King for Commoners : Despite the sideburns, the blue-black hair dye and the karaoke machine, Nick Cirocco of Huntington Beach says he isn’t your typical Elvis impersonator. He plays swap meets.

Nick ’55 is in a dedicatin’ mood.

“I’d like to dedicate this to two people--first of all my girlfriend, Carol, back in Pittsburgh, Pa. She’s the love of my life, and I always think of her when I sing ‘The Wonder of You.’ And Mario Cossentino, my business partner and voice instructor, who has helped me greatly,” says Nick.

He’s not exactly dedicating a concert here. He may be stuffed, cannelloni-like, into a white, fringed jumpsuit and sporting more turquoise jewelry than a pawnshop display case. He may be striding restlessly back and forth as if he’s sizing up the stage at the Forum. But Nick ’55 is merely wearing a groove in his brown living room carpet while granting an “exclusive” interview to your hapless Fixations reporter.

“I sing the songs basically the way I feel them,” he said of the 355 Elvis songs he claims to have memorized. “There’s only one Elvis. But if I could bring the charisma he had across to just one person in an audience and capture them for that small moment of time, to achieve that is an achievement in itself.”

And still he paced the room. Doesn’t this guy ever sit down?

“I can’t really sit with this belt,” the Huntington Beach resident explained, and, indeed, his jumpsuit’s white leather belt is about as wide as a bike lane, with a buckle of leather and metal discs that appears inspired by a pancake stack.

Perhaps you’ve seen him, way, way, way in the background in the film “Honeymoon in Vegas” or at his appearances at parties and business promotions. What sets Nick ’55 apart from the Presley-fied pack, though, is that he has taken Elvis to the people. What other impersonator can you find plying his trade at swap meets at 8 in the morning?

For years he has been a fixture on weekends at the Orange Coast College Swap Meet and other local flea markets, where, along with vending merchandise, he has a sign proclaiming “Nick ’55 Does Elvis.” He sings requested Elvis songs for $1 a pop.

You don’t get him in full jumpsuit splendor out there--it’s too hot in the sun--but there’s no mistaking the trademark Elvis sideburns and raven-wing black hair. Should you desire Elvis impersonator hair of your own, Nick recommends Wella blue-black dye.

“I’m all shook up about Wella. I do my own hair and dye it about every three months, though I have to dye my sideburns every three weeks because I’m a little gray. I just turned 52 on April 2,” he said.

His given name is Nick Cirocco. He gets the ’55 from his two-tone red and white 1955 Cadillac he uses on promotions.

“55 is a special number to me,” he said. “My family moved to California from Jamaica, Queens, in 1955. My first car was a ’55 Lincoln, and I had a ’55 Olds. Once betting 55s, I won $87 in Lotto, and I’m soon to appear at the grand opening of the Huntington Beach Indoor Swap Meet, which is at 5555 McFadden.”

Incredible, even if you don’t count all those 55 m.p.h. speed-limit signs he sees everywhere.

He says his Cadillac is the same model and year as Elvis’ first one.

“I’m probably one of the only Elvis impersonators to have a 1955 Cadillac,” he said proudly.

He’s also the only Elvis impersonator who has taken to calling me at home before 8 a.m. every morning: “Hey, Jim, I thought you’d want to know that I’m going to be doing the Champagne Cruises!” He may soon become the first Elvis impersonator to be shot with a crossbow.

Cirocco began singing in school choirs. During 10 years spent in the retail furniture business, he often sang to himself on the sales floor, which led to requests to sing at company parties.

Following an injury on the job, he starting selling merchandise at swap meets.

“I was selling leather goods, and remember years ago when they first came out with those sand art things you’d turn upside down and the sand would flow? I was one of the first guys to get a hold of that. So I’d be selling these at different swap meets. Around 1975, I saw this guy with a karaoke machine, bought one for $400, and inside was this Elvis tape with 12 songs on it.

“Being a salesman, I thought if I could sing it would bring the people in as they went by. So instead of me saying, ‘Hey! You!’ I would sing a little bit--’Don’t Be Cruel,’ ‘All Shook Up’--and say (in Elvis voice), ‘C’mon folks, see the magic sand pictures.’ It gets their attention.”

He got more serious about Elvis’ music after seeing him perform three times. The first time, in 1976, he found that the woman who took him had gone to Presley’s high school and had dated him, which accounted for the front row seats they were given.

“And he just really captured me. I was singing then and had been doing a little imitation of him, but when I saw the stage all done in black and gold, and him coming out with all that drama, it really got me. He was heavy then, but he never lost his marvelous voice. At the time, I was more into Dean Martin, but when I saw the King perform, wow.”

After Presley’s death Aug. 16, 1977, a friend at the swap meet had suggested Cirocco charge $1 to sing Presley songs along with the karaoke machine and adopt the Nick ’55 name.

“If people requested a song I didn’t know, I’d make it a point to learn it. Then I started making my own tapes and selling them out there.” Cirocco now has seven cassette albums out, selling for $6 to $9, all of him singing along to karaoke backing tracks.

