The name of my site comes from my favorite Elvis joke from Mojo Nixon’s “Elvis is Everywhere.”
The title of that song was true in 1987 when Mojo Nixon wrote it, and it is still true today.
I just watched the movie “Man on the Moon,” about Andy Kauffman with my parents. They loved it. My mother said she never knew most of his career consisted of staged jokes at the time. I tried to explain to her with some effectiveness that that was indeed the point.
I also tried to tell her that everything Kaufman was making fun of was actually stuff that he loved: Elvis, wrestling, Howdy Doody, bad television reception. Everything.
Early in that movie, Kaufman is told by a club owner to get an act. He is told to do some “take my wife” gags, talk about traffic, do some impressions and be relatable. So Kaufman leaves with a smile and defies him by sort of doing exactly that.
It wasn’t much of a stretch for Jim Carrey, because he started out doing almost nothing but impressions and could have stayed in Las Vegas doing them for millions of dollars had he not had bigger ambitions.
So when he does a “real” impersonation, he chooses Elvis. Don’t ignore the tagline. Even when Kaufman just did his “foreign man” character that became Latka on “Taxi,” he always ended it with Elvis’ most famous phrase. “Thank you very much.”
Elvis was raised to be polite and was. Everyone mocks him for it, like they do a lot of things, but it does stem from his polite appreciation of his fans.
Here is the real Andy doing that bit on “The Tonight Show” in 1977 five months before Elvis did leave the building. Kaufman makes so many inside jokes that you can tell he did really love Elvis.
The groundbreaking thing wasn’t the choice of Elvis, it was a comment on how many people had already been doing it for so long. Can you think of another artist that created so many jobs for so many people?
Here is Johnny Cash doing it in 1959 or so. Often, Cash would do it opening for Elvis, and Elvis would come out and do Cash right after.
What would have been groundbreaking was what Yes’ Rick Wakeman referred to in his hilarious Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech.
“I’d like to thank, apart from all the guys in Yes that I work with, my father, who played a massive part in my career. Like my family, we were all in the entertainment business. We generally were very, very poor. My father was an Elvis impersonator. But there wasn’t much call for that in 1947. He taught me a lot. I remember he sat me down once, he said, “Son,” he said, “Don’t go to any of those really cheap, dirty, nasty, sleazy strip clubs because if you do, you’ll see something you shouldn’t.” So, of course I went. And I saw my dad.”
That joke was actually the whole premise behind “The Skin Game” episode of “Happy Days” before it “Jumped the Shark.”
“Happy Days” actually “Jumped the Shark” when it stopped being a subtle, nostalgic show and became a farce centering on Henry Winkler’s Elvis impression!
Quentin Tarantino, who had all the same thoughts as me, but executed them better than I ever could is an Elvis impersonator in this scene from the Golden Girls.
Here’s Val Kilmer doing it in “True Romance,” written by Tarantino. The whole script is obsessed with Elvis and when Tarantino made his first movie “Reservoir Dogs,” it featured Michael Madsen playing an evil Elvis, and that in no way was the end of Tarantino’s obsession with Elvis.
Here’s me doing Elvis in 1987 in my room in front of an Elvis poster. It led to me doing mine on Chicago’s legendary “Second City” stage soon afterwards.
A few year’s earlier, I had written a very good essay for a Rhodes Scholarship saying that I wanted to shake up the world like Elvis did.
It got me an interview, where the first thing they asked me was why my hair did not look like Elvis’. Idiotically, I told the truth that I kept showing pictures to barbers and those barbers continually failed me, when I should have just said – METAPHOR!
Here is a movie called “Honeymoon in Vegas” all about Elvis impersonators that actually ends with an entire group of parachuting Elvis impersonators called the “Flying Elvi” that still exist. Elvis first flopped in Vegas and then somehow became the embodiment of Vegas.
“3000 Miles to Graceland” is a movie where Elvis impersonators rob a casino.
This could go on forever. Please add your favorite in the comments. There are at least 500 just in movies and television shows. I fully expect you to post “Full House” clips to make me crazy and it will. Please just post unique ones and not the same one over and over.
There are now currently estimated to be 85,000 Elvis impersonators in the world.
The other day in response to this recent post, “Essential Albums: Elvis Presley at Sun Records,” a good friend and I starting discussing Ricky Nelson.
Ricky Nelson recorded his first song “I’m Walkin’ ” as an Elvis impression to impress a girl. He was dismissed as a “teen idol,” but actually found his own voice and became a true artist, largely with the help of James Burton, who would go on to play guitar for years for Elvis Presley.
As Nelson matured, he ventured into Dylan and was an early country rock pioneer, which didn’t go over well especially at Madison Square Garden. In response, as a statement about his true artistic intentions, he wrote “Garden Party.”
If you like true artists the lyrics are very inspirational and include:
If you gotta play at garden parties, I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang, I’d rather drive a truck
And it’s all right now, learned my lesson well
You see, ya can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself
The reference to driving a truck is in fact 100% an homage to Elvis, who did drive a truck before he became “Elvis” and was told to go back to doing it after auditioning at the “Grand ‘ole Opry.”
In the end, there was only one Elvis and here is Frank Sinatra sort of trying to imitate him, and Elvis showing he could be anyone he wanted and still be Elvis right after he got out of the Army.
“Elvis is Everywhere” apparently except for Michael J Fox, whose contacting Parkinson’s kind of ruined Mojo Nixon’s joke, but everything I know about Michael J Fox shows that he can take a joke (See his appearance on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”). I’m sure he would admit with good-natured fun that the only good thing about his contracting that disease is that he too is now more like Elvis who did shake a lot and did sing “All Shook Up.”
