By RACHEL SAUER
Palm Beach Post
Not three hours before, in a second-floor hotel room at the Comfort Inn near the airport, the CD had played just fine.
With his wife Janet watching, he’d paid particular attention to his second song, “I Miss You,” pausing the disc to silently run through the words with his eyes closed. And when he hit pause again to restart the disc, it played. Just like it was supposed to.
But now, half past midnight, onstage at the Holiday Inn, in a roomful of Elvises and those who love him… silence.
Awkward, sickening silence.
His five songs, carefully selected months before, arrangements suited to his clear tenor voice, practiced in Port St. Lucie, on the road to Memphis and in that second-floor hotel room – disappeared on a disc that wouldn’t play at the moment he needed it to.
Scott Norton looked like Elvis with the pompadour and rhinestones and white jumpsuit unzipped to an Elvis dip. But would appearance be enough, even a gold ring on every finger? He was surrounded by Elvises, with their mutton-chop sideburns and their “thank-yuh-very-much.”
What would distinguish Scott as he stood on stage in a ballroom of Memphis’ Holiday Inn Select Aug. 18, one of 34 finalists in the Images of the King Elvis Presley tribute artist contest? What could save him when his CD wouldn’t play and he stood on stage, looking like Elvis but sounding like a guy with no music?
What would Elvis do?
Well, he would sing. So that’s what Scott did.
Looking like Elvis
Let’s be clear that it’s not enough to look the part.
With a box of Miss Clairol #51D and a ready supply of rhinestones, a lot of people can approximate Elvis. They can do the “hey, baby” gun fingers and huh-have a bluuuuuuuue Christmas, and all they’re doing is telling the same stale joke: Yes, yes, Elvis Presley in his extremes became something of a caricature.
If sideburns and gold shades were all there was to Elvis, surely by now he would have faded, forgotten in the gentle dusk of cultural forgiveness. But almost 600,000 people visit Graceland every year, and weep genuine tears over his grave. Books are still written about him.
And thousands of singers slither into black leather pants or white gabardine jumpsuits and karate chop their way across stages around the world, trying their best to channel The King.
People like Scott Norton.
Scott Norton, 43, who sells stoves and refrigerators and lives quietly in Port St. Lucie, who met his wife in a bowling alley.
“I am Scott Norton,” he says, “I’m not Elvis Presley and I never will be, and I do not strive to be better than Elvis Presley.”
His mom has a picture of him at age 2, holding a toy guitar, the collar of his pajamas turned up, twitching his legs: Elvis Jr. His parents listened to Elvis’ music, so he knew about hound dogs and blue suede shoes from a young age.
In fourth grade, he wanted to enter the talent contest at his Louisville, Ky., elementary school with Little Sister. His mother didn’t think it was appropriate for an 8-year-old, so he switched to Big Boss Man. While practicing it at his grandma’s house one day, his dad wandered into the room and asked, “Do you have to sing it? Couldn’t you just lip sync it?”
Ouch.
Then, an insight: While trying to help one of his classmates sing The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, his music teacher advised her to try sounding like the person on the record. Scott embraced the advice, tucking it away for future use.
Four years later, he lugged his turntable out to the back yard so he could enjoy the weather and learn from Elvis. He was singing along to Playing for Keeps when he “hit a note and it just blended so well that I just went wow, I can sound like Elvis.”
Falling in love with you
It should be noted that he never had a voice lesson.
It also should be noted that he never saw Elvis perform in person. He had tickets to Elvis’ April 1977 performance in Louisville, but Scott was grounded and his dad wouldn’t let him go.
His first paid gig as an Elvis impersonator was at age 17, when he sang in a bowling alley lounge, accompanied by tapes imported from Japan. Six months later, he sang at a Christmas party for the Kentucky Air National Guard.
But as often happens, life got in the way. He got married, got a job, moved forward. He still sang, and at one point had his own country band that, thrill of Scott’s life, backed George Jones at Louisville’s Freedom Hall. Elvis shuffled to the back of his mind.
And life rolled along. His marriage ended, he was discouraged, he had no direction. A friend invited him to visit Florida, so on Sept. 30, 1990, he flew down and that night went to Port St. Lucie Lanes. It was league night, and Scott’s friend introduced him to a woman named Janet.
She, too, had been through rough times — widowed young and left to raise two children. So maybe she recognized a certain sadness in Scott.
“He seemed lost,” she remembers. “He’d been through a rough divorce, his wife hadn’t wanted him to have anything to do with music. He was just in a really low place.”
They became friends first. He got a job at the bowling alley. Janet remembers coming in near closing time, as he waxed the lanes, and hearing him sing when he thought nobody was listening.
“His voice,” she sighs. “I remember hearing him sing and it was just so beautiful.”