“One day many years ago at the swap meet a guy walked up to me and asked me to play a going-away party for one of his head salesmen who was an Elvis fan. He asked, ‘How much do you charge?’ I’d never done a show in my life, but I said $800. He said OK, sends me a $400 deposit in the mail, and then I knew it was for real and started worrying. What am I going to do? I didn’t have a jumpsuit or anything. But I rented a tux, dyed my hair, bought some jewelry and did the show. I got three more bookings out of it, and the guy gave me a $100 tip.”

Since then, he’s done everything from kids’ birthday parties to a backstage bash at a Guns N’ Roses show, where, he says, Axl Rose prompted him to get onstage and sing with Slash. Sometimes he’s hired just to mingle, along with other celebrity impersonators managed by Doubletake Entertainment in Huntington Beach. He’s played political rallies and bar mitzvahs and for a while had a gig promoting Elvis Presley Cologne at JCPenney stores.

In his bedroom-recording studio, Cirocco has a poster-sized photo of one of his Penney appearances, where he’s wearing a black leather outfit, singing and hugging a dazed-looking woman. He pointed out a character in the background of the photo, saying, “That’s my bodyguard there.”

Nick ’55 has a bodyguard?

“Sometimes when I do shows like this, you never know what you’re going to run into. JCPenney’s, you know, there’s a crowd, and I’ve got to get into the mall and get out of the mall. You can’t spend a lot of time with people, so he got me in there and got me out of there.”

There are other hazards to his profession, like the women who just can’t resist the ersatz Elvis allure.

“I do have a lot of women come on to me, women that have given me phone numbers or given me gold rings while I was singing,” he said. “The bad thing is that, being an entertainer, you don’t know who they are. I screen all my calls because there’s a lot of screwballs out there, real nut cases.”

To perform on a stage is one thing, but it takes a person with a thick skin to do Elvis at a swap meet or department store.

“When I first started out at the swap meet, people would go, ‘Oh, he’s not really singing, he’s lip-syncing!’ Then I’d stop singing and say, ‘No, he’s not!’ But then I started getting known as a singer out there, and all the fright went away. The butterflies are still there every time you do a show. The audience can make or break you. But after it’s all over, if you’re successful, the achievement and the high is there. Then you come down and you’re back into reality again.

“The down side is, like, sometimes people go by and say, ‘Awww, he really thinks he’s Elvis,’ or ‘Why don’t you let the guy rest in peace?’ Or I’ll be walking down the street, and people will go, ‘Hey, nothing but a Houuuuundawg!’ or ‘Hey, sidebuuuuurns!’ Sometimes I get a little uptight, but that’s just part of the thing I’m in. I have to roll with it.”

Being Elvis isn’t the sort of job where you can just clock out at 5 p.m., and that troubles Cirocco a bit.

“I like being me. But, you know, like even when I want to be me, sometimes I can’t be me. I even go out with my hair parted down the middle, wearing a T-shirt, and people still come up, ‘Hey, Elvis!’

“Some of these Elvis impersonators get so caught up in it they get the plastic surgery and all that. This is going to surprise you, but I don’t even know how to make my lip go like this,” he said, while he attempted the trademark Elvis sneering lip curl. “I just can’t do it.”

Except for the sideburns, I think Cirocco actually looks more like Ernest Borgnine than he does Elvis Presley. Has he ever considered doing “Nick ’55 does Borgnine?”

“No. No, not really.”

Last fall he traveled by train to Graceland in Memphis. One might think an Elvis impersonator going there would be one of the larger lumps of coal one could haul to Newcastle, but he says everyone treated him special.

“They gave me free accommodations at the Days Inn. All I had to do was mingle with the people in the morning at the continental breakfast. I got up with a band on Beale Street and sang ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and ‘All Shook Up,’ which I was. If I’m lying, I’m dying.

“I wanted to walk down the King’s territory, just as an ordinary tourist. But no matter where I walked, people were hollering from the bars, ‘Hey, Elvis, come on in!’ So they’d buy me a Jack Daniels. I didn’t spend a dime in Memphis,” he said.

Though he says he knows he’s Nick and not Elvis, there are times when he’s singing that the line blurs.

“I’m glad that doing Elvis you can wear the sunglasses, because there have been occasions where people have busted up when I’ve psyched myself into a song. For that one hour I’m not me. I’m him . I think it and believe it so I can do it. And a couple of times I’ve had people completely busted up, shaking, crying. And then I even broke down, but with my wraparound glasses they couldn’t tell I was crying. They just thought I was sweating.”

Elvis sang “Follow That Dream,” and Nick ’55 has a dream or two of his own.

“You know what I would really like to do, my ultimate dream? I really hope that maybe somebody will see me and see this beautiful car and say, ‘Well maybe this car belongs in a hotel in Las Vegas, and maybe Nick ’55 belongs in a hotel in Las Vegas, as a mingler.

“In other words, I’d be getting the tokens for the slot machine, playing them, and congratulating people when they hit the jackpot, so it’s like they’re playing with the stars. When people check in to the hotel they could have a complimentary picture taken with me. I would like to do that. Just mingle, have a nice suite at the hotel.

“That, or I’d like to have the car inside Nick’s ’55 Diner: Have this here car completely retired. Take out the gas tank, open up the trunk, have it as a dessert tray, spinning around. Have peanut butter and banana sandwiches and cheeseburgers. I’d be happy to furnish the talent; I just don’t have all the funds. I’m ready to rock ‘n’ roll! Yeah, cook some hound dogs!”