Outback Elvis

by John Connell

  Like the fans, the ETAs saw his legacy extending beyond singing: for Norm Bakker: ‘He was a real gorgeous person … There was no other like him’. Jack Gatto came first in the 2016 Ultimate Tribute Artist competition. His perspective was: ‘Do it like he would, don’t do it badly and don’t make fun of him. Elvis was a very generous person and I try to keep that going. I think it’s very important you stay true to him’. Scott Crawford observed: ‘We’re not idiots, we do know that Elvis has passed away, but in our hearts we love him’. Still, to Norm Bakker, there were always ‘a few fanatics who think they’re Elvis’. But those who tried too hard failed; those who talked about Elvis, rather than pretending to be him, were more likely to succeed. As Norm put it: ‘I don’t try to be Elvis; I don’t talk American. I have a voice a bit like Elvis, but it’s me’. There was only one King.

  With a Little Help from My Friends

  Most tribute artists were initially unsure of themselves, and feared they would be inadequate and embarrassing. They often had to be persuaded by others to give it a go. Allan Wright was forced by his friends to sing an Elvis song at a karaoke bar; soon afterwards he won the Elvis look-alike competition and tribute competition at the 2011 Festival. Norm Bakker began in the Chantinos (‘Don’t Say Nothin’ (If You Can’t Say Anything Nice)’), with his brother and sister, playing on Bandstand in the 1960s, before he was pulled out: ‘You look a bit similar to Elvis. Give it a go’. Some nearly gave up – She Is The King had a ‘god-awful’ New Year’s Eve debut at Petersham RSL in Sydney – but battled on. Like so many tribute artists, Jack Gatto had got there with a little help from his friends and family. Still a full-time worker in a suburban Geelong paint shop, he was much encouraged by a lady ‘who said she saw Elvis when she was 15 years old and she said if she hadn’t known better she would have sworn I was him’. Scott Crawford was working the club circuit with Neil Diamond and Engelbert Humperdinck covers before being told he resembled Elvis:

  I’d grown up near Parramatta and so felt really weird about wearing make-up and stuff, but my arm was twisted when I was offered my first jumpsuit if I gave it a go. So I learned how to draw my cheekbones in, add Elvis tonalities to songs and practise southern speaking. My first spray-on hair dye ran black all over my face when I got warm and my sideburns weren’t big enough.

  No Australian tribute artist claimed cosmetic surgery, but the real ETAs grow their hair into ducktail quiffs and keep their sideburns all year round. This is the job, and wigs are seen as a mark of failure.

  Some came to Parkes just once, never to be invited again; others came regularly, and developed careers from succeeding there. For some it was the zenith of their career, an emotional high. Scott Crawford experienced ‘the love and enthusiasm of the crowds in Parkes … it was like an out-of-body experience, as if I was floating above them’. For She Is The King: ‘It was the best and most satisfying experience I have ever had … Everybody is so up for it and there are 3000 people around the stage … Despite playing in Memphis, nothing since then has measured up. The Parkes people are what makes it’.

  The Blues Brothers look on as Bearded Elvis performs at the Star Hotel, 2015

  Brandon Sherman

  A Night with the Stars

  John Connell

  Kiss Elvis: Ladies Don’t be Shy

  Robbie Begg

  Tribute artists they may be, but they are nothing less than effusive about their own skills, talents and appeal. Nor is there any lack of claimants to being Australia’s number one, or any shortage of their DVDs and CDs. Their websites can be as spectacular as they are resistible: hyperbole has much to answer for. Adam Sutherland, performing The Elvis Experience, delivers ‘a show sure to please even the most critical Elvis Presley fans. Boasting a voice that “is the sound of Elvis”, Sutherland also recreates the look of The King with “the stance, the lip curl and the outfits” as well as the music’. Whereas ‘Damian Mullin is the closest to the “real deal” Australia has. He stands a powerful 6’2” and possesses a voice and the moves that capture the essence of the King of Rock ’n Roll’.

