That was a very strange day," Wise says. Nelson even performed alongside Presley when they first met, also in 1954. The original unaired pilot even had Johnny Bravo as a literal Elvis Presley impersonator. Jeff Yagher played an Elvis impersonator (as well as Elvis himself) in an episode of The Twilight Zone called "The Once and Future King". Siegfried & Roy, and Wayne Newton. Cruise kept asking James if he had any songs that would be right for Elvis. 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. Some ETAs perform under stage names, mostly using names associated in some way with Presley's life or career (such as Presley's character names in his movies). Cruise and James thought of \"Suspicious Minds\" and James began urging others to get Elvis to hear it. The plan was scuttled when someone accidentally tossed out the whole mess. I was 30 or 32 and wild and crazy anyway. Erwin, D.H. and Droser, M.L., 1993. But a lot of the nightclubs were afraid it was just a freak show. While some impersonators perform a wide variety of Presley's discography, his songs from the 1950s and 1970s remain fan favourites. That was a very strange day, Wise says. [3], Many impersonators sing Presley's songs. The 10-piece band will include his wife, Marcia, as a backup singer; their son, Shane, on drums; and Dennis brother, Jim, on guitar. 2023 Getty Images. covering all phases of Presley's recording career, including rock `n' 29 cents Cost of the Elvis stamp issued in 1993. Dennis Wise Tickets, 2023 Concert Tour Dates | Ticketmaster Home Concert Tickets Dennis Wise Tickets 3.0 Dennis Wise Tickets Events Reviews (1) No Concerts Near Raleigh & Durham Select Your Dates Sorry. "[17], However, the Elvis industry includes "professional Elvis impersonator registries." Elvis was only the beginning. We just want to bring back Elvis impersonators set to appear besides Fitter were Brendon Chase, Melissa Perkins and Kerryn Winn. He and Effie were divorced in 1979. Wise was doing an Elvis show in Hawaii. James's wife has suspicions of his feelings. By coincidence, Wise had a brother, Dennis, who knew how to sing like Elvis. Saturday, January 18 at 8:30 pm Cascade Lounge. In an episode of Married with Children, the character Peggy Bundy claims to have seen Elvis at a mall, prompting a large number of Elvis impersonators to come to her home so she can share her "experience.". Smith's physical resemblance to Elvis and his mannerisms happened to catch the attention of DJ Norm Pringle of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, who had been playing "That's All Right, Mama" and "Heartbreak Hotel" on the radio. Wise has been performing his Elvis act longer than almost anybody since 1977. How would Danny come up with that? she says. A promoter was looking for an Elvis act, says Wise, who auditioned by singing Trying to Get to You., I sang a few lines and the guy said, Thats enough, Wise says. [55] During the 1960s, he played drums with Sonny Day and The Sundowners. king's untimely death at the age of 42. \"Suspicious Minds\" was widely regarded as the single that returned Presley's career success, following his '68 Comeback Special. Must be 21 to attend this Las Vegas event. He had previously wanted to manage a Barbra Streisand impersonator but soon realized the audience wouldnt buy his first choice: At five feet two and 160 pounds, she didnt conjure Streisand physically. This has seen some impact on what Elvis impersonators and contests have on the media and marketing industry. I was heartbroken, very upset. 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). Wise heard a story maybe apocryphal that ODay had booked pop star B.J. James felt Elvis needed a mature rock 'n' roll song to bring him back as Tom Jones was a hot artist at the time. His admiration for Elvis has spanned over forty years. "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. Hes consistently at the top of its top-earning One of his biggest fans is Dennis Wise, a man who even had his face and hairline changed through plastic surgery to look more like Elvis. I really hated him then. On New Years Eve 1979, during the tours Reno run, she tossed down 50 sleeping pills and some champagne and hoped it would all end. The Philippines has its own Elvis Presley impersonator, Filipino singer, and actor Eddie Mesa, dubbed as the Elvis Presley of The Philippines. Most fall under the following categories: There are different levels of impersonation, which depends largely on who is doing the impersonation and for what purpose. 