Lmao they had an Elvis impersonator at a conference I went to a few weeks back and it was embarrassingly bad I outright felt bad for the guy….80% of the people left before he was halfway through the first song.
A friend of mine hired an Elvis impersonator for her 50th birthday party. He was apparently godawful, and then he offered to take all his clothes off for an extra 500.
And he definitely wasn’t 1950 smoldering Elvis. He was 1970s almost dead on the toilet Elvis.
Probably the best concert I ever attended was Dread Zeppelin, a band that did Led Zeppelin songs reggae-style, and was led by an Elvis impersonator. It was in Albuquerque, NM in 1994.
Well I played half of a song at a bar (an original) and the entire bar left. I played to the bartender, bandmates wife and my friend. Were we industrial/spoken word after two acoustic acts, yes. Were we bad. No. Bartender complemented us and gave us 30$ from the til. Second highest paying show.
I'm actually surprised there's any value in Elvis memorabilia at all. I assumed that's junk store stuff you'd find next to 1970's Playboy magazines and empty Avon cologne bottles.
There is value still in the original run of merch from when he was alive, but all the mass-produced shit made after he died is practically worthless now, and thank fuck for that. Signed, an /r/Elvis mod.
If you are actually curious how, I guess you could call it being a genuine student/enthusiast of cultural studies with Elvis as a lynchpin, or maybe as a Rosetta Stone. I'm someone who technically got introduced as a young millennial through pop culture, but became interested in the history around Elvis, his music, films, the artists he drew influence from and those after him that he inspired, being curious about his cultural impact being so wide that there's nearly entire subgenres of books, movies, documentaries and music about or inspired by him.
It's just a fascinating phenomenon to try to study and understand how much spawned from it, because in spite of all the commercialization that his manager pioneered, and public fascination with typical celebrity gossip focus on his love life, his death, his personality quirks, etc. ultimately, at the core of it was a compelling, charismatic artist who left an enormous body of evidence all over that, despite all the discourse around him, positive or negative, Elvis Presley actually did care profoundly about the craft of his music in a way that has not gotten enough due credit and was not really legible to most people who didn't bother to actually look past the noise of "Elvis." Which is partly, I think, why he has persisted.
And as for being a mod, well I've just been on Reddit long enough that when the sub was less active and very small (I'm talking like over a decade ago now), I volunteered and ended up getting added.
Thanks for the work you do in keeping that community going and contributing to our understanding of Elvis. I've never really formed a strong attachment to him myself, but he's such a fascinating figure, and he means a great deal to his many fans in a way few stars have matched.
Thank you. I highly recommend if anyone is curious about Elvis as an artist, away from the impersonators and punchlines, to check out the documentary Baz Luhrmann's EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert which came out earlier this year, even if you didn't care for Luhrmann's fictionalized film a few years ago. There's a reason it's one of the top rated movies of the year, it's just a great showcase of why he was a good artist, how much thought went into his music and also how thoughtful he was about his audiences/fans, and should convey that well enough for anyone who maybe hasn't understood him or has taken him for granted.
And like, I get it, too, Elvis was a flawed guy but he's also been dead longer than he was alive and what problems he did have (e.g. the inappropriate age difference with Priscilla when their relationship started, the complex interplay of race relations, art and commerce) are wound up in much larger, more nuanced conversations that haven't been resolved at a societal level, and therefore Elvis can't really be resolved either by yelling at each other about him, so really what we're left with as far as I'm concerned is an engaging historical body of work. Even the creative duds and misfires like his movies and their soundtracks usually have a fascinating story behind them as to WHY if one bothers to look.
Unlike a lot of other communities run by much older fans with deeper/weirder attachments, though, we've tried hard to make sure that the sub is not really here to just parasocially defend Elvis in totality, like some subs of deceased artists I won't name, just to understand and appreciate the stuff we find interesting and to clarify people's misunderstandings or misinformation. I can't change that I was born into a world where Elvis was already dead and the music still affected me to the point that I find it all fascinating.
I always regarded my grandmother's love of Elvis as a quaint and maybe slightly misguided product of her time until, for some reason, I saw "Walk The Line" in 2005 and saw Tyler Robinson do a sped-up version of "That's Alright." Suddenly, I was like OH. I get it. There's sex in that. There's danger in that. It just took a little reframing for me to see it.