  Mark Andrew started performing aged eight, and later formed a band, the Blue Suede Dudes, playing around Melbourne and supporting Chubby Checker on his Australian tour. In 1995 he created Dead-Set Legends, performing as Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Jim Morrison and, of course, Elvis. He toured with Elvis’s own friends and entourage, including Joe Esposito, Elvis’s road manager, performed on cruise ships, at the Collingwood Elvis Festival in Canada, and, not to be excluded from his CV of triumphs, on the Channel 9 Footy Show. His ‘corporate clients’ included Carlton and Collingwood AFL clubs (probably on different nights). By 2014 he was back for the sixth time. Monique Kronk enthused: ‘Everyone was in love with him, a dreamy, lovely man – and probably no-one would have objected had he come back every year’.

  ETAs also liked to claim some degree of global presence and, if at all possible, a connection to Memphis: ‘Dean Vegas has [performed] in Dubai, China, Bali, Sweden, Indonesia, Lebanon … and in clubs and casinos across Australia’. In 2007 he was awarded the keys to the city by the Mayor of Tupelo, Elvis’s Mississippi birthplace, and a guitar from the local hardware store where Elvis bought his first guitar. Those who made it to Memphis exulted in the moment. When Norm Bakker appeared at Parkes for the ninth time in 2009 he was just back from Memphis, where he had performed: ‘The standing ovation I received was overwhelming and proved to me that even the diehard Elvis fans in Memphis appreciated the Aussie accent and sincerity in my salute to the King Elvis Presley’. For Paul Fenech: ‘When you get to perform in front of 4000 people and they’re all screaming like you really are Elvis, it’s a great feeling’.

  As the festival grew, the net for ETAs spread wider, specifically to the United States. Licensing by the Memphis-based Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE) brought better tribute artists to Parkes, since everyone wanted to make it to Memphis. Coming from America was certainly no disadvantage. Dean Z – a ‘headline artist’ in 2012 – was one American star:

  Showcasing his uncanny resemblance to The King, his magnificent vocal talent, a dazzling Elvis wardrobe recreating many of the outfits Elvis wore himself and moves sure to leave audiences ‘All Shook Up’. With a devilish grin and shiny black hair, women spontaneously erupt into screams when they witness the same look, sound and swivel as the Memphis Flash himself.

  Justin Shandor, another US performer, was reputedly ‘hailed by audiences and critics for his uncanny ability to capture the looks, moves and especially the sound of the King’. He was probably the most anticipated guest in the history of the festival. It was claimed that he is ‘such a lookalike that he was once warned to stop using photos of the real Elvis to promote his shows’. Like others, his claims to authenticity centred on an early affinity with Elvis, and by age 16 he was said to performing nine shows a day in Vegas.

  Gender benders?

  Women are not just fans and admirers, or showgirls, but impersonators too. Parkes has had two female Elvis impersonators, Jacqueline Feilich (She Is The King) and Sheryl Scharkie (ShElvis), and a few buskers. Entering the business was usually tough. She Is The King was laughed out of the door at Mushroom Records when she started: ‘You’re either mental or you’re absolutely incredible and the world is waiting for you, but I don’t think it’s the latter.’ ‘Bugger you all’ she responded and made it to Parkes and onwards to Memphis.

  While male ETAs dress up and display their sexuality, both exaggerated for performances, female impersonators cannot easily be mistaken for Elvis, though occasionally they are. She Is The King wore a pink jumpsuit; there was no doubting her femininity. As she put it: ‘You have to prove yourself doubly: sing, dance and have a good figure … I’m not trying to be Elvis; it’s just me paying tribute to Elvis’. She began relatively late:

  I’d been obsessed with Elvis since I heard him on the radio when I was little. I’d watched all his movies and plastered my bedroom with Elvis posters. He was devilishly handsome, could sing, a
ct and dance. What more could a girl want? So in 1998, after dabbling in real estate and journalism, after my first child was born, I decided to take the plunge and become an Elvis tribute artist.

  Sheryl Scharkie, too, made a late start in her early fifties, when a relationship went bad, a relative died and a new challenge was needed. She came fourth as a busker in Parkes and was on the way up. Three years later she had made it to the stage of the Parkes League Club and was on her way to the Ultimate Tribute Artist competition in Surfers Paradise, the first female ever to compete in it. She saw a wider purpose:

  I really believe I’m pioneering things. There is definitely a gender thing with Elvis. He was male, of course, very charismatic. Sex just oozed out of him. That’s what drove the women crazy. My aim is not to emulate that. But given the gift of the voice I’ve got, I can prove to the guys that I can hold my own in paying tribute. Most female ETAs don’t have the depth of voice that can do that, or the volume that can reach those big notes that can emulate the King. I also bring a little bit of diversity.