'The World's Greatest Elvis impersonator..EVER!' Rick Bonner 335 subscribers Subscribe 132 121K views 9 years ago A both serious and humerous collection of the world's greatest Elvis. There are even several radio stations[1][2] that exclusively feature Elvis impersonator material. As far back as the Seventies, touring and club acts meticulously did their best to look and sound like the Doors or the very much alive Bruce Springsteen, and tourists in Manhattan flocked to Beatlemania, a Fab Four tribute that ran on Broadway for two years. "[18] According to George Plasketes, there are "legions of impersonators. Boards are the best place to save images and video clips. For the first and not last time, his boss, Danny ODay, could boast, with one of his robust laughs, that he was the monster maker.. The two wound up singing covers in another band, poetically named Xerox, and before long, they became romantically involved. [39] His day job is at BGT Laboratories in Ffostrasol, which makes antidote products including snake anti-venom. During Their fellow townspeople understand this sentiment, but in the final scene they are shown burning those selfsame photographs, which display both Oscar and Emma dressed as Elvis. He died at age 64 in July 2008, after battling cancer. He would just come out with that stuff, you know?, Newspaper headline writers reveled in the weirdness of Rock and Roll Heaven, dubbing it the cloneheads and referring to ODay as the clone ranger. ODay brushed off any and all skepticism. Arona Mane Shows Off His Production on Thandi Phoenix's new single 'Hot Sauce'. of Elvis Presley. Sight unseen, always. And just like ODay, each was hungry for recognition and success, a very different type of American dream. "We're not here to try to take his place. The two still performed in what tiny clubs they could, but one day a waitress told ODay, who was singing Kenny Rogers songs with another act, that he bore some resemblance to the Gambler growler. ", "Guinness book of records - Largest gathering of Elvis impersonators", Gadfly Online: David McNair and Jayson Whitehead, "Love and Theft. Pop singer Bruno Mars, only six years old at the time, has a small role as a young Elvis impersonator. He was having to be with the band, and the kids were in school. It was her motivation that helped him become an Elvis tribute artist. Mom was the fan in the house. Marcia is a schoolteacher, teaching the history of music. The film's soundtrack contains multiple Elvis songs with the titular Hawaiian girl named Lilo being a huge fan. When he woke up, his swollen face wrapped in bandages, Wise had implants in his cheeks and a curled-up lip, and he was on his way to resembling the King more than his 23-year-old self. Way before technology, there wasnt anything else you could do.. [10] As Kaufman gained fame, the impersonation was used less and less. In Reno, Gamble saw ODay handing out five-dollar bills to people at the door to lure them inside. 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. This Dennis Wise shows off his reconstructed face to talk-show host Mike Douglas. He has been performing as Elvis since around 2000. I dont see a morbid aspect, he said. 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. Wise says that, inspired by Dark Passage, the 1947 film in which Humphrey Bogarts escaped-con character undergoes plastic surgery to avoid recapture, he suggested altering his face to look more like the King. People loved it.. Its no longer a wrap: the Rock and Roll Heaven band after the bandages came off. So Jim said, Lets do a little Elvis thing in the show.. A.J. By the mid-Eighties, ODay was running out of schemes. The four singers he found also got surgery (it was said to have cost O'Day $500,000, though Browne also notes the surgeries were less invasive than what Wise experienced) and press, but the audience didn't materialize and a planned Vegas run allegedly fell apart over O'Day's unwillingness to let "the Vegas casino establishment" take the reins of the show. Leilani, who had referred to himself as a "rock 'n' roll-singing Polynesian guy", had formed a rockabilly band in the early 90s and had performed in Hawaii. It just took off, Wise says. Rock and Roll Heaven opened with the backup band playing an instrumental version of the Righteous Brothers dead-rocker hit of the same name. I kind of took after him.. Dennis Colt, the first famous Elvis impersonator, circa 1978. And it didnt do it merely with costumes or note-for-note vocal imitations: ODay hired plastic surgeons to physically alter his tribute singers to look as much as possible like the people they were honoring. Due to confusion about who is going as Elvis all three do it, appearing in sequence as Elvis at different stages of his career, winning the competition. James at the time was married to his first wife, but still had feelings for his childhood sweetheart, who was married back in Houston. To hear his family tell it, Danny Dixon ODay could have been a star. Dennis Wise has been paying tribute to Elvis for more than 30years. Morrison had been found dead in a Paris