Outback Elvis

by John Connell

  Like many iconic events the Parkes Elvis Festival had modest beginnings. It started with a party. As Anne Steel recalled:

  The editor of our local paper, Roel ten Cate – we did parties for his family every June. It was their tipping club’s end-of-year thing ... They are huge Elvis fans. Their wives and their children naturally had to be, and their children’s boyfriends and girlfriends once again had to be Elvis fans. They wanted the sort of party [where] you didn’t sit down to eat, you danced. Elvis was played all night. They had a ball. Even the tiny little kids knew the words to all the Elvis songs. After one of these parties, Roel and Bob sat down for a red wine. We had just decorated the restaurant in ’50s and ’60s style. We dressed the staff, the girls in the full skirts and bobby socks and little neck scarves and the fellas had their T-shirts … And so the fellas said, ‘We should have an Elvis week’, and that sounded like it might be a good idea. They said, ‘We’ll have it in August’, and I said, ‘Well, it’s the end of June, so we won’t, ’cause you can’t organise anything that quickly. Why don’t we go for Elvis’s birthday in January?’

  A few more red wines were consumed and the idea began to take shape. Elvis Lennox saw how it evolved as institutional support was sought:

  It was Bob and Anne Steel up at Gracelands restaurant. They’re big Elvis fans … They were just having a bit of a talk to the right people at the right time, at one of their functions. They were councillors and they said, ‘Well, there’s nothing going on, no weddings, nothing celebrated that time of year. Elvis’s birthday’s the eighth. Come along to the next council meeting, we’ll put it to the board’. It just evolved from there.

  A restaurant called Gracelands made all the difference, as the idea materialised far beyond an impulsive local whim conceived over a decent red wine, or perhaps the Mateus Rosé.

  The Parkes Shire Council was not greatly interested. Obscure festivals celebrating American pop stars in the middle of summer promised no obvious economic benefits, and sounded far from their ideas of what a country town should be. Another suggestion, a proposed camel park on the Newell Highway, sounded a better bet. But the council decided to at least have a go, since it suited the pragmatic aim of boosting summer tourism. An Elvis Revival Committee was formed, made up of everyone who had attended the first optimistic meeting, and planning began.

  If the town itself was uninterested, the national media certainly were. This festival was unique and January was a slow news month. That some in Parkes saw the festival as inappropriate was exactly the sort of controversy needed. Bob Steel, the first chair of the committee, said a couple of days before the first festival:

  We have been overwhelmed with the attention this festival is receiving. For example, even the Melbourne Truth ran an article on the festival, suggesting that we could become the Elvis capital of Australia. Newspapers, television and radio stations have all been giving the festival plenty of coverage and, if nothing else, it has certainly given Parkes publicity.

  The initial festival was held in January 1993, on the weekend closest to Elvis’s birthday. It attracted around 200 people. Elvis enthusiasts came from as far as Adelaide and Sydney, and set the scene and the themes for the festivals that followed, with Elvis and Priscilla look-alike competitions, a street parade, shop window displays of posters and memorabilia, Elvis movies at the Golden West cinema (long since closed), and musical performances, the main one at Gracelands, where the accompanying dinner offered Love Me Tender steak and Stuck on You pudding.

  A country town, accidentally, unsuspectingly and uncertainly, was about to enter a new era. It had been a good three months; in November the construction of a Northparkes copper and gold mine was announced, and in January the festival began. Only one of these seemed to offer any real prospect of development in Parkes. The other was widely assumed to be a one-off wonder.

  If I Can Dream

  Celebrating Elvis in a small Australian country town was incongruous and improbable. Unlike the promise in his song ‘There’s So Much World to See’, Elvis never travelled far. Months on end could be spent at Graceland, where he was quite invisible, and until the later Las Vegas years he rarely went far from Memphis. He travelled to Europe just once, famously conscripted as a GI in the US army; otherwise he would probably never have left America. In 1958, at the height of his initial burst of fame, he was drafted and posted to Germany, emerging as a sergeant. While that did produce a German chorus in ‘Wooden Heart’, Elvis rarely enjoyed the wider world, although in Germany he did meet the 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, whom he married seven years later. The only other times he left America were to play three concerts in Canada.

