Find Your Inner Elvis!

It was a frigid New Year’s Eve 1975 at the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit. My destiny changed that night at the young age of 15. There on the stage was the legendary King of Rock-N-Roll – Elvis Presley. When one is in the presence of greatness, the moment is surreal.

I had been to many concerts growing up in Motown, but no one affected me the way Elvis did that night. As the 2001 Space Odyssey started playing and he entered the stage, my knees began to shake. I became just like ever other person in the audience, spellbound by his magnetism.

What kind of magic did he possess that caused this kind of reaction from people? Elvis was cool to men, and irresistible to women. No other man could pull off both.

It was that very night that I too decided to become an entertainer. I wanted to affect people like him. I had been singing since I was seven – mostly Donny Osmond songs. But it was Elvis that transformed me from singer to entertainer.

Fast forward to the present – I spent the next 25 years pursuing my own music career with limited success. I had given up on my dream of being an R&B singer and moved to Nashville to sing Country music.

In 2002, I had the fluke idea of putting together an Elvis tribute show at a local restaurant to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of his death. I did about a 30 minute set of classic Elvis tunes while a video documenting his life scrolled behind me. I got many compliments from the audience.

As a result, I started getting call after call from different people wanting me to do an “Elvis” show for them. I got requests for company parties, for 90-year-old women’s birthdays, fairs, weddings, election campaigns, conventions, anniversaries, pageants, graduations, and so on.

Now over 300 shows later I guess you could call me a professional Elvis impersonator or tribute artist as we are sometimes referred. Never in my wildest dreams would I have believed I’d be doing this to make a living. I quickly realized being Elvis paid better than being myself. But even more than the money, I was bringing people an unspeakable joy, if only for an hour.

A remarkable thing happens when I put on the jumpsuit. I become the ultimate rock-n-roll superhero to people. They light up. They stare. They whisper. They smile. They tell me their Elvis’ stories and sightings. They ask me if I think he is still alive. They even ask me to call their grandmother’s on their cell phone and sing “Love Me Tender”.

Just my resemblance of Elvis brings back memories of a better time to people. It was a special place in our history when there was real talent in the music business. But Elvis was more than talent. People loved him as a person, which can’t be said of many celebrities today.

Something I’ve realized these past six years is that anyone can have a similar affect on people. You don’t need a white jumpsuit or long side burns to find your hidden Elvis.

You can touch people the way he did without ever singing a note. You don’t need a face lift, black hair dye and blue eyes, or even a million dollars in the bank. You can affect both women and men in much the same way without ever curling your lip.

Elvis’ appeal transcended the world of the physical and entered the realm of the emotional, mental and spiritual. The fact is 600,000 fans still visit Graceland every year, and not just because of Elvis’ great looks and music. That’s good news for you and me. You don’t have to rely on hereditary or biological factors to change your life.

You can become someone people will be endeared by and fall in love with, and they might not fully know why. I personally have implemented these principles in my own life. As a result, I am more successful than I ever dreamed possible.

This blog is not about egocentricism. The world is already filled with narcissism. For those who truly knew him, that wasn’t Elvis.

You are about to learn how to leave a legacy beyond this life while fulfilling your personal dreams of success and happiness along the way.

Get ready to find your inner Elvis!

Chuck Baril
http://www.nashvilleelvis.com/
http://www.nashvillebookingagency.com/