Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 4, 1993 TAG: 9301040050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HARRIET McLEOD RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
DATELINE: EXMORE (AP) LENGTH: Medium
BLACK ELVIS `NEVER REALLY THOUGHT IT WOULD GO THIS FAR'
To reach the Black King, you have to call Norma's Pet Care in Exmore in Northampton County. Norma Walizer is president of his fan club, taker of his phone calls and conduit for the good business fortune that has been coming lately to Clearance Giddens, also known as Black Elvis.Black Elvis is not easy to catch these days. He's on the road or in the air between Virginia and New Orleans, where he's recording his first album. Videos are in the works.
In the last year, the Eastern Shore native has taken star turns on "Arsenio Hall," "Geraldo," where he won the audience's applause as the best Elvis impersonator, and in the movie "Honeymoon in Vegas."
Not bad for a "Sho' boy," as he calls himself.
"It's amazing," Giddens said. He sat in a changing room at the Anchor Inn in Nassawadox. Later, guitar in hand, jumpsuited up in red polyester, shades in place, he strolled through the motel's dining room to have pictures taken in a meeting room where he's played. A bridge club of older ladies, setting up their card tables, paused to listen to him sing "Love Me Tender."
"I never really thought it would go this far," he said.
Almost 40 years after Memphis record producer Sam Phillips wished for a white performer who could sing like a black man, the audience on the "Geraldo" show proved they go for the black singer's voice.
Unlike some Elvis channelers, Giddens, 38, doesn't think he is Elvis. His hair is a brief pompadour. Sideburns and a slight curl of his upper lip evoke the dead King. With a good guitar stance, he has the knee-knocking leg shakes and other Elvis stage poses down.
And unlike most Elvises, who lip-synch, he has a very good singing voice, full of Presley tremolo.
"I always liked Elvis Presley when I was growing up," he said. "I used to listen to him in the closet. When I was growing up, James Brown was big in the black community. You better not be listening to no rockybilly."
Unlike other Elvises, too, Giddens has been a performer all along. He sang in church, had a gospel duo with his brother and was a member of the Gospel Expressions, a group led by Eastern Shore singer and saxophonist Charles Strand.
A few die-hard Elvis lovers he knew suggested he put together an act.
"I said, `Nobody's gonna buy a black Elvis!"'
In 1987, he said, he was painting Hopkins Bros. store in Onancock - he was a house painter by trade - when the proprietor set up his first show in the store.
"The place was just packed," Giddens said. "I didn't see a black person in the place. I said, `I don't see any of my friends down there.' My audience had always been black. I never performed for a white audience."
His young nephew played the bongos. "And me with a guitar running through one amp," Giddens said. "I said, `My leg is shaking, and you guys think it's part of the act, but I'm really nervous.' I had that leg shaking the rest of the night."
He learned the songs and the moves from rented videotapes of Elvis' many grade-B movies and mumbled the lyrics he couldn't figure out.
Black Elvis started getting booked for festivals in Cape Charles and Parksley and small-town carnivals, where he was introduced by a member of his first backing band, the White Trash Band, as "Fresh from the grave, he didn't even have a chance to wash the dirt off his face . . . Black Elvis!"
Giddens has seen "Honeymoon in Vegas" four times. Flown out to Las Vegas, he stayed at the Bally Hotel, where the action takes place, for four days, playing slot machines, suiting up to be ready for his part.
Giddens works hard at being Elvis. His suits are made by a local seamstress for about $350 each. One is all leather, but he stays away from rhinestones, he said.
"You do a tribute to somebody, but you don't want to just copy 'em to a T," he said.
Notoriety extends from the Shore, where he's recognized shopping in the Dollar General in his Wayne's World cap, to meeting celebrities and discovering he's one, too. "I got to meet R.E.M., and they won Grammys and all they want is to meet me! " he said.
His forthcoming album is all original songs. A single from it is a country tune, and there are two gospel songs. "I would like to show 'em that I can do something else," he said.
Giddens is not Vegas-bound, he said.
"I'm gonna stay here," he said. "This is home. I don't have to worry about walking the streets and getting knocked in the head.
"My goal is starting a record company here later on. Since we're so isolated, people don't make a lot of money and go to the big city to record.
"I'll get some money, bring it back into the neighborhood. If it wasn't for my hometown folk, wouldn't be no Black Elvis."