  Elvis certainly never visited the southern hemisphere. Apart from his loyal local fans, assuredly he had no connection whatsoever with Parkes. For the briefest of moments in 1957 Elvis did connect with Australia. On WKNO-TV he appeared alongside a globe oriented toward Australia saying, ‘I’d like to say hello to all the listeners in Australia. I’m looking forward to coming down there some day’. How many such listeners there were no-one knows, and the promise never materialised. Meanwhile, on the set of Jailhouse Rock, Elvis improbably appeared with a baby wallaby. After that there was nothing, although, in the midst of the later depressing period afflicted by divorce and prescription drugs, rumours spread that Elvis would play outside the United States for only the second time, after a million-dollar bid from Australia. But the rumour was precisely that, and Elvis remained sequestered in Memphis. As one Australian fan suggested, ‘Colonel Sanders would not allow him out of America’. His manager, actually Colonel Parker, was firmly in charge.

  Indicative of Elvis’s fame is the way that the places where he briefly stayed overseas have become tourist sites. Bad Nauheim, an old spa town near Frankfurt, where Elvis lived for most of his time in Germany, has held an annual Elvis Festival since 2002, with concerts, a Cadillac parade and exhibitions. Guided tours of the few traces of the King remaining in the town take place year-round. Even Prestwick in Scotland, just a plane stop-over for Elvis on the way home, has a blue plaque (and Graceland bar) to commemorate the event. On the other side of the world, since Elvis was never coming to Australia, it was time to remedy that and create a new site.

  As they went about staging the first Elvis Revival Festival, the Steels faced formidable competition. The local Country Music Association was powerful and well supported, organising a family Dance Night at Parkes Golf Club (‘Ladies a plate please’) and putting on two annual concerts: the Country Music Spectacular and the Country Music Muster. This was real Parkes music, and Parkes’ own Currajong Bush Band was a regular participant. Still, there was really only one show in town. The annual Parkes Agricultural Show was Parkes. By 1993 it had been held for 113 years, with all the typical features of an agricultural show – every imaginable domesticated animal (from lorikeets to Yorkshire hens) and every conceivable species of food plant (from lupins and linseed to rhubarb and broccoli), intense rivalries between knitted coathanger competitors, accompanied by three days of showjumping, a sideshow alley, and fast rides for youngsters. The added attraction of a ‘freak show’, caber tossing and hammer throwing opened a limited window into other worlds. The show quite properly offered ‘sit down meals and morning and afternoon teas’, not at all the sort of event to be disturbed or displaced by a gaudy upstart. Rural shows offered entertainment, education in local tradition and heritage, support for regional commerce and at least a hint of an older order of a community where agriculture and social connections were invaluable. At its heart, Parkes was country. Elvis was a strange foreign affront, but hardly one to be taken seriously.

  Elvoss (Ross Mancini) on the Elvis Express, 2015

  Jen Li

  The Elvoss Dancers – from Hurlstone Park, Sydney – pose for a selfie on the Elvis Express, 2015

  Jen Li

  Elvii are always on hand to greet the Elvis Express as it arrives from Sydney. Parkes Railway Station, 2010

  John Connell

&nbs
p; ‘I wish Elvis had been bald … it’s like a towering inferno in this wig.’ Street parade, 2007

  Robbie Begg

  The show and the country and western music scene had little to fear from Elvis. They had different committees and clienteles; they were respectable and established and attuned to the town. The Elvis Revival Committee was proposing something at a different time of year. While Elvis had neither local history nor authenticity on his side, there was room for an additional bit of creativity that bothered no-one and was all a bit silly. Few could have predicted that a quarter of a century later Elvis would not only have triumphed over the tough times, but become the dominant festival in town.

