Arena date for The King - Shawn Klush, Steve Preston.....

IMPOSSIBLE as it may be for some Elvis Presley enthusiasts to accept it, The King is not alive and well and living in Area 51.

And yet, if I had to swear to that as I sit here chatting to professional Elvis tribute artist Shawn Klush at his folks' home in Pennsylvania, I'd waver in my conviction that Elvis met his maker more than 30 years ago, aged just 42.

Why? Because Shawn is so like Elvis it sends shivers down your spine. He looks like him, laughs like him, walks, talks and sings like him.

It's impossible to tell where Elvis ends and Shawn begins.

Little wonder, then, that he's won all the most prestigious Elvis talent shows around, performed as part of the award winning Legends In Concert tribute show and is one of only a handful of Elvis tribute artists - known in the business as an ETA - to be recognised by and invited to perform at Elvis's estate in Memphis.

He's one in a long line of impersonators (although he, like other professional ETAs, refuses to use that word) making lucrative careers out of taking off The King. And if there's an international phenomenon that unites us across the cultures, ages and sexes, it's imitating Elvis Presley.

There's even a range of 'how to' books to help aspiring Elvii become GI Elvis, rock 'n' roll Elvis, '68 Comeback Special Elvis or the iconic jumpsuit Elvis.

The difference with Klush, though, is his credentials. His big win on the BBC's hunt for the best Elvis last year whipped up excited talk that the 38-year-old is the nearest thing you'll ever get to The King himself.

You can judge for yourself when he performs at the World's Greatest Elvis Concert at Bolton Arena on August 9 supported by Elvis's backing band, The Sweet Inspirations, plus 24-piece orchestra.

The concert is a first for the Arena and will feature four ETAs: Shawn will cover the Aloha From Hawaii and Vegas periods, while Rossendale-born Steve Preston sings the Vegas Rehearsal songs, Gordon Hendricks performs the 68 Comeback Special hits and Justin Shandor is young Elvis.

High praise

Shawn, though, is being billed as the main attraction. It's high praise that he isn't altogether comfortable with.

"That's weird, if they want to call me that, that's fine and dandy, but I don't carry any airs," he sighs in a rare moment of shyness. "I never let those comments get ahead of me."

That Shawn is the whole package comes as no great surprise when you consider that he's been raised on Presley since the age of two.

Although he never got to see him live ("My parents saw him at Madison Square Gardens in 1972," he recalls. "If I got my daddy now, he'd talk to you about it for two and half hours"), he has had three decades to get his performance right.

"My father was a DJ in the Fifties and he brought all these records home," recalls Shawn. "I was the only child and we lived on a big acre of land. There wasn't a whole lot to do except play with the antelope or listen to records."

Ask him how that led to becoming an ETA and he jokes, "I was studying to be an electrician; I must have got wired up wrong." But the truth is that he got hooked on Presley the minute he heard Blue Suede Shoes.

Honky-tonk

After high school, he snuck into honky-tonk bars to sing, eventually earning $600 a night performing in the Pocono Mountains, a popular local tourist spot, before moving on to the Legends tour.

He's sung the whole breadth of Elvis' catalogue since, but he plans to concentrate on the favourites from 1969-1973 when he takes over the second half of the Bolton gig.

"That's about where my body allows me to go," he laughs. "Every year I put on a few pounds and have to go up a year in his catalogue!

"The strangest thing of all is I know this guy in Las Vegas with an Elvis museum that has a bunch of Elvis' clothes. He let me try on a couple of jumpsuits and they fit: the legs, the arms, the whole thing was perfect."

Live, he has a clear favourite to perform.

"If I Can Dream, that's a real kicker, the raw emotion, you have to be in that song at that moment."

Co-headliner Steve Preston agrees that Shawn is setting the standard for other ETAs to follow.

"As a tribute artist you hope to recreate a fraction of what it was to see Elvis in the 1970s.

"But Elvis impersonators have always lacked credibility. Shawn Klush is the best thing that's happened to the Elvis world in some time."

Steve, who is still the only ETA to have performed in front of the Queen and appears on Channel M's Breakfast Show tomorrow, says that becoming Elvis is a calling.

"If I'd have told my careers adviser in school what I was going to be in life, he would have probably chucked me out," he laughs.

"The music first attracts you to doing this, but if you feel you have the ability to go on stage and recreate that kind of excitement, then you have to do it."

The World's Greatest Elvis Concert is at Bolton Arena on Saturday, August 9, £28-£48 (Golden Circle £120).

Sarah Walters
24/ 4/2008

I really enjoyed reading this article...and also enjoyed Steve Preston's classy comments ..one ETA praising another! That also sets a standard! Carol