EVERETT — Get your Elvis shoes on.
Dancing isn’t limited to performers at the annual Kentucky Rain Band’s Elvis Challenge, 7:30 p.m. May 4 at the Historic Everett Theatre, 2911 Colby Ave.
This isn’t a show the audience can take sitting down.
Admission is $25. Part of the proceeds benefit the Everett Gospel Mission.
Last year, 13 Elvis artists gyrated on stage to live music by Kentucky Rain Band. This year, just as many are slated to don dark sunglasses, black sideburns and jumpsuits to croon tunes as the “King of Rock and Roll.”
“There’s a good lineup of contestants. Some returning who have performed before and some new ones,” said event spokesperson Rob Schwertley, whose Elvis stage name is “Robbie Dee.” “There is one woman who is competing.”
Elvis entrants will be judged in four categories: vocal performance, costume and appearance, stage presence, and audience response.
Nick Poling, 33, of Marysville, took home the bacon last year, with a narrow victory over runner-up Kyler Vance, of Lynnwood.
Nick Poling performs as Elvis. (Photo by Alexander Stevens)
Schwertley said Poling wowed the crowd with his hip-shaking, “young Elvis” rendition of “Blue Suede Shoes” and his “jumpsuit-era Elvis” version of “My Way.”
Poling had stage experience. You might remember him as the co-playwright and actor in Marysville’s Red Curtain shows “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” and the “Star Trek”-inspired adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.”
This event was the first time he took on his Elvis persona.
“I signed up on a whim,” Poling said. “I hadn’t been in a band or a play for a long time and I was itching to perform.”
He threw together an outfit from thrift-store finds.
To his surprise, he got the crown.
“The crowd really responded well,” he said.
It launched his side hustle as an Elvis artist. He hopes to perform on a cruise ship this summer.
“I got a proper jumpsuit. It was like $1,800, and that’s at the cheaper end,” he said. “I grew my hair out. I grew my own natural sideburns.”
Poling, a medical assistant at a neurology clinic, dressed as Elvis on Halloween. “I gave my patients quite the surprise,” he said.
He’ll be at the May 4 event to sing some Elvis, including “If I Can Dream.” The show’s host is radio personality Heidi May.
Gus Mansour, of Lynnwood, donned his first Elvis costume about 10 years ago. This will be his third year in the Elvis Challenge.
“You are right in the presence of Elvis’ soul,” he said. He calls Elvis music a universal language.
The “King” died at his Tennessee mansion, Graceland, in 1977 at age 42.
Presley’s last words: “I’m going to the bathroom to read.”
In 2018, Donald Trump posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with Babe Ruth and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Lisa Marie Presley, his only daughter with actress Priscilla Presley, died Jan. 12, 2023, at age 54.
His granddaughter is actress Riley Keough, co-star with Lily Gladstone in Hulu’s “Under the Bridge” and in the new movie “Sasquatch Sunset.”
Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @reporterbrown.
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