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Bill Cherry thought his days of being "The King" were long over. He certainly never expected to be "The King" of "The Kings."
But whether it was fate or merely bad luck followed by a crazy idea followed by hard work that turned a laid-off welder at a steel plant in St. Louis into one of the top Elvis Presley impersonators in the world doesn't really matter to him now.
"Sometimes, in people's lives, things happen and you think, 'You know, it can't get much worse,' " Cherry said in a phone interview. "But it can also turn out to be a blessing in disguise, and in my case, it definitely was."
Cherry is one of just 10 people to win the annual Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest sponsored by Presley's estate. Three of them — including Cherry — are now part of the "Elvis Lives" multimedia and live musical touring show that will play at Salt Lake City's Eccles Theater on Saturday.
The show, which is endorsed by Presley's estate, features never-seen-before footage from Graceland Archives, narration from Presley himself, and musical performances from Cherry, Jay DuPuis and Dean Zeligman along with a band and backup singers, spanning the entirety of Elvis' career.
"There's a little bit in the show for everybody," Cherry said. "We've had people that came that are not Elvis fans, but they walk away with a different respect and outlook on Elvis Presley and who he was and what he did musically."
Cherry's respect for Presley came at an early age.
When he was a child, his mother was an Elvis fan. So whenever one of Presley's movies was on TV, she would gather Cherry and his two brothers around to watch. "As a kid, I loved the Elvis movies, because it was all about race cars, speedboats — they were basically beach movies, fun movies, and of course, his singing and his way of doing things … the rebel in Elvis Presley, I guess. I was attracted to all those things there," he said.
Afterward, Cherry would grab one of the five Elvis albums the family owned, put it on, and sing along.
And while his musical tastes would evolve and expand in the intervening years, Elvis' death immediately snapped Cherry back into his original fixation — something that would pay dividends for him years down the road.
"One day, my parents, not long after Elvis had passed, they took me to see an Elvis impersonator. So we're in there watching this guy, and they're playing '2001: A Space Odyssey,' which was Elvis' intro … and this place was packed, and this guy comes walking through the door with four bodyguards and everybody's standing on their chairs just to get a look at this guy. And I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe the reaction, because, I mean, I know this is not Elvis Presley, but the way these people are acting, it was mind-blowing for me," he said. "He gets on the stage, starts singing, and a little light went on in my head — and this is 1978 — and I kinda thought to myself, 'Wow, I kinda do this in the bedroom,' and I didn't know there was an audience for it. I was very much a closet Elvis! I wasn't ready to do that in front of people, but I knew that I could do it, 'cause I'd been singing it forever."
Once Cherry was ready, around the mid-'80s, he started entering unofficial regional competitions held around Memphis, just as a hobby. "I never did win — I was always a finalist," he said, but that was fine by him, as it was just something fun to do.
When he got hired as a welder in 1995, however, his hours picked up and "I stopped dabbling in that world."
Fate — or bad luck — intervened, though, in 2008, when the then-42-year-old Cherry was laid off.
While he was looking for a new job, a friend approached him with a crazy suggestion. Elvis Presley Enterprises was going to hold its third annual Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest in 2009, giving its official backing to the best of the roughly 100,000 Elvis impersonators throughout the world. The first year, the champion received $5,000. The second year, the winner got a guitar. But that upcoming third year?
First prize: $20,000.
"He showed it to me on the internet and said, 'Man, you should try this, you know?' Well, it'd been 12 years since I'd done anything like that, and I didn't know if I really still had that in me to do it," Cherry said. "My head was shaved, I had a goatee — I was a welder, you know? … He also let me know that the prize was $20,000. … So I bought a cheap wig, and I had it cut, and I put it on my head, and I'm looking in the mirror to see, 'Can I still see what I used to see?' Or what I thought I had seen, anyway. And I thought, 'Well, maybe I can do this.' "
Every day, Cherry went over to his friend's house, popped an Elvis CD into his karaoke machine, and "I would start trying to get back in touch with the inner Elvis, you might say."
His first victory ever as an Elvis impersonator came in the official preliminary event held in Elvis' hometown of Tupelo, Miss.
And then came the "Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist" finals in Memphis.
"When they announced my name as the winner up on that stage, it was almost surreal. It was like, 'Wow, did I just win this thing? Did they just call my name?' " Cherry said. "Nobody knew who I was — I came out of nowhere, I was no longer in that circuit or part of that world. So I was kinda, you might say, the dark horse. I came in there and I stole the prize, and ever since then, this is what I've been doing for a living."
Part of that living now involves being part of the "Elvis Lives" tour. Zeligman portrays '50s Elvis and also handles the '68 comeback. DuPuis does "movie era" Elvis. And Cherry is "the '70s era of Elvis, so I'm the last guy that they will see in the show. So I get to wear the cool jumpsuits with all the studwear, all the jewels and all the bling. I'm the king of bling here!"
Cherry said generational fandom, like his mother passing down her love of Presley to him, is the reason Presley's legacy persists to this day, the reason that a show about a man who died almost four decades ago can tour the country and draw a crowd.
"Elvis Lives" audiences, he said, are mainly a mix of those who got to see Presley and want to re-live the nostalgia, and those who didn't but were told about it and want to get the next-best thing.
"Elvis never did an encore at his shows. Because the rule was, 'Leave them standing in their seats and wanting more. That way they'll come back and see you again.' Well, that rings true in life, as well," Cherry said. "He left early, and people wanted more. And so they just try to get as much of it as they can."
Cherry loves the fact that "there's 10 guys in the world that hold the 'Ultimate Elvis' title, and three of 'em are on this show. … The tribute artists that the audience are seeing have the stamp of approval by the Elvis Presley estate, and … to me, that's as close as Elvis Presley coming to you and shaking your hand saying, 'You do a good job.' It's really a very cool thing."
He also calls it "mind-blowing and mind-boggling" that he's one of them, that his love of The King has taken a laid-off welder all over the world.
"It's amazing how the power of Elvis Presley can take a guy like me and put me on a whole different plane," he said. "It's still going strong today. His music and his memory — people cannot get enough of it."
After Cherry won the "Ultimate Elvis" title, his old steel plant called him up to offer him his job back.
He declined. He had a job he liked better now, he told them, but thank you.
Thank you very much!
Twitter: @esotericwalden —
Elvis Lives: The Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Event
When • Saturday night, doors at 7, show at 8
Where • Eccles Theater, 131 S. Main St., Salt Lake City
Tickets • $25-$60; Art Tix outlets and artsaltlake.org