Legacy of Elvis Gets All Shook Up During Annual Birthday Tribute

Elvis couldn’t have seen this coming. Strange enough that the King reached retirement age last weekend, but the dozens of musicians who gathered at the House of Blues for a Sunday celebration of Presley’s birthday caressed and twisted his legacy into a variety of new shapes and sounds.

“This gets more like ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ every year,” host Art Fein said early on, as a large group of fez-wearing players exited the stage. The rock historian and author has led this annual tribute with musician Ronnie Mack for 15 years, mostly attracting local players with a rockabilly fixation.

But some of the best moments on Sunday were unexpected, like the cool surf take on “Don’t Be Cruel” by Rod & the Tone-Masters, or former Knack leader Doug Fieger’s passionate pop reading of the bluesy “One Night.” Danny Blitz and his band of muscle-bound men in tight red shirts ripped convincingly through punked-up versions of “Burning Love” and “Suspicious Minds.”

Most of the night was filled with straight-ahead rockabilly, largely ignoring the music of the “fat Elvis” years. This wasn’t about parody, and there were (thankfully) few acts that even approached impersonation. Instead, longtime local rockabilly kings (Levi Dexter, James Intveld, etc.) paid tribute to the early Presley years that somehow continue to resonate in contemporary pop music.

While most acts had fun with the concept of Elvis as icon, a few saw the night as mainly a chance for cheap camp. Johnny Legend did stomp across the stage in a gray hermit’s beard and groped his bikini-clad backup singer, but most of the acts chose to pay loving tribute. Among those was the Three Bad Jacks, whose lead singer--really named Elvis by his parents--seemed to speak for the musicians and crowd when he declared the King’s birthday as “the best damn day of the year!”