  ShElvis and She Is The King perform in masculine garb, never pretending they might be Elvis, but mixing their own and Elvis’s personas. To ShElvis:

  It’s important to be able to lose your identity and forget who you are to a certain extent. In competitions, what they’re looking for you to do is generate some of that entertainment value he had [so that if] you closed your eyes you could be in the presence of Elvis.

  As She Is The King put it: ‘I’m just paying tribute to Elvis … . And Elvis never wore a pink jumpsuit’.

  For ShElvis there was another measure of distinction: ‘I’m gay … It’s like anything, though. If it’s entertaining and you can prove the value. Sure, it’s a novelty. But if you can prove you’re paying a respectful tribute, why can’t you?’

  There had always been moments of homoeroticism between fans and tribute artists. As one local said: ‘When we were growing up the women loved him, but so did the blokes. Most of us had a man crush on him because we wanted to be Elvis. I love other songs and artists, but no-one’s affected me quite like Elvis’. But it was female ETAs who drew attention to what was sometimes seen as the androgyny of Elvis: the campy rhinestoned gaudiness, the eye shadow and the elaborate hairstyle, the capes and belts that parodied superhuman heroes and caricatures of masculinity. ShElvis again:

  There were question marks with Elvis, of course. He was always into the bling, the jumpsuits. He was a flash dresser. He was always ridiculed for that. Long hair. He was a long-haired lout of sorts. Showing his feminine side as well. His voice, some of his song choices were very feminine. … I can do a lot more of the songs that the blokes with their big boomy voices can’t do. The stuff that the other guys don’t do, such as ‘Kentucky Rain’, ‘Honky Tonk Angel’. In America they do it. But not here in Australia. So I can bring something different, show Elvis’s feminine side.

  She Is The King had much the same perspective, preferring smaller, more intimate shows where she ‘could take fans on a journey, explain why Elvis chose particular songs and studios and compiled shows and albums’. That meant including rarely performed songs, and ‘hidden gems’, such as ‘Stranger in My Home Town’, which also meant ‘losing the “Suspicious Minds” crowd’. Like ShElvis, she often chose songs that men could not easily perform, deliberately avoiding competition by not just doing the ‘standards’. In Parkes, and throughout the world, both male and female ETAs still choose the image of the Vegas Elvis, perhaps, as US art historian Erika Doss suggests, because it ‘best embodies the pain and suffering of the later Elvis’. Alternatively, it is undeniably more glamorous, suits spectacular performances and, in the end, the suit is rather easier to get into. Impersonating Elvis enables a multitude of conflicting identities and possibilities. In Parkes they all have a place.

  On the fringes of glory

  There is a hierarchy and a virtual league table among Elvis impersonators: a ladder that performers hope to climb, going from mere impersonator to tribute artist. Gnarnayarrahe Waitairie (Black Elvis) was a regular fixture in Parkes. Well over six feet tall, in a striking red jumpsuit, with flowing ducktailed white hair, aged 67, he cut an impressive figure in 2016. One of a family of 23 brothers and sisters of the Yindjibarndi tribe from Roebourne in Western Australia, he had come via Brisbane (‘the suburb of Graceville – get it?’), had been performing since he was 15 years old, had travelled to 30 countries, had two CDs out, and performed at corporate events and weddings, but he was always a colourful figure on the sidelines rather than on the central stage.

  Hans Wawak was a regular visitor to Parkes in its earlier years, and in 2007 he was still more or less active, without ever making the top. Dressed for the task, 53-year-old Wawak performs Elvis at karaoke bars, perhaps as often as three times a week, and occasionally gets a gig as an Elvis-o-gram. ‘I did a 50th birthday for a nurse in a hospital X-ray department … I went right in there and sung “Love Me Tender” and gave her a pair of underpants. It’s funny because I see her all the time now when I go in for X-rays. It’s all the squatting and kicking you do when you’re performing Elvis – it plays havoc with your knees. I’ve just had to have a reconstruction’.

