Outback Elvis

by John Connell

  While the festival might have begun indoors at Graceland, the parade takes it into the heart of the town and into the hearts of most festival visitors. Over the years, it has simply got bigger and bigger. Businesses take out floats, not least such sponsors as the Northparkes mine, the Dish (with kitchen plates and dishes stuck to their front windscreen), Big W and almost everybody who is anybody. The fire brigade, the bush fire brigade, the police are all there. Hairdressers focus their floats on Priscillae. Friday has seen even halfway attractive Elvises and Priscillas being signed up in the street by groups short of the right numbers and image for their float. Floats come from tiny local clubs too, of horse riders and girl guides, local schools and welfare groups. The Parkes School of Dance and the Little Bopper Dance Group show off their moves, distribute flyers and drum up business. Rugby and football teams contribute the hundreds of Elvii. Few businesses and few locals now disdain the parade; it is the time to show off, to see and be seen.

  Gleaming vintage cars, and occasional vintage caravans, dominate the parade and then remain in town for their proud owners to display. They prove a particular attraction as long as they are in keeping with the era, and are similar to Elvis’s Cadillacs: ‘They’re beautiful, beautiful, amazing! It’s just amazing to see the look-alikes of what Elvis used to have’. The crowd is in awe: ‘Wow, an HJ Holden’, ‘Red Mustang’, ‘Black Corvette’, ‘Valiant’ – some people can name them as they go by – an old Mini Cooper incongruous among the Caddy Coupe de Villes and left-hand-drive Lincoln Continentals. Some are merely puzzled: ‘They’re humungous cars. Where do they keep these things?’ – the reply: ‘In their garage’ – and ‘Imagine going to the shopping centre’. Occasionally the vintage cars break down and perspiring Elvii push them through the parade. To elderly English migrants it can seem a slow motion reprise of Genevieve. A vivid reminder of youthful mobility, or more probably the movies, the cars are a hit. Following them come a tiny wooden Cadillac and a papier-mâché Lisa-Marie aeroplane; jolly, jaunty and quite foolish, they add a surreal note.

  Seemingly improbable musical groups turn up. Pipe bands appear from various regional centres, including Dubbo, Condobolin, Orange and as far as Sydney. The Elvis Festival is one stop on their own annual itineraries, which include Anzac Day ceremonies and culminate at either the Glen Innes Celtic Festival or the Bundanoon Is Brigadoon Festival. The Condobolin RSL Band offers ‘street marches, weddings, funerals, birthdays, and any special community events such as the Parkes Elvis Festival and the Condobolin Garden Festival’, while the Canobolas Highland Pipe Band from Orange is ‘kept very busy throughout the year travelling to Australia Day, Anzac Day ceremonies, Balls, Running of the Sheep in Boorowa, the Cherry Festival in Young, and whatever functions are required from them throughout the Central West’. Behind them the Parkes Shire Council Band plays ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. Bagpipes were not known to be one of Elvis Presley’s favourite musical instruments, despite distant Scottish ancestry. ‘Scotland the Brave’ momentarily drowns out ‘Teddy Bear’ from the loudspeakers, but the colourful and incongruous mix somehow succeeds.

  The Parkes Show often has a float, which in 2007 had three sheep Elvises wearing sunglasses over dyed black wool, a reminder that there still is another show in town. The main festival shows are shamelessly promoted, with the leading tribute artists and their showgirls decorating appropriately elegant open-top Cadillacs: only the best cars for them, and only the best rhinestoned Vegas showgirls in full make-up, towering hairdos and tiny costumes that verge on pornographic. It’s quite a contrast to the Gospel Service float – ‘Jesus is my rock and my name is on the roll’ – and the rather more sedate presence of the United States Consul, an enthusiastic repeat visitor. As if these contrasts were not enough, the Anglican Church Hall ladies come as Priscillae, spruiking their newly opened café. One has a pet galah along for the ride on her shoulder.

  The parade takes on the festival theme of the year: cowboys and stetsons for Roustabout; sombreros and ponchos – and even a four-piece mariachi band – for Fun in Acapulco. Parkes’ own Alvis arrives on a float decked out as a Mexican beachside tequila shack. Women in bullfighting costumes follow. Former Elvis co-stars show up when their movie is the year’s theme, such as Cynthia Pepper – Elvis’s opposite number and love interest in Kissin’ Cousins – in 2014. Pepper has her own circuit of around four Elvis festivals a year.