He had no confidence, though, so Janet coaxed and cajoled, and finally, reluctantly he sang for her. Soon, it didn’t take much coaxing. She, too, was a lifelong Elvis fan, so he delved into his memory and pulled out all the old love songs.
During their wedding ceremony Feb. 4, 1995, he couldn’t get through Can’t Help Falling in Love without crying. He tried again at the reception, getting down on one knee, looking in her eyes and beginning, “Wise men say only fools rush in …” He made it through, and every day since, Janet has insisted he sing.
From Elks to Ultimate Elvis
Becoming an Elvis impersonator — the term he prefers to “tribute artist” — wasn’t one of those grand life decisions. A few years back he heard about an Elvis impersonator contest in Stuart and Janet encouraged him to enter. He figured, what the heck? Might as well.
He didn’t win but did well, so for the next one Janet sewed him a white jumpsuit. And he just kept performing — at the Sons of Italy Club, at the St. Lucie West Elks Club, at the Jupiter Country Club, at the American Legion Post 318. He performed for Ms. Trelmarie Fountain at her nursing home, singing and swinging, 15 songs beyond the three he’d promised, every resident in attendance, every woman there swooning.
He and Janet saved their money for a jumpsuit from B&K Enterprises, the company that made Elvis’ costumes, and for other Elvis-inspired outfits from earlier eras. He practiced his moves in front of a mirror and recorded himself singing the same songs over and over, each time trying to sound more like Elvis.
In May, Scott entered the Tampa Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest, one of the regional qualifying contests for Elvis Presley Enterprises’ first Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest, to be held as part of the events honoring the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death.
After making the top eight, he decided to perform Fairytale and What Now My Love for the finals. Now, these are vocally difficult songs. Even Elvis strained on Fairytale. Scott says he thought he did well, but the audience didn’t scream for him the way they did other performers. The same thing happened during What Now My Love. Scott figured he’d lost when he was accused of lip-syncing Elvis’ actual vocals. Judges listened to his accompaniment CD.
Scott won the competition.
Memphis: Out, then in
Just 24 performers from around the world qualified for the Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest and only 10 progressed to the finals. Scott gave his preliminary performance Aug. 12, after he and Janet loaded their PT Cruiser full of Scott’s outfits and drove to Memphis. He didn’t make the top 10, and despite his disappointment immediately called organizers of another tribute artist contest, the Images of the King.
Is it too late to enter? he asked.
No, they told him, come on over. So he was the first to perform, competing on Aug. 14 against 85 performers from around the world in the 21st annual Images of the King.
Scott made it to the finals. He would perform last the evening of Aug. 17.
“I feel like a king”
If the contest went according to schedule, starting on time at 7 p.m. Scott would go on stage at 10:45. So at 6:30 p.m., Scott and Janet are still relaxing in their EconoLodge room. His handwritten set list tallies to just over 14 minutes.
“You’re disqualified if you go over 15 minutes,” Janet explains. The list starts with Tryin’ to Get to You (2:04), soars to How Great Thou Art (3:58) and ends with Can’t Help Falling in Love (1:45 the Vegas version).
Now Scott is doing his hair. Carefully, carefully he draws the brush back, creating the perfect side-parted swoop. A lengthy ssssssssssssss of hairspray follows. Next, the makeup: waterproof mascara to touch up his eyebrows and the roots of his hair, plus sweep across his eyelashes.
“I had to teach him how to put it on,” Janet says, laughing. “At first, it looked like spiders. The guys at work would really give it to him if they knew.”
She also advised him to use a light hand with the bronzer. Makeup-wise, though, that’s as far as he goes. The same cannot be said for other Elvises.
Then for the pièce de résistance: the jumpsuit. At an auction earlier in the week, he’d bid $200 for a B&K Enterprises white jumpsuit of the “Tiffany” design — which retails for $1,600, without the cape — and won, “and it fits like a glove,” he brags. Talk about a good luck charm. Zipping it up (tidbit: no underwear, as contest rules prohibit lines) and snapping on the wide belt, he bends and stretches, dropping into Elvis’ famous leg-extended pose.
“How do you feel?” Janet asks.
Scott considers. “I feel like a king.”
Pacing, waiting, worrying
They arrive at the Holiday Inn to a contest in progress, though half an hour behind schedule. Women approach him and ask to take a picture with him. He drinks a Diet Pepsi and then another, and he and Janet make several trips outside to smoke.
The performers are good. Some are great. Scott sits at the end of a long banquet table in the packed ballroom, jiggling his leg, playing air piano, chatting with other tribute artists who walk by in gold lamé blazers or Hawaiian shirts. At 11 p.m., there are still four more performers before him, but he wanders back to the communal dressing room.