  The sun sets over Dagwood Dogs in Cooke Park, 2014

  Nic Walker/Fairfax Syndication

  Elvis for Sale, 2010

  John Connell

  Fringe benefits are evident. Many Elvis impersonators have routine jobs as butchers or panel beaters, and becoming the King, however briefly or marginally, is a pleasant shot of escapism, and an emotional break from mundane everyday life. Besides, shaking even aging body parts and crooning ‘Love Me Tender’ on stage can, as we were often reminded, get a good response from the ladies.

  For many such marginal figures, enjoyment was to be had but dreams were never quite realised and costs could be considerable. Wives often had to help out: Scott Crawford’s wife did ABBA impersonations while Scott changed costumes. Busking, singing and travelling were physically demanding. Balancing the work with ‘real’ jobs is difficult, and tribute artists burn out. In the musical world nothing was guaranteed. For ShElvis:

  I have a job where the bosses are flexible … I have a Mum in a nursing home and [a] partner at home waiting for a gall bladder transplant. Then the gigs to fit in, and any social time, and … It’s a tiring lifestyle and a world of time-poverty. I have to learn new music, keep things fresh, avoid audience boredom. I do it in the car, burn CDs and rote learn the songs to and from work.

  Some maintained hectic schedules By 2009 Norm Bakker was not only a director and entertainment manager at Hornsby RSL but was celebrating 20 years of doing his ‘Solid Rock Salute’ to Elvis. By then he was winding down from the Parkes and Memphis success stories, and performing on a tight circuit around the Hunter Valley and Sydney, ranging from bowling clubs and RSLs to cruises on Newcastle harbour and Melbourne Cup lunches, and, at 70, claiming a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest professional ETA.

  As the club scene changed, live music gave way to pokies and shows gave way to more affordable single-person performances – tougher on performers, who lost their enthusiasm, and so appreciated the larger stage that Parkes could offer. Others like She Is The King were forced into an early retirement, having ‘no wish to be reduced to weddings and bar mitzvahs’ or to be seen as ‘mutton dressed as lamb in a jumpsuit’: an experience that men escape more easily. Certainly, ‘If Elvis were still alive he wouldn’t be wearing a jumpsuit and singing in an RSL Club’.

  Petrol and replenishing jumpsuits can be costly. Repeatedly playing the same songs is taxing, although a handful of ETAs can also cover Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and others, and so diversify gigs and incomes. But knees and pelvises are fragile and most impersonators go for a physical performance. For ShElvis:

  Busking wrecks your voice if you don’t look after it. Singing out in the environment. You’re in dry air. You’re dehydrating … Toilet breaks aren’t necessarily going to happen. There’s also that
adrenaline push. You put off your wellbeing partly to entertain them. Partly an aging thing. Haven’t smoked for nine years now. That didn’t help. Busking … can be very detrimental.

  Terry Leonard, at 58, had no intention of retiring: ‘Even after I can’t do Elvis, I can then turn to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin or Al Jolson’. The spirit was willing, but family demands made some time-poor, other sources of income seemed more secure, and the flesh was weakening.

  At birthday parties, hens’ nights and in the clubs, only the most familiar songs are wanted by crowds that are not particularly attuned to Elvis. Most ETAs bowed to this demand for the tried and trusted, and were often grateful for it. Although El Gamble was renowned for being able to do a two and a half hour concert without any repetition, even he wanted now and again to break out into a Beatles number. Terry Leonard, performing twice a week somewhere in country New South Wales, claimed to be able – and willing – to do ‘In the Ghetto’ six or seven times a night if required, but was glad if it wasn’t. Several ETAs found it frustrating to spend a lifetime on covers, without really letting their own voice (or songs) be heard. El Gamble, who had made a successful living out of impersonation, found it flattering that people saw his voice as being so close to Elvis’s, but ‘it also pisses me off on other occasions as my natural vocal ability is not being recognised’; there was scope for improvisation, but audiences too often sought the familiar. At Parkes, everything Elvis was welcomed somewhere.

  Treat Me Nice: the beauty of busking

  Buskers included both the wannabes and those who had already made it in a small way. The street was their stage, where discovery might await them; there was at least the semblance of a crowd, and the possibility of being recognised, or at least selling a few CDs. Like the tribute artists, they are mostly male but a vividly more diverse collection, from the obvious wannabes to the sometimes cute children. Most come alone but duos and small groups provide variety. Most are well aware that they are never going to make the grand stages, or make a living from Elvis, but a street corner stage is satisfying, and the dream might last a little longer.