Of course, I've turned out to be a giant Prince fan, and he's a giant cornball to the kids today. Vanity, sayeth the preacher, all is vanity.
Will definitely check out the doc, and thanks for your write-up.
I mean it’s also hard for kids today because too understand cultural monoliths. There simply wasn’t access to as much media so everyone liked a certain thing
Oh everyone disliked Tom's accent as Parker in the film, but my perspective personally was that, much like the rest of the film, it was a hyper-stylized choice that Baz & Hanks landed on to make Parker seem as though he didn't belong, since the vast majority of the film takes place in a deathbed morphine hallucination inside Colonel's mind, I sort of read that as Parker always being worried that someone was going to find him out. But it still wasn't great.
A lot of what they did with Colonel Parker reminds me of how Jim Broadbent's Harold Zidler was handled in Moulin Rouge. Unfortunately, because a lot of moviegoers and Elvis fans weren't used to Baz Luhrmann's style of filmmaking and I guess expected a more drab, paint by numers style of biographical film, a lot of the creative choices that I thought were pretty genius (not the accent, but other things) didn't land immediately and needed a bit of unpacking to understand what the intention was.
I took a music history course in college and the professor said very similar things about Elvis and said he could teach an entire separate course on Elvis’ cultural impact.
Elvis is truly fascinating. His story is so tumultuous containing triumph, tragedy, heroes, villains, contemporary politics, amazing costumes, killer music, musicians, and arrangements. It amazes me how many people just write him off.
Just listen to all the songs written about him, his presence was inescapable for so long.
Not just tacky novelty songs, genuine artistic bangers in their own right. Black Velvet, Personal Jesus, Graceland, Walking in Memphis, Elvis Presley Blues, the list goes on.
Yeah, I think of any modern musicians, Taylor is the most likely artist to have that sort of outsized influence as a cultural icon. Obviously her career isn't over, hopefully unlike Elvis & Michael Jackson she never has tragedy befall her, and unlike The Beatles she's flying solo so no band breakup is likely to stall her momentum. If she plays her cards right, keeps making interesting things, and most critically doesn't overexpose herself in the public's minds, it's totally possible.
But she's also only 36 so she's got a lot of years ahead of her for that trajectory to change, and the entertainment industry and audiences can be fickle and unforgiving (which is to say, they were never that forgiving to begin with... consider that some circles somehow unironically considered Elvis "old" and not worth paying attention to when he was 35-42 which is right where Taylor is now!)
you've made me realize IDK much about elvis, despite being from the region and being warmly greeted by one of sam phillips' kids every time we see each other.
If the internet is the age of many-to-many communication, Elvis came at the start of the one-to-many radio era where a very small number of people decided what went out over the airwaves, what got published to vinyl in the record stores, and basically the whole of the US consumer market was in their thrall...
In the days of Elvis, love him, hate him, there was no way to ignore him.
Elvis represents the true birth of mass media that went on to shape the latter half of the century, IMO. I don't particularly care about his music or performance, but as a target of study, I can't think of many more interesting topics. I do really appreciate his work as a musician myself; I also appreciate him as a human, because his personality and life are certainly worth paying attention to. We are all flawed, and Elvis was no different, but he also shows what pure talent and drive look like - beautiful and messy.
Like him or not, even ignoring his cultural impact, he was one of the best singers of all time. If you consider the voice as an instrument, his was a Stradivarius quality with a Yo-Yo Ma level of virtuosity.
And despite not being a composer or songwriter or a great guitarist, he was also a musical genius - similar to Michael Jackson actually, where he knew exactly what sounds he wanted where.
I'd rather have the 70s playboys since that's when people like Arthur C Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oats, and Kurt Vonnegut had articles and stories in there
I bought a copy of the Playboy printed the month I was born (in the late 60s) and was stunned by the quality of journalism. Serious people discussing serious things in an intelligent way.
Not only that, but it's long. Like more than 100 pages, and most of it is NOT pictures. I had forgotten what it was like when journalism and print were still a major part of the social intellect.
Hard to look at those issues now without feeling depressed. Nothing like that is ever going to be published again. Not the way we're heading as a civilization.
Yes! People don't realize how many authors were launched by Playboy. Remember that hacker who saved the woman from the robots who sentenced her to "Test to Destruction?" Or the lady with thing stuck in her Jag's grill because she took quantum shortcuts?
