JRtherealJasper
Jaming With Elvis
Number of posts : 498
Age : 114
Location : UK
Registration date : 2007-08-13
 | Subject: Legendary ETA Morris Bates turns 60!  Fri May 07, 2010 8:31 pm | |
| Morris was hailed by Nevada critics as the best Elvis tribute act on the Vegas circuit since Presley’s death in 1977. After 10 years – moving from The Silver Slipper, to the Landmark, to Vegas World – Bates earned the title of the longest-running Elvis performer and the second longest one-man show, next to Wayne Newton. By the time The King passed away, Bates had already spent four years perfecting his tribute show by studying photographs and watching Elvis perform on a five-inch Betamax TV. Bates started in Vegas when he turned 28, with a gruelling three shows a night.“We were just punk kids in Las Vegas, we weren’t ready,” he says with a laugh. On the first anniversary of Elvis’s death, Bates performed on the Merv Griffin show, watched by 17 million people.According to Bates, one of the things that set him apart from the other impersonators was his personality – he always remembered he was Morris Bates first and Elvis second. “On stage it’s a theatre, backstage that’s me.”That ability to differentiate is what messed up a lot of performers, he says.
 MORRIS IN 1980:
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