Touring Elvis Lives! stars three Kings onstage
Being laid off at 42 from his job at a St. Louis steel plant in 2008 was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to Bill Cherry.
“I was a welder by trade; I worked in a steel foundry,” he says. “And in 2008, the steel industry took a big dive and I was laid off. A friend found out on the Internet about this Ultimate Elvis competition that the estate of Elvis Presley put on, and he said, ‘You ought to do this.’”
Cherry’s mother was an Elvis fan, and he grew up with Presley and his music.
“I used to do the Elvis thing as a hobby,” he says. “So, in 2009, I got involved in the competition. I won the preliminary round in Tupelo, Miss., which is very cool; that’s where Elvis was born.”
That earned him a trip to Memphis and the finals on the stage of the Orpheum Theatre, where he was named the Elvis Presley Estate’s 2009 Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist.
“From that point on, I’ve been doing this full time,” he says. “It’s amazing, none of this existed before I put on that suit. Now I have a fan club and the greatest job in the world. The craziest part is none of this would have ever happened if I hadn’t been laid off.”
When he got the call to come back to the steel foundry, he turned it down: “‘Yeah, I don’t think so. I like this job more.’”
Cherry dons the King’s trademark jumpsuit and appears as the third of three Elvises, the Elvis of the ’70s, in Elvis Lives!, blending live performances and multimedia displays in a musical journey across Presley’s life, onstage Friday-Sunday at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center, under the auspices of Celebrity Attractions.
Jay Dupuis, winner of the 2014 competition, comes on first as “’50s Elvis.” Kevin Mills, who took third place in the 2009 competition and was the runner-up in 2010, portrays “movie-era Elvis” (a segment that also involves an Ann-Margret tribute artist). The show also features a band, backup singers and dancers and “iconic imagery made available from the Graceland archives.”
“We have footage and audio of Elvis given us to use by the estate and the archives, so Elvis is on a screen behind us in images and footage, and he narrates the show from the beginning to the end,” Cherry explains.
He adds that the show appeals not only to Elvis aficionados but to fans of Broadway shows and concerts: “With three guys doing it, you don’t get bored with it. You’re not seeing the same guy come out. And each of us has his own style and take on it, so you’re getting three performers, backup singers, dancers, a huge stage production — not your typical Elvis show people might go see down at the local VFW hall.
“It’s really cool and very exciting to be a part of that. It pretty much captures what it might have been like to see Elvis live.”
The show debuted in St. Louis in 2009, and has gone on the road every year since. Tours last anywhere from two to five months; most of them transit North America, but Cherry says they’ve even taken a trip to Singapore.
“Elvis is everywhere,” he says. “It’s amazing how world-renowned, how popular he is — even more so across the oceans and on the other side of the world, for someone who’d never been there himself, except for Germany when he was in the military.
“The fan base is huge, almost cultish. I think Elvis’ popularity is because of a mystique about him. You never saw Elvis do Johnny Carson or any of these talk shows, especially in the latter part of his life. I think to most people, in their minds, Elvis is whatever they wanted him to be. They hang a picture of him on the wall and he’s whatever they imagine he is, because they never really knew who he really was.
“The people that were here at the time Elvis was here and knew what he was about, as far as his stage presence, will be dying off and there will be a new generation, and I just hope it won’t end up getting diluted in terms of what Elvis was really about.”
In the “off season,” Cherry pays tribute onstage to Elvis under his own flag. He performs with many of the same musicians who backed Presley, including the Jordanaires, the Sweet Inspirations, D.J. Fontana, and members of J.D. Sumner and the Stamps Quartet. Last year, he received a key to the city of Tupelo.
Even in his speaking voice, one can hear Elvis cadences.“My mother was from Arkansas — I can’t remember what town it was; it might have been close to Little Rock,” he says. “My father was from Tennessee. So I’ve always had the Southern drawl in my family, and on top of that, watching Elvis — it’s very natural for me. When I’m onstage, I put a little extra into it, to kind of really kick it off.”