It was as an IT guy for the Alexandria-based International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions — his next job — that he first stood on a stage to sing karaoke. The occasion was an industry convention in New Orleans, and he attempted the tricky Roy Orbison (“I butchered it”). The next year, he tried Elvis.
Five years later, Ernst showed a video of the Elvis performance at the office, and his boss asked him to play at the Christmas party. Ernst had another Elvis gig booked before the holiday season was over, and a whole new career was born.
We caught up with Ernst during a busy Christmas week, when he was playing a gig a night, topping off a year of 126 shows as Elvis. He talked about the art of being Elvis:
“For guys like me — I’m 60 years old now; I got started very late with this — I concentrate on his later years, when he wasn’t moving as much. He had a few of his classic moves, but he was not jumping around stage quite as much as he had when he was a younger guy. And the jumpsuits, of course, are an added benefit — the outrageous costumes he wore onstage just adds to the mystique of Elvis. He was a very Liberace-like figure.
“I have no hair at the top of my head. Elvis would have probably had hair, though I understand he was thinning as he was getting up there. And I understand he was also coloring, which amazes to no end. He was using Clairol blue-black. I don’t use Clairol; I use Just for Men.
“I have six jumpsuits, plus [a ’68] leather, by the way. Many times I ask the client, ‘Which suit would you prefer?’ And sometimes they’ll come to me and say, ‘I want the white one,’ referring to the aloha suit. That’s the one with the American eagle on it, the classic Elvis Vegas look. . . .
“I will try to match most of the songs to the suit of that era. So if I’m wearing the fringe suit, because it’s one of Elvis’s very early suits, I’ll do songs like ‘I Got a Woman,’ ‘That’s All Right Mama,’ ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You,’ ‘Polk Salad Annie.’ If I’m wearing my red burning-love suit, I’ll do ‘Burning Love,’ of course. For suits like the blue swirl, he did songs like ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ in that one. The aloha, of course, is very closely associated with ‘Suspicious Minds,’ ‘Welcome to My World,’ ‘An American Trilogy.’ . . .
“If I’m doing a gig Thursday — and this happened this week, actually: Two people wanted the aloha suit, so I wore it one day and I had to wash it and wear it two days later. As long as it can get dried in time, I can wear it twice in three days. And that usually doesn’t have to happen. Unless . . . I don’t get it too dirty or sweaty, I can’t really wear a suit twice in a row.
“I do sweat in my shows. That’s one thing I do like Elvis did: I sweat. . . .
“There are guys that do this into their mid- to late 60s. I’ll probably do this a few more years. Until I decide I don’t want to do it anymore, or I’m not getting gigs. Or I decide that I’m kind of washed up. But I still have a lot of energy. I lug my equipment around. I jump around onstage a little bit. I get down and I do the splits like Elvis did, I get down on one knee and joke about not being able to get up, or say ‘Hope this suit doesn’t tear’ the way he did. But I’ve actually torn the seat out of several of my suits. That was not a joke that Elvis was making.”
Catlin is a freelance writer.
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