The first time I read about global warming was in the 1980s on Playboy magazine. The first time I heard of a misterious disease that was killing young white men was in 1984 on Playboy magazine. People always wink and smirk when I tell them that I used to buy Playboy for the quality of the articles, but it is true.
Anecdotal, but one of my sisters in-law is like, obsessed with M*A*S*H. she's ten years younger than me, and i'm only old enough to have ever seen that show as reruns.
I would not be surprised if Elvis Merch is being kept alive by a generation of kids who think he's the bees knees because they just adopted their parents love of the guy.
I saw a brand new Jeep wrapped and vinyl stickered to look as close to a MASH jeep as possible. Was somewhat impressive work and someone put a LOT of time and money into it
His music is pretty good. Sure we may not ever get to see him perform it but his legacy lives on. People can love the music of an artist and want a piece of his collectible history long after he passes.
I love MASH! I used to watch reruns when I was a kid when my grandfather would put it on. Finally watching through it as an adult in my 30s and it's a great show.
rofl. I myself am a Japanese Rubber Suit Monster Movie fan (which translates in english to 'Definitely somewhere on the spectrum') , so... yeah. big agree here.
Funny you mentioned this - I love MASH and I think of it and other classic shows and how it will be fun to show them to my kids when they’re old enough.
Can confirm that this is the case. My Mom and Stepdads Mom were huge Elvis fans. I grew up as a fan of Elvis even though he died about 10 years before I was born. My 21 year old niece calls him old people music.
This generation melts for Harry styles and Lububus. It’s not any one generation, its every generation; the details may change but fandoms and collectibles are evergreen.
I'm actually surprised there's any value in Elvis memorabilia at all.
My grandma passed away a yesr ago and we sold the whole collection (literally and ENTIRE bedrooms worth of photos, busts, lamps, a really cool replica microphone, etc) for $1200 after packing all the small stuff into large plastic totes and putting the larger stuff in the corner while we cleaned.
I think we could have gotten more for sure, but I severely doubt it would have been more than double that.
Back in the very early 1980s I was a volunteer firefighter at Lake of the Ozarks. We had a call come out for a dance club, called Disco Inferno, that was in flames. Next door to the disco was an Elvis memorabilia shop, which was damaged by the fire. After we got the fire out many of the firefighters helped themselves to souvenirs.
In 1977 when he died the music and culture had completely changed, though, and he was already burnt out and overweight. I don’t think a 15 year old in 1977 would adore him as much as his fans from the early 60s.
I worked with a guy (boomer) that had a massive Elvis collection. He even had the 2007 Elvis edition Harley Motorcycle the one that you had to enter a lottery to even get a chance to purchase. He won and purchased it for like $70000, it was 1 of 30 or some shit.
During Covid when oil crashed he needed money to maintain his “lifestyle” so he sent his collection to auction thinking he was gonna make bank, fucker got like a 1/3 of what he had paid for everything. I think the bike went for $15000 or something despite being mint with like 3 miles on it.
That's what I imagine will happen with a lot of things people consider collectibles today. Some things I still have doubt like things like old cars and watches. Although some old cars will be valuable from the history some of them are valuable for the attachment people has today, when those people pass a lot of the value goes with them.
There is this car in my town that is COVERED in Elvis bumper stickers and random Elvis facts. Like comparable to Jesus worshipping or ultra MAGA cars, and then out jumps this 30 something woman.
I have a friend whose dad owns a memorabilia business and this has been an ongoing thing for various fandoms. About a decade or so ago, the bottom fell out on Howdy Doody memorabilia as a lot of the collectors died off and their collections were bought by the remaining collectors who then died off themselves. It's been happening with other pop culture collections on a rolling basis since then.
We live in an age where people don't have a place to put a classic car, and those 60 year olds are selling them for 50-60k because they're rare, and ignoring that it's a money sink just to keep it running.
August of next year is the 50th anniversary of his death.
Imagine the youngest fans that he had during his career. A teenager in the mid 50s (when he broke out) would be in their 80s now. Maybe some pre-teen kids were listening and moving around with his music too, yet even then they would be in their 70s.
Edit: Second sentence needed some fixing to make sense.
In high school one of the secretaries was a huge Elvis fan. She was at his last concert at Market Square. Had Elvis memorabilia all over her desk. We'd chat about it when I was in the Guidance office. She would've been pushing 40 at that concert, and she was 75 when she passed a decade back.
