experience I have ever had.
I did some other jobs for Jimmy but tried to avoid him for the most part. I had to stay on his back to get paid and get the amount he promised. I got to the point I had enough with him!
There was a guy that I met who had an agency called “Zippity Do Dah.” His name was Ange, and he was a great guy to work for although he didn’t get me a lot of work. I’ll never forget one job he got me. I had the deli at the time. He called me up and asked if I would sing to a woman’s boyfriend for his birthday over the phone. He said that he could pay me twenty-five dollars. I said, “Sure, what’s the story?” He told me all I had to do was call the guy on the phone and sing two songs. I waited for the right time and closed the deli for a few minutes, called the guy up, and sang two songs. Elvis never left the building and got paid twenty-five dollars! Too bad I couldn’t do that a few times a week.
Ange also had me do a wedding. Now when I did weddings, I would just arrange things with the DJ and come in as a surprise for the people. I went into the wedding and sang a couple of songs. As I was leaving, I heard the DJ say, “I always wanted to say this…ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.” And I’ll tell you, I have heard it many times since and left many buildings in my time as an Elvis impersonator.
One wedding I did was very interesting. It was set in a park. It was a mock wedding where I had to perform the ceremony. The groom wrote the whole thing and stated all that the wife had to do, like the dishes, the cleaning etc…it was a good time had by all with beer trucks all over the park. No one went home sober except Elvis.
I didn’t realize how popular being an Elvis impersonator was until I was on the computer one night. Someone popped up on my screen and started asking me a lot of questions about what I do and how I do it as Elvis. Finally, I asked who this person was. She turned out to be another agent based in Chicago. She had a national Elvis agency, which eventually went international. Nance has done well for herself.
One job she got me was very exciting. A guy called her from Philadelphia and said that he wanted an Elvis impersonator for a nighttime television show. It was the Wally Kennedy Show on ABC. I told her that I’d be happy to do it. The bad part about the trip was that it was wintertime. I had my two sons and my girlfriend, Mary, that night. There was snow and ice on the ground. The first thing that happened was when I was leaving my mom’s house, backing out of her house, I stepped on the gas and the van darted backward and hit Mary’s car. Then off to the TV show. It was a rough ride because I had to use the Schuylkill Expressway down in Philadelphia. I always called it “the highway of death.” I was just about to get off the highway when the fan belt broke. It was one of those serpentine belts; all I could do was nurse the car over to the TV station. Well by this time I was not happy.
In any case, we went into the studio. They told me to get into my costume and put on my makeup if I wanted to. I’m not a makeup kind of guy. I finally got on the set. They had a couple of sisters from California who followed and literally chased Elvis impersonators. They had them on the TV screen, and I could see them, but they could not see me. It would have been nice if they could have seen me too.
Wally asked me to sing a song to them, so I sang “Love Me Tender.” After I got done singing, they said I sounded hot! Wally tried to get me to say how I could have my pick of women anytime I did a show. I told him that I wasn’t like that. I usually had a girlfriend and was always faithful. The two girls were saying how they would go to all the shows to see any Elvis impersonator. They would try to get the scarves and try to get up onstage with them. One of the girls admitted going home with one but claimed she did not do anything with him. I had my doubts. When I was done, I had to figure out how to get us home. First, I called my buddy, Tom, who we all called “the Colonel,” like Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker. He knew his way around Philadelphia like the back of his hand. Then I called a tow truck.
Thank God I was a member of AAA. I was about an hour from home and had the hundred-mile deal. My sons got into the tow truck which took them home, and Tom took me and Mary home. What a night! Oh, I did get my girlfriend’s car fixed. That had haunted me for five years because I used my insurance to get her car fixed. Nance did get me a few other jobs, but they were few and far between. She was involved in all the big Elvis contests all over the USA.
Another time I wound up on TV was while I had the deli. I got a call one day form a publishing company that wanted to advertise a book called Where Is Elvis? on The Today Show. They said they wanted four guys like me. On every page of the book, there was a picture of a group of people, animals, and other objects in a crowd of junk. You were supposed to find the picture of Elvis in the crowd. I told them I would do it. They were brief on the details, so I called the Colonel and asked if he wanted to go, he did.
We had to get up at three o’clock in the morning to meet a chauffeur in front of the house. At three o’clock, we were off to NBC to be on The Today Show to advertise the book. When we got there, we went up on the fourth floor. There were three other guys up in the room already. One was dressed like young Elvis, the other two were in jumpsuits. I always dressed in the jumpsuits. One guy was tall and skinny with a not-too-good-looking jumpsuit. The young guy looked good and so did the other one. A woman came in and told us to get a song together so we could all sing it together. We finally decided on “That’s Already Mama.” The one guy that looked pretty good was there with his father. He and his father wound up getting in an argument with the management because he wanted to do a song alone.
They came close to throwing him out of the building. They finally calmed down and realized that he couldn’t do a song by himself.
I asked a woman in charge what exactly would happen. I was under the impression that they were doing a taping and it would be aired later, and she proceeded to tell me that we were going live at eight o’clock! That was when the adrenaline kicked in. I got on the phone and called everybody I knew. The song went well. The younger guy played the guitar for us. It was an experience that I will never forget. On the way home, the Colonel asked me if I had seen Don McLean up at NBC. I had seen a guy sitting with a guitar with a beautiful blond, but I had no idea it was Don McLean. I had never seen his face before, I had no idea who he was. I do remember thinking he was a good guitar player. The worst part was going back home after that and standing behind the counter of the deli again for the rest of the day. It was just a crazy feeling to have been on national TV and then having to go back to reality!
When I think back, I seemed to get many jobs in South Jersey and the Philadelphia area. What surprised me a lot of times was how much people would pay. People would call me to do a party for maybe an hour. I’d say I get $250 for that. They would just say okay. I was getting quite a good reputation. People would ask agents specifically for me. Many times, I would just have to stop in and do a couple of songs. People would pay at least $100 for that. Most of the time they would want me to stay and enjoy the party. They’d ask me to stay and eat and drink. Being the social person that I am, I did. Plus, it was good public relations.
One wedding I did was a Jewish wedding. It was one of the most exciting weddings I had ever seen. Those people know how to party. They step on glasses and break them, but I have no idea why. They also put the bride and groom on a chair and lift them up in the air and dance around the room that way! I was waiting for them to drop the couple, but fortunately they didn’t.