bathtub seven years before. E [58], Another Elvis of Samoan descent is Johnny Angel. The large growth in Elvis impersonators seems tightly linked with his ever-growing iconic status. He was hired and began working at it full-time in November 1977. At the tours debut, at the Southeastern Music Fair in Atlanta in September 1978, fewer than 50 people showed up. The band ended up in Hawaii. Marriott and the JW Marriott system are not associated with any part of The Resort at Summerlin (the Resort) other than the JW Marriott Las Vegas hotel (the Hotel) at the Resort. But the fans gave their tender love to Shawn Klush of Pittston, PA, crowning him King in the finale. For example, an ETA may open his show with a 50s set dressed in appropriate attire (such as a gold lame jacket), reenactments of musical scenes from Presley's movies, and/or reenactments of segments from the '68 Comeback Special; and after an intermission closes his show with a full-blown 70s concert dressed in an appropriate jumpsuit. 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! Once the artists are gone, theyre gone, says Pezzuti. Wise isnt totally focused on Elvis. Caywood wound up taking the gross heap home with her, with the thought of encasing it in glass and turning it into a coffee table. SELECT OPTIONS SAVE TO CART James felt it was a confusing time for him and that all three were caught in this trap that they could not walk out of. Caywood remembers ODay as a big ol shyster, but the tour launched her into roles in productions of Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as an extended run at a Palm Springs club (singing both new and classic pop hits) until her recent retirement. This show will be a little different from the past few years, Wise says. One of the first books to document the phenomenon was, I Am Elvis: A Guide to Elvis Impersonators released by American Graphic Systems in 1991. The 24th season of the American adaptation of Big Brother featured Daniel Durston, an Elvis impersonator from Las Vegas, Nevada. For this paper, he interviewed many impersonators and draws parallels with minstrelsy. According to a popular myth, Presley himself entered an Elvis lookalike contest at a local restaurant shortly before his death, and came in third place. Tourists would visit the mansion and then stop by Wises club for the tribute act. He appeared in episode 3 of the BBC Two Wales documentary, Cardigan Bay Coastal Lives. Thomas into a local club, took the money, and then disappeared; it turned out he didnt actually rep Thomas at all. His brother had arranged an [50][51] Another single of his, released on the Fire Mountain label in 1980, "Just One Look" by "Darling" is a sought after collectors item. Kenny had a really unique voice. But he hit a snag: According to his musicians, the Vegas casino establishment wanted ownership of the idea and were less interested in working with ODay himself. But more than 40 years ago, Danny ODay took imitation to a place no one imagined before or since. From a standpoint of being original and doing something that wasnt being done, I give him credit for putting his neck on the line. He could have made a killing in Atlantic City., Some involved in Rock and Roll Heaven wanted to forget it ever existed. In his mind, Rock and Roll Heaven would merely be the beginning. $10 million Approximate worth of his estate when he died in 1977, More than 1 billion Best guess of his record sales, according to Elvis Presley Enterprises (the company that owns his likeness and everything else), 147 Number of albums and singles that had been certified gold/platinum/multi-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, 31 Number of feature films that Elvis appeared in from 1956 to 1969. (I knew it wasnt the original, the woman said of ODay. The guys in the band were all laughing.. Novelist William McCranor Henderson wrote about his attempts to learn the Elvis trade in, I, Elvis: Confessions of a Counterfeit King. For Elvis tribute artists like Trent Carlini, Jesse Garon, Darren Lee and Pete "Big Elvis" Vallee, the message they try to relate on stage is one of fun energy and high intensity, a routine that Elvis himself would be proud of. Danny as Kenny Rogers? Wise says. It's only fitting that he would Copyright 2023 Penske Business Media, LLC. It was such an odd thing. And lastly, Dennis is a bit aged these days and many of his promo photos are of younger years. Dean Vegas and Paul Fenech from Australia were also booked for the event. We've recently seen amateurs at the Elvis Tribute Contest in Vegas that blew Dennis away. But a drinking problem that had developed on the road soon overtook him. They wanted the whole property to themselves.. 