  In any case, January was a thoroughly bad time. Many people fled to the coast; rates were due; new school clothes had to be bought; Christmas had almost exhausted savings. As Anne Steel recalled: ‘We couldn’t get the townspeople involved. We couldn’t get anyone to do things at the start. For some years we didn’t even make enough money to pay our entertainers’. Tourist Office staff were as likely to leave town as anyone else. The townsfolk of neighbouring Forbes had even less interest in participating.

  One local citizen who was extremely interested was Steve Lennox, who had ‘heard about it on the wireless’ and offered his services as a competition judge. Closet fans began to emerge, and slowly it became evident that there were rather more fans of Elvis than the Steels or Roel ten Cate had anticipated. Costs were reduced since the Steels owned Gracelands but the committee was forced to use quintessential Australian methods to cover costs: lamington drives, pet shows and white elephant stalls.

  The first festival contained a diversity of offerings, some with only tangential relevance to Elvis, hinting at amateurism and speculation. No-one knew what was possible and what might work. No-one had previous experience of organising festivals. Shops were encouraged to have Elvis Presley displays and record covers in their windows, and to play Elvis music in the background, and some obliged. Video Ezy and Kelly’s Bakery emerged as sponsors. Radio 2PK and Lachlan Valley Radio 2LVR-FM promised to feature Elvis music prominently over the weekend. Since Bob Steel was also the chairman of the New South Wales Cadillac Club, it was inevitable that vintage cars would play a part, and they have never gone away. The Parkes Shire chairman formally opened the event at the now 1950s Gracelands and after some rock ’n’ roll, the inaugural Elvis Look-alike competition was won by Steve Lennox, who was not allowed to judge himself. The first Vegas jumpsuit – the grand Aloha from Hawaii – had arrived, but only Lennox was able to truly dress the part, courtesy of his hardworking seamstress wife Debby. She never quite forgave him for later selling it.

  A flea market at Gracelands the next morning brought out a display of local Elvis memorabilia, with people from Mudgee, Bathurst, Dubbo, Orange and Sydney all bringing treasured items. That led in to the street parade (with the Post noting sadly that there were ‘not many floats’, even if an estimated 2500 people turned out to watch). The festival then diversified and divided. At 1 pm a coach departed for greyhound racing in Forbes. The Forbes Greyhound Club played its part by including a ‘Hound Dog Stakes’ and a ‘Love Me Tender Stakes’. The alternative was a double bill of Elvis movies at the Golden West cinema. Then it was back to Gracelands for another dinner ($20 a head) – 200 seats were filled and some latecomers were turned away – that included a limbo contest, followed by a much-awaited concert at the Parkes Leagues Club, starring Eddie Youngblood (or, in some advertisements, Johnny Youngblood, or Eddie Young Blood), a ‘World Known Elvis Impersonator’. Just $12 got fans into his show: The Golden Years of Elvis. From 11 pm supper dances at ‘various venues’ followed. Parkes was living the Elvis rock ’n’ roll life.

  Anne Steel, however, was far from sure about the merits of any impersonator; Elvis was not be mocked or tampered with.

  One of our people, who eventually joined the committee, had seen Eddie Youngblood, and knew how to get hold of him. So they said they would have Eddie. And I thought, ‘I won’t go and see him, I don’t like fake people. If I can’t have the real thing I don’t want anything’. Yeah, that was me. And then I heard Eddie’s interview on 2PK saying that he loved Elvis’s music and he did it his way, so I thought, ‘Oh, he mightn’t be so bad’. So I went, and it was brilliant.

  A great Parkes tradition nearly never happened. Bushfires in the Blue Mountains meant that Eddie Youngblood’s band had to make a several hundred kilometre detour to be there. Youngblood, a pioneer of what was then called the ‘concept show’ industry, became the first of hundreds of tribute artists and impersonators to arrive in Parkes.

  Eddie Youngblood was probably the first Elvis tribute artist in Australia. Despite not quite winning a high school talent show, he gained a taste for show business, leaving school at 17 to play in rockabilly and rock ’n’ roll bands in Sydney. After being seen on television early in 1977 on Pot of Gold, he was told: ‘We need to develop your image with early ’50s rock ’n’ roll’. Six months later Elvis died and a new suggestion emerged: ‘Why don’t we put together a tribute to Elvis; you love Elvis and you sound a bit like him’. From then on Eddie focused almost exclusively on Elvis, developing a show with a seven-piece band, up to four back-up singers and even ballet: the first ‘concept shows’ in Australia.