  Unlike in the early years, the parade has become a real media event. Young female journos in power suits trot around with accompanying television camera crews. Freelance photographers with giant telephoto lenses get the best angles, some positioned like snipers up high above the crowd, atop the Cambridge Hotel. Clapping and cheering is egged on by a PA announcer, deliberately sounding like a hyped-up horse race caller.

  Hunky Elvises on Harley-Davidsons are likely to steal the show, especially when followed by ‘Bananas in Pyjamas Elvis’. Much less noisy are the BMX Bandit Elvii – only truly appreciated by the Generation X members of the audience who understand the reference to Nicole Kidman’s cult teen movie. They are very much in the minority, as ZZ Top beards and Harley-Davidson T-shirts dominate. Black Elvis and ShElvis, Australia’s most prominent female tribute artist, drive by on enormous three-wheeler Harleys. Even at ten in the morning, under an unforgiving sun, they have their moments; as the Sydney Morning Herald observed:

  Straddling a gleaming Harley-Davidson, the man with the mammoth, black quiff is working the crowd into a frenzy. Cupping a hand around one ear, he motions for further applause, as the sun reflects off his glinting gold sunglasses. ‘You can take me for a ride anytime’ shrieks one middle-aged woman, to the amusement of those around. Curling his lip the man leans back into his leather seat and cranks the throttle lever. There’s roars of approval as he purrs forward, a dozen fellow bikers in tow.

  It is barely enough to be an Elvis Elvis. Behind come Elderly Elvis and Eldest Presley (pushing a zimmer frame) and a giant koala Elvis; Elvises in purple, pink, white and green. Elvis comes on stilts and on roller blades, in pushchairs and wheelchairs, on a tractor and by bicycle, and often in disguise. Jungle Elvis (‘Looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane, smells like a cheetah’) precedes Chewbacca Elvis, a nod to the new Star Wars movie. From the crowd: ‘He’s got a real identity crisis, that fella’. No-one is excluded – there are Down syndrome Elvises, overweight Elvises, gay and lesbian Elvises (with Gay Elvis in rainbow ruffles hamming it up for the crowd, perhaps practising for the following month’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras), dozens of junior Elvises and even a few who look rather like Elvis.

  Not all Elvises are two-legged. Sheep dogs arrive as Old Shep, ponies seem to be auditioning for Roustabout. The Parkes Pony Club brings Pony Elvis – ‘He’s cute!’ – all glitter on his hooves. Donkey Elvis comes from out of town. An Elvis pug wears a miniature replica of the fabled American Eagle jumpsuit; Elvis puppies in a pram are overshadowed by a giraffe Elvis. An organisational priority is to keep animals that might deposit unwanted contributions to the parade well to the back.

  The crowd play their part. Once barely a single person deep, the audience is now ten deep in some places (where the shop awnings cast shade). There is a sense of wonder and bemusement: ‘I can’t believe the people here. It’s huge … I’ve never seen this many people … in Parkes’. They yell their appreciation: ‘Come and make my day, Elvis!’ Plenty of the now old-fashioned larrikin Elvii kiss middle-aged ladies sitting in the crowd in their camping chairs. Cheeky, and the ladies love it. The impersonators respond with one-liners as they pass: ‘It’s hot out here … I need another peanut butter sandwich’, in a failed American accent, and from another on the Parkes Leagues Club float: ‘I wish Elvis had been bald … it’s like a towering inferno in this wig’.

  The festival is not at all political but the National Party takes out a float in the parade, with acolytes seated on bales of straw, prompting some rude asides. The state member of parliament, Andrew Gee, plays his part, singing along remarkably well
in front of the ‘Central Graceland’ cover band, a live band of local kids and an aging drummer. They bring up the rear, and the crowd, regaled, amused and hot, disperses. The parade is over for another year. A woman in her eighties lies on the footpath, collapsed from heat exhaustion, being helped by the ambos. For almost everybody else, vibrant colours and flamboyant costumes, crazy participants, the Elvis soundtrack (and the occasional bagpipes) ensure the parade is fun, whet the appetite and set the scene for much of what follows.

  How Great Thou Art

  If the parade is the biggest event of the festival, the next biggest, though utterly different, is the Gospel Service. It seems only fitting. Elvis had, after all, been brought up in a Memphis Pentecostal church and recorded three gospel albums, which brought him the Grammys his other music never did. Like every other part of the festival, the Gospel Service began small and grew far beyond expectations. But it very nearly never happened.

