Rocking it like the King
By Johna Strickland - Argus Observer
Monday, August 27, 2007 11:06 AM PDT
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| Members of Kawa Taiko perform in the Meyer/McLean Auditorium Saturday evening just before the Nisei Appreciation Banquet at the Four Rivers Cultural Center. |
Nyssa - Did you know Elvis lives in Nyssa?
Or maybe you do know because you’ve seen him running around in his black jumpsuit and cape. Or driving his white mini van.
If you have, you can thank Amy Wade who bought the costume off e-Bay for her husband Randy Wade, 42, Nyssa.
Recently, she got some of her money back — $100 — when Randy Wade’s jumpsuit and rendition of Elvis’ “An American Trilogy” won second place at Malheur County Fair’s talent contest. She may see even more money because Wade represented Malheur County at the state fair’s talent contest in Portland Sunday. The first-place contestant was unable to attend. Top prize at the state fair is $1,500.
Wade’s first Elvis gig a year ago made money for someone else, though, he said. He performed at a casino night to benefit a man with cancer. At the Moose Lodge in Grand Prairie, Texas, Wade sang a couple Elvis songs.
“I put scarves on the ladies and kissed them and they came up and kissed me,” Randy Wade said. “The only thing they didn’t do was throw their underwear, which I was thankful for. After I did that first show in Grand Prairie, Texas, at the Moose Lodge, I’d go there on weekends and they’d say, ‘Hey, Elvis.’ I was never Randy again.”
His journey to scarves and kissing the gals started in a church choir when he was 12, continued through high school and on to karaoke bars.
“I even would sing Elvis songs,” Wade said of the karaoke.
He won a karaoke contest with “Stairway to Heaven” in 1996 and appeared twice on Arlington Music Hall’s Johnnie High’s Country Music Review. The contest in Malheur County was his first talent show.
Before a show, Wade said he usually gets nervous and worked up, but he performs anyway “‘cause I enjoy doin’ it. I enjoy the music. I enjoy getting the crowd worked up.
“It’s kinda like takin’ on a role in a play. It’s awfully hard to get the crowd moving. I try to talk like Elvis, as best I can. ... And it’s hard to keep up. You get excited and you start to lose the character.”
The Nyssa-native found his “character” during the nine years he spent as a disc jockey for a radio station in Texas. A friend had heard him talk like Elvis and asked him to do a radio commercial as Elvis for his business. Wade did that one and others.
“Probably the most notable was the ones I did as Elvis,” he said.
One he did for a storage company featured “Elvis” talking about getting a unit for his “Pink Cadillac.”
Wade’s imitations of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard also came from his days as a disc jockey — call name Doc Holliday — on a classic country station.
“I’m an imitator,” he said. “I don’t even think I could write a song. I ain’t much of a poet.”
But Elvis is his true art. Working from film clips of Elvis and taped interviews he gave during his life, Wade depicts a late ‘60s, early ‘70s Elvis “when he wasn’t shaking so much,” Wade said, adding he can’t shake like that much anymore either.
“And it’s actually an easy voice to do. He had a Southern accent,” Wade said. “It’s a rarity to be an Elvis impersonator.”
Now in his karaoke and disc jockey business, Rockin’ Randall Productions, Wade has a chance pursue his loves: music and Elvis. And someday, maybe just like Elvis bought his mom Graceland, Wade just may buy his 78-year-old mother a house too.
“He (Elvis) was a momma’s boy,” Amy Wade said. “Just like Randy is.”
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