  His most famous show, The Golden Years of Elvis, had gained the prestigious Mo Award in both 1984 and 1985 for the Best Variety Production Show in Australia. By the time of the first festival he had toured Asia and made several albums. It was a coup to get him. Thankfully, his belief was that ‘the legacy that he left us, the music that Elvis left us, should be presented in the right way’. Anne Steel was satisfied. That he existed at all showed that fans were also remembering and reviving Elvis in other places than Parkes.

  A country Sunday brought winding down, and the first festival hangovers, despite a Revival Breakfast sausage sizzle at the Kelly Reserve. That was followed by a coach tour to Forbes, aimed at securing regional support, accompanied by Elvis videos. It took in morning tea at the Fat Lamb Hotel in Eugowra, and a visit to the local Forbes winery, followed by one of the highlights of the day: a trip to see ‘the external view of Michael Hanley Funeral Parlor of Graceland design’. The funeral parlour remains a bizarre but uncannily accurate replica in an otherwise nondescript suburban street, somehow setting the tone for future festivals. That and some of the memorabilia provided links to Memphis. Somewhat tentatively, Elvis had come to town.

  The festival was pronounced a success by the Parkes Champion-Post – perhaps generously, since its editor, described as ‘Rockin’ Roel ten Cate’, had only been a runner-up in the Elvis Look-alike competition. But as Roel observed: ‘a blond, bulbous-nosed Dutchman, even with black boot polish in his hair, was never going to cut it’.

  Roel’s enthusiasm had been kindled and he became an unheralded, behind-the-scenes backer of the festival and the town, always embellishing the event’s achievements in the pages of the Champion-Post. When we talked with Roel, in the newspaper’s tiny and fading wood-panelled offices, he began with a slick rendition of the official story of the festival’s genesis, ever the consummate journalist, but said nothing about his own role. But he soon became more animated, and veered from the official story, insisting on showing us his prized collection of photos of the first few events, barely able to conceal his passion and pride. He was ebullient about the town’s successes. After all, Parkes had given his family a new home in the uncertain aftermath of World War II, and provided him with an unexpected but rewarding career. Roel had arrived as an infant in nearby Tullamore in 1951, after an epic journey by taxi from Bathurst, with migrant parents who thought Australian towns were as close together as Dutch towns. The taxi bill cost two weeks’ wages. The family later moved to the ‘city’ of Parkes and Roel became a cadet journalist on the Champion-Post. By 1977 he was the editor, as he again was in 2016, after being dragged back from retirement. The first festival, and every other one, gave Roel a vehicle to promote Parkes, and give bac
k to the town. Fitting, then, that the ten Cate family provided three of the first five look-alike competitors.

  A couple of hundred people had turned up for the first festival, and some less than enthusiastic fans of Elvis had been converted. Participants proclaimed it a success but, other than in the Post editorials, the town evinced no great interest. While later in the year Michael Greenwood, then the Parkes Council Promotions Officer, described it as ‘the acclaimed Elvis Festival’, the acclamation was largely muted. Even so, before the second festival, he was confidently stating that it had ‘evolved to become part of Parkes’ annual events calendar’.

  In its second year, the festival brought visitors from further afield, including Western Australia and Queensland, and added a clambake at Gracelands, with tons of sand and surfboards brought in to transform the car park into an outpost of Hawaii. Buckets and spades were available and a signpost ordered ‘No Nude Bathing’. Steve Lennox again won the look-alike contest and his son Stephen kept it in the family by taking out the junior Elvis look-alike. Businesses were leaned on further to sponsor floats and decorate their shops, with prizes offered for the best of each. Those who agreed were given a particular Elvis song title deemed appropriate for them, and a half-hour cassette of that song – perhaps not a very welcome incentive.