Columnist Jerry Fink: Bartender mixes Elvis moves with Santa Fe drinks

Friday, April 13, 2001 | 8:47 a.m.

Jerry Fink's lounge column appears on Fridays. Reach him at jerry@ lasvegassun.com or 259-4058.

I've seen fat Elvis, thin Elvis, old Elvis, young Elvis and flying Elvis. Now I've even seen a Wise Elvis -- that would be Dennis Wise, a 46-year-old bartender at the Santa Fe Station's Iguana Bar.

Every Friday from 8 p.m. to midnight, Wise steps out from behind the bar and onto a nearby portable stage, where he pays tribute to the King and invites members of the audience to join him in singing their favorite Elvis songs -- it's a karaoke-Elvis evening he calls "Come Sing with the King."

"It's just a fun thing I do. There's no charge," Wise said.

Besides karaoke Elvis, once a month Wise performs "Tribute to Elvis" at the Santa Fe Lounge, accompanied by his wife, Marcia, and his brother, Jim Wise (a country singer who recently moved here from Nashville) and a four-piece band.

The next show, a tribute to Elvis' 1968 NBC "Comeback Special," will be on April 28. Admission is $10, but you get a whole lot of shakin' for the price -- an hour's worth of warm-up followed by 90 minutes of Wise Elvis.

At a recent show, Wise played to a near-capacity audience in the 300-seat lounge. Appearing in a white, fringed jumpsuit and using all of the cliched Elvis moves, Wise mesmerized the mostly middle-aged crowd.

During a seven-minute rendition of "Suspicious Minds," Wise threw open the curtains that separate the lounge from the slot machines and instantly captured the attention of the gamblers, holding them under the magic spell Elvis still casts 24 years after his death.

Wise's performance is almost flawless, as well it should be after 23 years and more than 10,000 shows all over the world (the most distant locale being Santiago, Chile, where he and Brenda Lee appeared on a television special).

"I saw Elvis perform live four times, but never had the chance to meet him," Wise said. "However, I did own a club across the street from Graceland."

He opened the Memphis, Tenn., club (a converted convenience store that he leased) in '84, after six years of traveling from city to city and living in a converted Greyhound bus.

"It was the perfect location," Wise said. "You had all these people touring Graceland, and when they came out they would go to my show. It was great while it lasted, especially around Elvis' birthday and the anniversary of his death."

But the Elvis estate wasn't thrilled.

"Graceland always wants a piece of the pie," Wise said. "It was a struggle. They wanted the property for themselves."

In 1986 the estate bought the property, and Wise and his wife were on the road again.

In 1989 the road led to Las Vegas, where his wife became a sixth grade teacher and he played lounges until after the 10,000th performance of his career on Aug. 15, 1997, at Arizona Charlie's West.

Wise decided he couldn't top that show and so retired his Elvis costumes and got a real job as a bartender.

But after awhile he missed the King. Earlier this year Wise lubed his hips, pressed his jumpsuits and is now mixing drinks and performing Elvis at Santa Fe station.

Wise, of course, is not the only Las Vegas Elvis. Tribute performances can be seen regularly at the Elvis-A-Rama Museum, New Frontier, Riviera, Magic Star, Fitzgerald's, Holiday Inn Boardwalk, Stratosphere, Imperial Palace, Lady Luck and Santa Fe Station.

While there is a high concentration of full-time professional Elvis impersonators in Las Vegas, Chris Davidson (owner of the Elvis museum and a man with an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Elvis) says very few of the rumored 50,000 Elvis impersonators around the world earn a living as the King.

"The key to being a good Elvis," says Davidson (whose museum contains a warehouse full of Elvis memorabilia), "is, can they do all three decades ('50s, '60s, '70s)? Many guys do specific years. I'd say 75 percent will do the '70s. It's almost impossible to find someone who can do the '50s, the movie years and the black-leather period."

Davidson employs four Elvis impersonators, including two who perform at the New Frontier, and two at his museum (where a show is included in the price of the museum tour).

"Some don't like to be called impersonators," Elvis impersonator Sonny Boline, who does seven 20-minute shows a day at the museum, said, "but I don't mind. We're blessed. If you have two of the three qualities that made Elvis great -- charisma, looks and the voice -- you're blessed."

Elvis is the one who was blessed. He died on Aug. 16, 1977, and he still makes more than $35 million a year.

I wonder, does the ghost of Col. Tom Parker still get half of the income?