Year: 2015
Director: Jeanie Finlay

The King Is Dead, Long Live The King? When Elvis P shat himself to heaven in 1977 millions cried for him along with their lost youth and memories. Yet how can Elvis be dead when we have his music – the people cried, particularly when a new disc from Jerry Lee Lewis arrives with an Elvis-y sounding singer billed as ‘Orion’ duetting with The Killer. Then a masked man with swirling cape, slicked back quiff and that voice is ‘Reborn’ on the front of an LP showing him also prone in a coffin. Can this be real – is the Pelvis back from his toilet break?

In this intriguing documentary we find that Jimmy Ellis was given the dream he had always wanted – to be a star with adoring and willing girls at his feet, big selling records (but not in the traditional sense) and sell out concerts but with a hefty price. He would have to wear the mask whenever he was in public and would only be popular because he sounded like and\or people thought he was Elvis back from the dead. Signed to Sun Records by the unscrupulous (and that’s being kind) Shelby Singleton who dubbed Orion’s voice onto 50’s masters to create new product he was exploited and burnt out without a red cent to show for it.
The post -fame period is sadly predictable and you can’t help feeling sorry for the guy but the novelty act tag was never going to leave him even when he unmasked himself Kendo Nagasaki style.

There is one curious point made in the film that suggests Jimmy Ellis could have been closer to the Presley bloodline than just having a sound-a-like set of pipes and this only adds to the strangeness of the tale which makes the Nashville music scene appear to be a den of scum and villainy. As Les McQueen from Crème Brulee memorably said “it’s a shit business”.

This was on BBC4’s ‘Storyville’ strand last week so still may be accessible via I-player

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06pyw3w/storyville-20152016-8-orion-the-man-who-would-be-king

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Music n shit