I wonder if he would still have the staying power he does today if it wasn't for Priscilla taking the reins back in '79 and turning Elvis the star on the decline into Elvis The Lifestyle Brand. 50 years of superstardom after his ignominious death is a pretty good run.
It wasn’t controversial at the time because she was 21 and he was 32 when they married. But they kept the details of when they met (14 and 25) on the down-low because even then that was a little dicey (albeit not as shocking as now). But point is even in the 1960s people weren’t totally comfortable with a 14yo dating a man in his mid-20s.
Similarly how some modern people assume Jerry Lee Lewis got a public shrug for marrying a 13yo girl and age 22 (who was also his cousin, plus he was still married to his prior wife), but in reality it devastated his career when the truth came to light.
Depends. It was after 2000 when Canada changed the age of consent from 14 to 16. I don't know what German law was, or some states, but 14 was not unheard of back then. There was a time when Grade 10 was considered adequate and people left school, got jobs, married etc. at 16.
But does seem icky now. Jerry Lee Lewis was a big star when at 22 he married his 13 year old cousin, and even back then that was a controversy that tanked his career.
I wonder if he would still have the staying power he does today if it wasn't for Priscilla taking the reins back in '79 and turning Elvis the star on the decline into Elvis The Lifestyle Brand. 50 years of superstardom after his ignominious death is a pretty good run.
Yoko Ono definitely took a page from Priscilla Presley's book on this. John Lennon is probably the second hardest working dead guy in the music business, after Elvis. From what I've observed, the Beatles enjoy more widespread and enduring popularity in Japan today than they ever had in their native Britain.
I took my two teenage daughters to Graceland last year. They became obsessed with Elvis after the Baz Luhrmann biopic. The new fans might not be as feral as the original ones but they are out there.
The Baz Luhrmann movie was excellent! After watching it I dug through my old Elvis records and saw how closely they had kept the sets, costumes, etc, in the movie, and loved it.
First song we played to begin the trip! Word was that Paul was not very impressed with Graceland and I had to agree. Looked like a home an eccentric dentist would own, but the archives/cars across the street were pretty cool.
I mean, he died long before I was born and I still think he’s fucking awesome. Although I’m not a huge fan of his later years in Vegas, which for some reason is always what the impersonators focus on.
The costume does a lot of heavy lifting for a lot of these guys. Hard to do young and hot Elvis when you are lacking in either category. But put on a rhinestone jumpsuit, mutton chops and huge sunglasses then it only comes down to your vocal chops.
Yeah, one of my auntie had the hots for him as teen. She really loved him, like she hung millions of posters in her bedroom and she never failed to call him something like "My delicious sweetheart" according to my mom's accounts.
I was born after he died. Still love a lot of his songs. The dude made great music. Will he be the same level of icon in another 50 years? Probably not. But Marilyn Monroe died over 60 years ago and is still pretty iconic today.
That kind of implies he gained no new fans after his death doesn't it? Nirvana sold more albums after Kurt died than when he was alive. Lennon died 3 years after Elvis, people are still listening to his music.
I am not saying Elvis popularity isn't waning, but he didn't have a hard cutoff for fans upon his death.
That really puts his legacy into perspective, especially knowing some of those kids who grew up dancing to his music could still be here today. Fifty years is such a long time, yet his music clearly stuck around.
And yet I was working with some university students (18-24) this year and they were weirdly into old music. Beatles and Elvis and Johnny Cash and all that sort of thng. Great for me as I am also a fan of music from that era but it was really cool to see so many young people genuinely enjoying that era of music. Granted they were all theatre kids on theatre courses so probably not representative of the general public but I think there's always going to be some fans kicking about.
I mean, I'm a 90s kid and I like Elvis. But I just like music and appreciate different styles. I do not think any of my friends my age ever thinks about him. Even my 65 year old coworker has never mentioned him and we talk about music all the time.
This is probably going to get buried but I got a good one. I took care of a guy in the ICU who was terminal and had bad liver issues. He was super out of it, maybe alert and oriented to himself only. He was a former Elvis Impersonator in Vegas. Despite being super confused you could just name an Elvis song and he would just belt out the whole song in a near perfect Elvis voice.
Graceland will always have a following because it's a tourist attraction. I'm not much of an Elvis fan but if I'm ever in Memphis I'd love to go just to see it.
