Elvis lives
(in Burton)

GENESEE COUNTY

THE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION
Sunday, January 05, 2003
By Doug Pullen
JOURNAL ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
 

Elvis Presley is not alive and well at a Burger King in Kalamazoo, even if some of his fans think he is.
But his spirit lives in every bowling alley, every small-town fair, every tribute concert Burton's Leo Days Jr. performs.
He's a hunka hunka burning Elvis, a 22-year-old fan and self-proclaimed "tribute artist" who is the King incarnate to some of his growing swarm of screaming, mostly female fans.
"An amazing being, superior craftmanship, sent to us, like Elvis, as a gift to continue on with the mystical ability of our King of Rock & Roll," one ecstatic fan gushed to Juanita Thompson, who runs Days' fan club, T.L.C.B. (Takin' Care of Leo's Business).
Days isn't sure what to make of it all. "I never thought, Hey, I could do this!,' " he says incredulously. "It was more or less an accident." Perhaps. Or was it meant to be?
Days is a living testament to the saving grace of rock 'n' roll. If it weren't for Elvis and his gyrating hips, Days might not be around to tell his story.
Days was introduced to the lusty power and magnetic majesty that was - and still is - Elvis Presley (pre-bloating, of course) by Leo Days Sr., who played the Kings' records and videos night and day.
"I didn't know there was anything else on TV until I was 9," Elvis Jr. cracks.
His parents broke up when Days was a little kid. His mom, Karen, a biller for McLaren Regional Medical Center, married Jerry Licquia, a GM line worker, 13 years ago. They now manage Days' burgeoning career and run his Web site, www.leopro.homestead.com.
The home life stabilized, but young Days didn't. By the time he reached the tender and volatile age of 14, he was one raging ball of anger and confusion.
So he ran away from home.
Days picks up the story: "I was on the streets for three or four months. I got into a lot of things - drugs, gangs and all that crap. After I moved back home, I was into boxing, which channeled some of my energy. I was still messing up in school. I wasn't very happy with who I was or what I was doing."
What happened next suggests the King may have intervened from the Great Showroom in the Sky.
Days was toying around with a karaoke system in the basement of their Burton house when Karen heard something she didn't expect. She heard a 15-year-old boy singing with Elvis' phrasing and vocal tics down pat.
"We started going out to places," he recalls, mostly karaoke joints.
Every time Days got up and did an Elvis song - with a few well-placed gyrations and poses thrown in - "people asked if I did shows. I'd say, Sure, I guess. What's a show?' "
He soon learned. He bought costumes, when his mom didn't sew them, and honed his act at bowling alleys, festivals and karaoke nights. Before he knew it, the kid who started calling himself Leo "Elvis" Days was in demand.
"It's what turned him around," Karen says proudly.
"We started going around a little more, and it kind of snowballed," he says, the disbelief still apparent in his voice. "I had no idea."
He does now, of course. Days, who once made the trek to Elvis Mecca, Graceland, when he was 8, has developed his act, paying close attention to detail. The idea, he said, is to respect what Elvis did by recreating what he did.
"I don't do anything he wouldn't have done on stage," Days insists. "I keep my show as close as possible to what seeing him was like."
He's earned the respect of a growing number of Elvis fans and fellow impersonators, winning the international championship at an Elvis confab in Collingwood, Ont., four years ago and the People's Choice award at another last year in Portage, Ind.
He's a regular at a two-day Elvis festival in Ypsilanti, performs in the Memphis area during Elvis Week every August and stages an annual fund-raiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association as a tribute to a family member.
Days brought tears to the eyes of one of Presley's former musicians this year at the Portage event, though he jokes about it now.
"His rhythm guitar player, John Wilkinson, was in the crowd ... and somebody told me he was crying. I don't know if I was so bad or what," Days says.
At 22, Leo's too young to have seen the King (who would have turned 68 Wednesday) perform live. He was born three years after Presley's death in 1977.
But he's got more than a dozen videos of Elvis concerts, and he pores over them constantly trying to get every detail right.
"I find myself analyzing them. What's this part. What's that part. I tend to break things he did down into little parts and try to work them into the show."
Ah, the show. What started out as a karaoke act has turned into a performance piece capable of recreating various stages of Elvis' illustrious career, from his humble early '50s beginnings to the slick, Vegas Elvis of the early '70s.
"I don't do anything after that," Days quips, "because he was big then and I'm not."
No fat suits for Leo. But he does have several costumes, most of them sewn by his mom, that faithfully recreate many of Elvis' familiar visages, from the gold lame jacket to the studly black leather of his 1968 comeback concert. "He's one of the few who can do all eras: young Elvis, leather, '70s," his mom enthuses.
The newest prize in Leo's growing wardrobe is a specially ordered "Aloha" jumpsuit - the one with the Eagle on the chest - just like the one Elvis wore for a concert beamed live around the world via satellite from Hawaii in 1973.
Cost: 3,000 big ones.
He can thank his devoted fan club for that. Its 100-plus members helped fund the purchase. Club president Juanita Thompson, whose husband, Dennis, serves as master of ceremonies at Leo's performances, marvels at what the kid King can do.
"We have seen many Elvis tribute artists, and Leo is the only one that really recreates the memories of Elvis," she says.
Make no mistake. Leo Days calls himself an Elvis tribute artist, not an Elvis impersonator.
"When you say impersonator, a lot of people get this thing in their minds of a big guy with a pillow stuffed into a jumpsuit with a bad wig and silly sunglasses. I take it more seriously than that," he insists.
Days harbors dreams of a career in music, either as an Elvis tribute artist or singing his own music. He recently traveled to Las Vegas, the capitol of Elvis imper... er, tribute artists, and a town the King practically owned when he died.
Just in case, Days completed his high school education two years ago and is close to completing an associate degree in criminal justice from Mott Community College. He plans to transfer to Michigan State University and study law.
He's certainly made a study of Elvis. Days is mystified why so many women, young and old, scream at his concerts and line up afterward for pictures and autographs.
"I don't understand it. To me, I'm going up there acting like an idiot, and people are sitting around watching and standing in line," he says.
He also makes it clear that he doesn't see himself as some second coming of the King of Rock 'n' Roll.
"I don't think at any point in the show that I'm Elvis. I try to make them think that," he says with a laugh. "But it doesn't work. I know that. There was only one Elvis."
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