Elvis Presley was once the toast of the Las Vegas strip.
To this day, you could rename the city Elvisville for all the signs of The King still shakin' the hips of America from that glittery spot in the desert.
Elvis is an industry, Las Vegas is the headquarters for that industry, and in order to be based there you have to be the cream of the Elvis crop. Donny Edwards is one of those in the elite ranks of Elvis tribute artists.
Anyone can put on a bedazzled white jumpsuit, anyone can coif their hair like the original rock 'n' roll legend, but it takes an unbelievable array of details in your talent pool to attain the levels of Elvis that Edwards has attained.
Prince George gets to see these skills up close and in person. Edwards brings his tribute to Elvis - complete with a nine-piece band - to the P.G. Playhouse next week.
"You won't see anybody with more diversity within the voice, how he used his voice. I don't think there is a better vocalist, ever," said Edwards from his home in Nevada. "I try to be authentic and true to what Elvis did, and I think that's why its been so successful for me."
Elvis has been dead almost as long as he was alive. He set every standard for record sales, concert sales, crossing over to film and crossing from genre to genre. He smashed the mould for television censorship, put the music composed by black Americans into irrefutable prominence, and began the movement that eroded the antiquated institutional thinking of old-school America, blowing up into the rock 'n' roll and R&B phenomena that changed Western culture from top to bottom.
Edwards once wondered how long he would be able to inhabit the character of Elvis Presley and keep finding audiences hungry to hear those songs performed the way The King did them. He said lately the audiences have not been holding their own, they've been growing in size and complexity. There is an Elvis revival going on.
"Every generation seems to discover him all over again, and that's what I'm seeing - that it shows how great music is timeless and his music has that timeless quality."
Even the deaths and advanced birthdays of other iconic rocks seems to draw attention back to Elvis because, said Edwards.
"I'm seeing it now because of Prince," he said. "I'm 41, so Prince is my generation along with Michael Jackson, Madonna, acts like that. When you shine a light on those acts, it inevitably draws comparisons to the trailblazers, and those are few. You've got The Beatles, and you've got Elvis who took the music industry to those high heights. Elvis was the first of that kind, who broke the colour barrier, who broke down music genre barriers, and taking a great song, capturing it, and singing it to you like he is feeling what you are feeling. That's unique - that truth to the song, the soul to the song - and that is why he has not faded away."
Edwards spotted that Elvis quality early in life. "My first two heroes were Superman and Elvis," he said, and since he grew up into an uncanny likeness of The King, and he grew up learning how to sing and perform music, he put on that persona out of admiration and role-playing fun. No kid can actually fly or cut metal with their eyes, but Edwards could certainly do versions of the things his other boyhood idol could do.
"Sometimes a career comes and finds you," he said.
What also came to find him were the caretakers of the Elvis legacy at his famous home Graceland in Memphis. Every Elvis fan considers it a pilgrimage to travel there and see that mansion and its campus. For Elvis tribute artists, it is practically required. Until Edwards got called to come do a show in Memphis, however, none had been given official sanction by the Graceland legacy-holders to perform there on those hallowed grounds.
"They had never allowed someone to do that. I didn't know until about a week out that my show in Memphis for this event was going to be on the grounds of Graceland. That was huge to me, and the highlight of my career. I've gotten to do this in Chile, in Australia, several parts of Canada, all over the world, but to do it on the ground that Elvis walked - that is huge to me."
Edwards has never been to Prince George before, so he breaks new Elvis ground on May 11 at the Prince George Playhouse (with special guests Uptown Hornz and Marilyn Monroe tribute artist Cassandra Friskie).
Tickets for the Donny Edwards show are on sale now at Studio 2880.