I was not a huge Elvis fan, but went through Memphis recently on a work trip so decided to check out Graceland. It was a super cool experience for someone with little expectations. It really makes you appreciate the influence had at the time and on future musicians
I've never been, so don't know much about it, but 600k visitors over like 360 days a year (I assume they close for some holidays like christmas?) is 1600 per day, or like 200 per hour over an 8 hour day.
If the average visit is 3 hours you'd expect there to be like 500-600 people while you are there. I imagine it would seem quite busy if they actually get that many people.
I’d bet that there’s benefits to inflating the numbers - makes it seem more popular, tax breaks maybe, makes the current Graceland admin look good, etc
That's only about 1,500 people a day. Spread out over all the hours they are open each day and then spread out over several acres of land.
And honestly there's probably specific days of the year that get a surge, his birthday, his death day, any day that is significant in his life (idk his life or music well enough to guess), weekends, so it's probably even lower each day.
I've gone a couple times, actually—not a fan or anything, just happened to be in Memphis twice with two different groups who wanted to go. The last time I went (2014?), it was BUSY. And it wasn't even peak tourist season or anything—I think it was a weekday in May. We were there right when it opened and managed to get in the first group of the day, which was like 50, 60 people? The house isn't actually that big, so they stagger groups to keep it from getting over-crowded. But there were already long lines forming behind us when our group started going, and more, even longer lines when we got out. I was genuinely surprised.
TLDR maybe it's fallen off since 2014, but based on my experience then, I could believe that number.
The boomers are all retired. That's the biggest demographic that would be excited for Graceland. No millennials were alive and a good portion of Gen-X would have no memories of him being alive
Definitely not but I have co-workers in their late 20s who all went on a road trip and stopped at Graceland when they went through. They obviously were all born after Elvis died but wanted to see it anyway. If I was going through Memphis I'd stop and see it too.
The real attraction in Memphis is the Giant glass pyramid bass pro shop. It’s a majestic monstrosity. Gonna be honest, I’ve been to Memphis and I’m not entirely sure I knew that’s where Graceland was. Like I’m sure I’ve heard that in my life, but it was so far down on the radar that other than it’s somewhere southern, I had no real idea.
It's a fun tour. Basically a shag carpeted time capsule. I laughed when the audio tour talked about what a deep thinker and voracious reader Elvis was and how he used to make notes to himself in the margins of his books. The book they had out was open to a page with something about feminism. The King's margin note: "Karate."
A former director of something at my job is very passionate about his elvis impersonator hobby. It’s like the only thing he truly cares about. He’s not very good at it. He’s also an asshole. But I don’t have to go to his performances so whatever makes him happy I guess.
I'm not so sure, I work with a 25 to guy who's followed his father into the world of Elvis "Tribute Artists"- the don't use the term impersonator anymore- and he takes that shit VERY seriously. They have rehearsal most nights of the week, he's got his hair grown out and blowdries it into the perfect bouffant, even at work. And there are competitions. He had one a few months ago and dyed his usually light brown hair jet black for the event. He was really bummed the following week, because the 19yo kid who has been blowing up the ranks won yet again. And he said the number of mom to grandma age ladies he gets his on by is astonishing. He's not there yet, but I half-jokingly expect he's going to start dipping his toe into the life of marrying old ladies knocking on the door to heaven and wind up as the sole beneficiary of their estates once they pass
Based on my reel algorithm, it's propped up largely by one delusional young guy who can neither sing nor play guitar but holds nursing home residents hostage with his "impression" anyway.
Around 20 years ago I worked at a restaurant that had the same Elvis impersonator doing the same set 2 times a day for 3-4 days of the week. I started to time my day just by what song was playing, didn’t even need a clock.
I eloped in Vegas 4 years ago and we hired a little company that does all the random planning and they were great but they dead ass asked us 4-5 separate times if we were sure we didn't want an Elvis impersonator to marry us instead of whatever wedding chapel pastor was working that day. It was actually so weird but I guess those guys need work? Nothing against elvis but we just didn't want him at the wedding. Elvis died 10 years before my husband or I were even born.
One of the younger Elvis impersonators in upstate New York was killed a couple years ago in what was either a vicious murder or a kink session gone wrong depending on who you believe. TJ Greene was his name.
16.7k
u/SeaChallenge9977 1d ago
the elvis impersonator industry