Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

“Hi, fellahs. Lookin' good. Have you a moment to answer some questions? I've got a radio guy here." Elvi turned their heads in matched-Doberman tandem to eye Matt as if he were raw meat.

“Live?" one asked.

“No, these are just preliminary questions about the competition, about playing Elvis, about the King." Matt gave Temple an A-plus for avoiding the phrase

“Elvis imitator." Exactly what they called themselves, or were called, was a sore point with many semi-pro Elvis clones.

Matt decided the ball was in his court.

“So. How long have you two been Elvis impersona- tors?" he began.

Like twins, they answered for each other.

“Jerry's been honing his act for three years," said one

“Mike's been in the biz for at least two."

“What's involved?" Matt asked, pulling over an empty chair.

Mike and Jerry exchanged glances. They were class A exhibits of what Matt saw was the most common Elvis imitator model: short, stocky urban guys with big dreams.

It wasn't that they looked like Elvis very much to start with; it was that they wanted to. He'd guess that they could sing a little, but not enough to forge an independent performing persona. They needed Elvis for instant identity, as much as he needed them to carry on his entertaining legend.

“What's involved? A lot," Mike said. This close, you could see the sand-blasted surface of the cheeks not hidden by the sideburns. Acne scars, but nothing severe enough to be visible from stage. "First we gotta get our act together. Get the right songs for our voices, get the props and costumes, get in touch with the Elvis impersonator network—"

“Get the noive," Jerry added, giving a belly laugh that shook his broad Elvis belt like a rhinestone surfboard hit by a big-mama wave.

Mike wore glasses. Not sunglasses, but real glasses. Elvis looked weird with see-through lenses on his face.

“I, urn, ditch these for the show," Mike said, suddenly self-conscious.

“I'm sorry," Matt said. "Didn't mean to stare. I'm just studying everything. I'm new to all this.”

Mike stripped off his modern-day frames. "Yeah, well, we're used to people thinking we're nuts. We don't start out anything like Elvis, most of us. That's the challenge."

“You mean, the greater stretch the impersonation is, the more accomplishment?"

“Something like that," Mike agreed.

Jerry leaned forward, intent. He had a TV sitcom Jersey accent, and fire in his eye.

“The thing is, you gotta love the King, or you got no business even trying to do this. You gotta respect the man."

“A lot of people don't," Matt pointed out. "Didn't they really put him down at the beginning of his career? Call him a white-trash, no-talent hick who had nothing to offer but dirty dancing?"

“Yeah.”

Mike was getting pugnacious, twirling his nerdish glasses by one earpiece. He'd be a good on-air interview, Matt was horrified to find himself thinking. Was Temple right? Was he being corrupted by his new media role?

“Yeah. They said all that at the beginning, and it was better than what they said at the end, that he was a drugged-out, used-up fat fool who threw his life away. It's just kinda funny that in between all that bad press the guy reinvented pop music in this country—in the world! He put it all together and brought it on home: rhythm and blues, gospel, country, pop. Man, the Beatles, that Dylan guy, they all were big cheeses after Elvis, and they all said they owed him a lot."

“Yeah," Jerry added. "Elvis grew up poor, but those church folk in the South, they knew how to sing. He heard it at church, he heard it in the bars on Beale Street, on the black radio. No one had put it all together like he did. It was never the same after Elvis. He's the King of Rock 'n' Roll.”

The present tense was not lost on Matt. Elvis lives: an eerie anagram of the performer's name that even he had noticed. And now it had come true.

“Are there any black Elvises?" Matt asked. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Temple making a startled motion after sitting statue-still and letting him conduct the interview.

He had been thinking of the black churches he had used to drop in on, and the glorious use of music in the liturgy, the most inspired blending of music and worship since the Middle Ages, he would bet.

But Jerry and Mike were bristling.

“We ain't prejudiced," Mike said. "It's just that Elvis mostly isn't a black thing. They got their Johnny Mathis and the old blues guys and gals. They were great, don't get me wrong. But Elvis just isn't a black thing."

“But," Matt mentally riffled through his previous night's reading, "wasn't Elvis accused later of ripping off the black musicians? And didn't he dress black in high school? He was hanging around Lansky's on Beale Street, which outfitted black guys and musicians. He was put down for it then."

“Yeah, yeah. That stuff was there. That's why he was a friggin' genius. But ... what can I say? We don't get many black Elvises. We don't keep 'em out. They just don't show up."

“What kind of Elvises do you get?"