The First Elvis Impersonator Elvira Presley!
Complete with guitar-shaped pasties, Elvira Presley hits the stage in 1957 in the not-so legendary stripdump "The Near and Far Club" operated by Al and Mal Warner in Los Angeles. They were looking for a sensational act to celebrate a club makeover, and when they heard of a model who looked like the "Mississippi Peckerwood" Elvis, they convinced her to put on levi jeans and then immediately take them off on stage! Complete with Elvis gyrations which even Ed Sullivan would have enjoyed!
Elvira was thus not only the first Elvis Impersonator, she was the first with 38-28-37 measurements! Like the (then prince, future king, finally dead) real Elvis, she came from Mississippi.
The act began with the house orchestra playing "Don't Be Cruel" while Elvira made her entrance with a guitar. As the band continued performing without paying royalties to the illegal immigrant Colonel Tom Parker, Elvira pops out of her Levis to "Blue Suede Shoes" and then out-hip-shakes the hip shaker with "Hound Dog" while tearing off her bra revealing sequins shaped like a Nashville guitar-shaped Swimming Pool!
Elvira became the first to set the standard Elvis Impersonator patter. When interviewed by the press, her answers are filled with "I hope he would be flattered" responses, but she avoids the "it's not an imitation, it's a tribute" banal platitude adopted by every single Elvis imitator since. It was an imitation for sure.
Uncredited Photographs appeared in Modern Man Magazine 1957
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