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. In Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel, eds., "The Pedant's Return: Why the Things You Think Are Wrong Are Right" By Andrea Barham. Barnum, a man who could, in Wises words, sell ice cream in hell. If that meant hiring someone to turn living singers into facsimiles of deceased ones, so be it. Why Book Elvis Impersonators. He has every album Elvis ever recorded and pictures by the thousands. BY THE NUMBERS $52 million Amount the Elvis estate made. At Gambles suggestion, his girlfriend, a North Carolina native named Deborah (or Erin) Rhyne, had her nose straightened and hair dyed black to resemble a female Elvis. (Im going to be Elvis in the early 1950s, when he was feminine-looking, she said.). The first singer to go through the surgery was Elvis impersonator Dennis Wise; a former car salesman from Hawaii who traveled to the U.S. to try his luck as a tribute act. Some of his contemporaries included Rick Saucedo of Chicago and Johnny Harra, a Kansas City native who moved his show to Texas in 1977. Dennis Wise knows exactly where he was when Elvis Presley died Aug. 16, 1977. (Blame it on the club owner, ODay said in response.) His mom said shed be fine with it as long as it was done in good taste, and that was good enough for her son. Thanks to an unstable household his mother had several husbands ODay eventually left home for California, where he hustled his way into other bands. And he has four . Hes great.. I asked him to show me his license and he refused.) According to Rhynes sister-in-law, Wanda, Rhyne was happy, for a time: Danny was the love of her life. He knew what was coming, but the reality of it didnt really hit him until the doctor, who seemed like a nice enough guy, started carving into his face. O'Day made sure there was fanfare around itWise recalls exiting the plastic surgeon's clinic in a wheelchair to find "100 people from the press all over the world taking pictures. I feel weird saying this, but basically I was the hit of the show, says Caywood. He has performed more than 10,000 shows as an Elvis impersonator. Following the transformation, he made his TV debut on Good Morning Americain early 1978. American Sound Studio was gaining a reputation in the industry as the Box Tops had just recorded \"The Letter\" there so James relocated to Memphis. From left: Caywood as Joplin, Rhyne as female Elvis, Hazebrouck as Croce, Gamble as Elvis, and OConnell as Morrison. An Elvis impersonator is an entertainer who impersonates or copies the look and sound of American musician and singer Elvis Presley. Millions of high-quality images, video, and music options are waiting for you. "It's almost like you're on autopilot," Garon said, of drifting into the Presley persona. It took a long time to get over that.. In Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray, eds.. Sweeney, "The King of White Trash Culture," p.262. He was so popular because he was kind and down [34], An Elvis impersonator in Arkansas, who legally had his name changed to Elvis Presley,[35] unsuccessfully ran for the positions of Arkansas Commissioner of State Lands in 2014, Arkansas State Senator of District 26 in 2016, and U.S. Representative of Arkansas's District 1 in 2018. Im impersonating her, but I was the same age she was when she died. But some of that melted away when ODay landed them a residency at Harrahs in Lake Tahoe, followed by a similar stint at that same casino in Reno in the early months of 1979. According to Rolling Stone, less than 50 people turned up to their debut show in Atlanta. The shit hit the fan. When the run ended in March 1979, Caywood recalls a big blowup over money, and the band broke up. >Las Vegas Leisure Guide. Dave Ehlert from Waukegan, IL began performing as Elvis in 1967 a full 10 years before Elvis died. That was the start of a career that has lasted more than 30 years. Dry-ice fog made a cameo, too. From 1982 to 1984 he had a nightclub across the street from Graceland in Memphis. Dennis Wise knows exactly where he was when Elvis Presley died Aug.16, 1977. In a lengthy piece for Rolling Stone, David Browne digs into the "rogue '70s promoter," who decided to try to make a living by putting cover artists on stagewith faces surgically altered to look something like the late singer they were mimicking. Dennis Wise has been paying tribute to Elvis for more than 30 years. Las Vegas Sun, 2023, All Rights Reserved, Less Elvis in Vegas doesnt mean no Elvis in Vegas, Elvis has yet to leave the building (5-15-2008), Bartender mixes Elvis moves with Santa Fe drinks (4-13-2001), Vegas Vipers Home Opener Against DCDefenders, Durango Beats Liberty, 57-47, in Boys 5A BasketballChampionship. The music will be all Elvis, from the Vegas years. In pop music, the tradition of the tribute band, the imitator, the impersonator, is now as durable as the concert T-shirt or the demand for an encore.