  At the end of the century, as the festival still struggled for survival, the Uniting Church minister, Tom Stuart, with his wife Kathy, returned to his home town from Gloucester. Young and enthusiastic, he had come back to Parkes to try and turn around the decline of the rural church, and seek to develop ‘a sense of goodness’ in the community. He caught up again with old friends like Bob Steel (who held car club meetings in the church) and read the Post’s articles about the festival’s struggle for survival. Kathy had grown up as part of a family where her aunts loved Elvis and annually presented her with one more Elvis gospel record (a source of some embarrassment at school). Somehow these threads became intertwined.

  Tom Stuart initially perceived Elvis as primarily a gospel singer, and after reading a series of biographies became conscious of Elvis as dedicated to his craft and ‘a spiritual guy’, however ensconced in a material world, consciously seeking perfection in his music and his life. He suggested to Bob Steel that perhaps the festival might include a concert of Elvis’s sacred songs. Bob looked at him weirdly and disappeared. Fully six months later a knock on his door was accompanied by the cry ‘It’s Elvis!’ Elvis Lennox had come to talk about this ‘great idea’ but could only offer Tom a Sunday morning slot in an otherwise full program. Tom responded: ‘But that’s when we have church’. Realising what this meant, and delighted at the opportunity, he plucked up the courage to talk to the key congregation members about turning a church service into a concert.

  Most of the congregation were appalled; ‘Is that our main game?’, ‘Why would we want to have anything to do with the debauched life of Elvis?’ Eventually they relented, since in January numbers were so small that services were sometimes held in parishioners’ houses. Reluctantly, they told Tom: ‘You do what you like’. As Tom Stuart explained, in the face of his flock’s antagonism, ‘I see Elvis as this performer with a very natural form of spirituality and this incredible talent who is like us because of the phenomenal personal failings that exposed his clay feet’.

  Posters were created (centred on the His Hand in Mine record cover, with a suited, rather spiritual-looking Elvis playing an organ), the event was squeezed into the program and in January 2002 some 80 people turned up to the first gospel service. At 8 am, half an hour early, the church doors were opened by a parishioner who had opposed the whole experiment. He was almost instantly won over: ‘I’ve never opened the doors, especially this early, and found people queuing outside’. It was still quite tentative. A lone parishioner quietly sought permission to wear a jumpsuit to the service; a year later he was performing in the service.

  Numbers grew, to 140 in 2003, 220 in 2004 and over 400 by 2005. By then the church was full and the service was forced to move. This quite belated festival entrant, uncertainly welcomed by the festival and uncertainly supported by the Uniting Church, spilled over from the church to occupy the much less hallowed ground of Big W’s undercover car park. (Festival promotions referred to ‘the spiritual journey to the Big W undercover car park’.) Two thousand people could be squeezed in and, with its dull grey walls carefully decorated and oil slicks covered over, it resembled a church crypt; the gospel songs had a nice echo, clever use of data projectors enabled a multi-media event, with footage of Elvis, and it was a godsend when it rained.

  The service was a stunning success. Established to ‘draw out the spiritual side in all of us, to assist people who rarely if ever went to church to become aware of their spiritual selves for the rest of the year’, it was directed at people whose first love was Elvis. That certainly meant many of the Elvis tribute artists. When Bob Steel knocked on Tom’s door at 1 am on the morning of the service to enquire if the main artists could possibly perform in it, Tom was overjoyed, and performing at the service quickly became part of their contractual obligations. Occasionally some first-time performers treated the service with disdain until they saw the size of the crowd; soon afterwards they ‘got the buzz’ from the crowd or from ‘the spirit of the event’. Some were genuinely moved. As one tribute artist said afterwards, with tears in his eyes, ‘I’ve been playing these songs for half my life, but this is the first time I’ve really got it’. For the first time for many, both performers and fans, the gospel music now existed in a religious context, amid prayers and sermons.

  One visitor was ‘quite delighted’ when the Uniting Church minister, two farmers and a shearer formed a quartet to sing ‘Sweet, Sweet Spirit’ in unaccompanied four-part harmony, to the background of Elvis video footage. Another commented: ‘Love it. Saw it last year, brilliant. And I’m not a churchy person, but it’s done the Elvis way and the preachers do a really good job of making it totally Elvis, so it was as good as people say’.

