King Blelvis

He hooked up with Joe Lee, owner of Joe's Record Paradise, who helped him get some gigs. He made the family's three-bedroom Montgomery County apartment (paid for with a $32,000-a-year job driving trucks for NIH) into an Elvis shrine. His older brother Ricky, a lineman for Pepco, was both amused and horrified.

"He had everything in there, from Elvis paintings to Elvis sweat suits. I didn't know they made Elvis toilet seats, but they do and he had one," Ricky Wooten said. "I think he loves Elvis more than he loves himself."

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What is the nature of obsession? Can it be appeased this way, or will it eventually laugh at your petty offerings? In the end, can you ever feed the beast, or does the beast always devour you?

Cathy Grooms divorced Wooten in 1996; she had refused to give their last two children Elvis-inspired names. Wooten lost his job. His siblings no longer speak to him; his sisters refuse to even speak about him. "If he took all the energy he put into Elvis and put it into something else," says Ricky Wooten, "he could have been a millionaire by now." Instead, his brother lives off Blelvis donations and bunks with a friend who lives in the Petworth neighborhood.

Elvis is not his only addiction. He won a battle with drugs in the late '90s -- "some people smoke crack, crack smoked me" -- only to replace the vice with booze. One night in a crowded bar, fueled by Elvis bravado and a couple of 40s, he gigglingly shows off how he likes to cup women's butts on the sly as he brushes past them.

Elvis, a man of enormous charisma and destructive appetites, is complicating life for Blelvis again. Make no mistake, he says, he'd be doing Elvis even if he were Donald Trump. He didn't go into medicine or business because, quite simply, they didn't grab his attention. Elvis is what grabbed him, and he wanted to go whole hog or nothing at all. "But sometimes I wonder if Elvis had to be the only thing that interested me," he says. "Sometimes I think I could have done Blelvis, but I could have done more, too."

When he phones one afternoon to confirm a weekend meeting time, he seems vaguely embarrassed. "Are we still on to go do the, uh, the Blelvis thing?" he asks, as if realizing that the Blelvis thing is an absurd thing for a 41-year-old man to do on a Saturday night.

Andrew's son Andrew Elvison, now 21, remains unwaveringly loyal to his father. "My dad is a good man," he says firmly, after admitting that he hasn't heard from him in months. "A very good man." And then, "But if you see him again, do you think you could pass on my cellphone number? He must not have it, or he would have called."

It's hard to back away from something that makes you feel worshiped, from something you know you can do. And he can do it. He can do it for up to $50 an hour on good nights. His game isn't quite what it used to be -- his cigarette-spoiled voice is throatier, his pompadour long gone -- and at times he seems less like Blelvis doing Elvis and more like Blelvis doing Blelvis, struggling to latch onto the routine that once came so easily. But he can still draw cheers from the fans who remember him, and he can still coax crowds into song, and why would he give that up for a desk job and some security?

When Jeff Krulik is asked whether Blelvis has been good or bad for Andrew, there is a long pause. "Write down that the question was met with stony silence," he says finally. "Because I've wondered that myself and I honestly don't know." He thinks some more. "But you know what I think? I think that as rampant development is turning this city into Anywhere, USA, people like Blelvis give D.C. the flair and color that it needs. I'm so glad he's out there. I still want him to become a nationwide sensation. I believe in Blelvis."

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