He sings “I Miss You” under his breath, his second song (2:17), to which he’s forgetting a few words. He paces.
“As it gets closer to showtime, I don’t talk to him,” Janet confides. “He gets in Elvis mode.”
Speaking of Elvis: “Elvis used to say even if he’d played a city before, it’s always a whole new crowd, so he’d get nervous,” Scott says, pausing in his pacing. “I shouldn’t be nervous, but … Elvis got nervous, too.”
A guest performer takes the stage and sings two songs, then another sings four songs, pushing the competition further off schedule. It’s past midnight when Scott hugs Janet close and kisses her once, twice, three times.
“I love you,” she whispers. “You know you’re my hero.”
He kisses her again, and she returns to her seat in the audience.
Finally, finally, at 12:30 a.m. … “From Port St. Lucie, Florida, let’s give it up for Scott Norton!”
A sickening silence
“Go ahead, maestro,” he says, running up the steps to the stage. “Go ahead, man.”
And then … there’s no music. Scott improvises, asking who attended the sold-out tribute concert at Memphis’ FedEx Center the night before: “Phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. There’s nobody better than the man himself.”
Still no music. More banter. This is his second trip to Memphis, he came 10 years ago. He’s looking forward to singing. One of the sound technicians weaves through the audience and approaches the front of the stage. Scott leans over to him.
“Wowwww,” he drawls, standing up. “My disc isn’t working.”
Um. He riffs on the Four Seasons and the Bee Gees, singing a few bars of Stayin’ Alive. “I don’t know what happened. It worked earlier today. Anybody got any music? Boy, I’m sweatin’ up here and I ain’t even done the first song.” Someone in the audience asks about Port St. Lucie, so he talks about the hurricanes. He tells the story of never getting to see Elvis live.
He is calm. It is a disaster.
Another tribute artist approaches the side of the stage with a CD — songs whose arrangements Scott’s not familiar with, but at this point he’ll take anything. And it’s Elvis. He knows Elvis.
“OK, let’s do track 4, track 7, track 10, track 14, and we’ll do, uhh, track 23,” he says. “You got it? All right.”
The music starts, and Scott slides into a pitch-perfect, “Born in the heat of the desert, my mother died giving me life …” His tenor voice is beautiful — clear and strong, betraying no nerves. He prowls the stage like Elvis, improvising moves as he sings “You Gave Me a Mountain.” He finishes by windmilling his right arm on the bom-bom-bom ending, channeling some indefinable energy, embodying Elvis. The audience of almost 300 goes nuts.
Next, “Treat me like a fool … ” Recognizing “Love Me,” almost two dozen women hurry to the front of the stage and Scott bends on one knee, crooning to them. A concert assistant drapes satin scarves one after the other around Scott’s neck, and he pulls them off to drape around the women in front of the stage, kissing their cheeks as he does. “Please love me …”
There is mass fluttering.
The audience is enraptured. Track 10 is “Blue Suede Shoes,” a fact he’s forgotten by this point, so he asks to start it again after missing his cue. And then he tears it up, swivelling his hips, snapping, sliding across the stage, by force of will getting butts out of seats as he bops through “blue blue, blue suede shoes.”
Straight into the dramatic piano opening of “What Now My Love.” The song he was accused of lip-syncing in Tampa. It is impossible to look away from him, standing in a single spotlight with his eyes closed, curled forward, soaring to the impossibly high crescendo, higher, higher, stratospheric into the last “What now my love? Now there is nothing/Only my last (higher still) good (is he going to make it?) byyyyyye.”
There has never been anything like the ecstasy in that moment and the perfection of that note. It is otherworldly. It is holy, if you believe in such things. He receives an ecstatic standing ovation. He could stop now and the incandescence of that moment would linger for hours. But there’s one more to go.
Last, “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” His wedding song. An impossibly sweet love song. Every woman in the audience is willing, at that point, to take his hand and his whole life, too. Janet doesn’t mind, because he’s going home with her.
At last it’s clear: This. This is what it’s all about, channeling some portion of the magic Elvis Presley brought to the stage, some of the energy, some of the passion.
Scott finishes on his knees, arms spread wide, the audience screaming.
A grand finale
The winners are announced late the following night, after all of the finalists gather at the back of the stage, waiting expectantly.
First, the Spirit of Elvis award, and then People’s Choice. Finally…
In third place…
From Port St. Lucie, Florida…
Scott Norton!
Later, he says it feels as good as if he won first — and the $400 cash and $500 gift certificate for a jumpsuit from B&K Enterprises is a nice bonus. He says he’ll be back next year. He says it’s an honor to get on stage and represent Elvis Presley.
“He was,” Scott says, and pauses, “he was the greatest. He’s the reason I’m here doing this.”