  Some did find spirituality, or at least pointed out that it brought them to church once a year. Ian Harris, the Ghost of Elvis, a regular tribute artist from Melbourne and the first to perform in the service in a jumpsuit, was quickly won over, and subsequently included more gospel songs in his regular performances. Sometimes it meant more than that. A group from the Central Coast were bonding in unexpected ways:

  It makes people really relate to one another. We just went this morning to the Gospel Service. Joan goes to church every now and then, but Glenys and I never do … that’s because we’re radical feminists! But I just enjoyed it so much, it was really good … really uplifting and fun … All the songs are related to spirit and it makes you realise how much of that is in everyday life; it really makes you think about it. So today our theme is share the love … but don’t touch.

  Occasionally Tom was asked by delighted visitors ‘Where can we find a church like this’? and was forced to remind them that ‘We’re not even a church like this’. Others simply discovered a new side of Elvis. Sermons were brief and oriented to the particular annual theme, even when Steve Clarke, ‘The Memphis Preacher’ – actually an Anglican minister and former blues saxophonist from Canberra – came to town. Some annual themes, like Viva Las Vegas, posed problems as they seemed synonymous with rampant greed and excess, but the opening lines leading into ‘set my soul on fire’ soon sparked ideas. Sista Jacqui Baldwin, an African-American from Mississippi, perhaps best known in Australia for having ‘starred’ in a 2009 episode of Border Security when Sydney Airport sniffer dogs wrongly singled her out, came from America to direct the Gospel Choir. At Sydney Airport, when her ordeal was over, she had triumphantly sung an unaccompanied gospel song. In Parkes she had a full choir behind her, and an enthusiastic live audience in front of her.

  Other Parkes churches looked askance but there was more than a hint of jealousy; many in their own congregations had absconded for the gospel service. Since the Uniting Church had taken the lead, although it was called a non-denominational service it didn’t become at all ecumenical until 2016. By then, after the departure of Tom Stuart, the Uniting Church found the strain of organising such an event too much for its small and aging congregation. It had little impact on religiosity in Parkes itself, though its contribution to a school and a parish in East Timor were enormous. Over eleven years, offeri
ngs at the Gospel Service had contributed over $110 000, mainly to a village primary school, strengthening a friendship agreement between Parkes and the Timorese village of Weberek. Tom Stuart had been transferred to Charlestown, Newcastle, where in a burst of new enthusiasm he developed a Johnny Cash service, focusing on another spiritual singer who had struggled with life’s journeys, but this time it failed to survive.

  Love Me Tender: the renewal of vows

  Something of a counterpoint to the Gospel Service, and an hour or so afterwards, comes the renewal of vows, an institution almost from its beginnings in 2006, when 23 couples renewed their vows. The presence of an Elvis celebrant even enabled new couples to marry, at Back to the Altar with Elvis: the next best thing to Las Vegas itself, and, for many, much better. Indeed, when the event was rained off and shifted to the Big W underground car park, Chris and Mary Madoyris from Sydney were renewing their vows – she in full bridal dress (not the original but, she stressed, the same size), he in a white Elvis jumpsuit, black wig and gold sunglasses. The pair had bonded over the King ever since they met. ‘We always wanted to get married by Elvis but it’s too expensive in America – 48 bucks in the Big W car park: it’s a dream come true’.

  One of the marriage celebrants in the mid-2000s was Dean Vegas, then Australia’s only official Elvis marriage celebrant and part-time tribute artist. In 2007, 33 couples renewed their vows, on the main stage and under the Love Me Tender Archway. Each year since then, a fully costumed Elvis marriage celebrant from Dubbo has presided over the grand ceremony, where the ‘brides’ are walked down the aisle to be given away to their partners: a family moment. By 2016 some 400 couples had renewed their bonds. Many surprise their partners; tears flow in what has become an outdoor chapel, and kisses follow.

  In 2016 Gary and Julia Roche were there, eleven years after their marriage, at Uluru (Ayers Rock), a quick decision and a hurried elopement away from family. Julia’s mother had never quite forgiven her daughter. This time the three of them had taken what was described as a camping holiday that just happened to go through Parkes. To her amazement Elvis pulled Julia’s mother out of the crowd. ‘Now finally you will be able to walk Julia down the aisle’. And so she did, amidst massive applause, more tears and much delight.