Little did Elvira (Peterson) know when she began her campy dress that, 20 years later, grown women would dress up like her, not as a Halloween stunt but every friggin day as a fashion statement.
Back around the same time Dallas Frazier was crooning Elvira, The Munsters sitcom was on tv with the running joke about the pretty blonde being treated like the ugly stepchild. Today, between Goth and feminism, the pretty blonde is becoming more like the ugly stepchild. We truly are living in a bizarro world.
“Today, between Goth and feminism, the pretty blonde is becoming more like the ugly stepchild. We truly are living in a bizarro world.”
Do not underestimate the capacity for the bizarre in the earlier decades. Take the story of the origin of the title, Elvira, when Dallas Frazier authored the song in 1966. The Wikipedia article cites the origin of the title as being the name of a street in eastern Nashville, Tennessee. However true that origin may or may not be, it may be covering for an altogether different origin with a less prosaic nature. The purported first Elvis Presley impersonator was a woman, instead of a man, who used Elvira Presley as a stage name. See:
The FIRST ELVIS IMPERSONATOR was a WOMAN (With Guitar Shaped Pasties) Elvira Presley Shakes her Hips Vintage Sleaze
The First Elvis Impersonator Elvira Presley!
Complete with guitar-shaped pasties, Elvira Presley hits the stage in 1957 in the not-so legendary stripdump “The Near and Far Club” operated by Al and Mal Warner in Los Angeles. They were looking for a sensational act to celebrate a club makeover, and When they heard of a model who looked like the “Mississippi Peckerwood” Elvis, they convinced her to put on levi jeans and then immediately take them off on stage! Complete with Elvis gyrations which even Elvis Sullivan would have enjoyed!
Elvira was thus not only the first Elvis Impersonator, she was the first with 38-28-37 measurements! Like the (then prince, future king, now sadly dead) real Elvis, she came from Mississippi.
The act began with the house orchestra playing “Don’t Be Cruel” while Elvira made her entrance with a guitar. As the band continued performing without paying royalties to the illegal immigrant Colonel Tom Parker, Elvira pops out of her Levis to “Blue Suede Shoes” and then out-hip-shakes the hip shaker with “Hound Dog” while tearing off her bra revealing sequins shaped like a Nashville guitar-shaped Swimming Pool!
Elvira was became the first to set the standard Elvis Impersonator patter. When interviewed by the press, her answers are filled with “I hope he would be flattered” responses, but she avoids the “it’s not an imitation, it’s a tribute” banal platitude adopted by every single imitator since. It was an imitation for sure.
Uncredited Photographs appeared in Modern Man Magazine 1957