Elvis Explosion LaCrosse, 2012 Information

2012 Elvis® Explosion will be at the La Crosse Center in La Crosse WI. Sept. 7th, 8th and 9th, 2012

The Elvis® Explosion in La Crosse WI is one of the top events of the year with the winner engaging the worldwide "King of the World" competition in Memphis Tennessee.

The La Crosse Wisconsin Elvis® Explosion is an international showcase featuring the world's top Elvis Tribute Artists (ETA). The competition takes place each year in September.

The La Crosse Elvis® Explosion also benefits the local area chapter of the Children's Miracle Network. The weekend event includes many other options for local tourism.

The event is hosted by national Elvis® event personality Ronny Craig. Craig has been featured as an ETA expert in such films and television specials as "Almost Elvis and "The Men Who Would Be King" which airs on the TLC television network. Multi-talented Ronny Craig is the ideal MC for this premier Elvis event. His stage presence, soaring voice, and knowledge of the world of the ETA combine to make him an asset for any show.

2012 Elvis® Explosion will be at the La Crosse Center in La Crosse WI. Sept. 7th, 8th and 9th, 2012

The Business of Being Elvis, was written with the intent of giving the reader an idea of what does on in a world full of people that continue to follow, respect, and pay tribute to Elvis Presley. It is not an encyclopedia, anthology, or biography…"

The book explains the motivation behind ETA's and what goes into making one. What is an ETA you ask? Well, the phrase means, "Elvis Tribute Artist" and there are many of them in the world today.

The book describes what goes into the production of an Elvis show, the costs of the costumes and the choice of a live band for backing or recorded music.

On Monday May 14, 1956, Elvis performed two shows at the Mary E. Sawyer auditorium in La Crosse (7pm and 9:30 pm). He sang Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes and Long Tall Sally. Tickets were priced at $1.50, $2.00 and $2.50. He had performed the day prior with an afternoon show in St. Paul and an evening show in Minneapolis, MN.

It was written that Elvis stands alone as a performer, not just another singer to be tagged with the same 'juvenile delinquent" line that the press applied increasingly to every aspect of this new rock and roll music.

Without preamble, the three-piece band cuts loose. In the spotlight, the lanky singer flails furious rhythms on his guitar, every now and then breaking a string. In a pivoting stance, his hips swing sensuously from side to side and his entire body takes on a frantic quiver, as if he had swallowed a jackhammer.

Full-cut hair tousles over his forehead, and sideburns frame his petulant, full-lipped face. His style is partly hillbilly, partly socking rock 'n' roll. His loud baritone goes raw and whining in the high notes, but down low it is rich and round.

As he throws himself into one of his specialties his throat seems full of desperate aspirates ('Hi want you, hi need you, hi luh-huh-huh-huv yew-hew') or hiccuping glottis strokes, and his diction is poor. But his movements suggest, in a word, sex.

He is Elvis Aaron Presley, a drape-suited, tight-trousered young man of 21, and the sight and sound of him drive teenage girls wild. All through the South and West, Elvis is packing theaters, fighting off shrieking admirers, disturbing parents, puckering the brows of psychologists, and filling letters-to-the-editor columns with cries of alarm and, from adolescents, counter-cries of adulation.

Heavy Beat. The perpetrator of all this hoopla was born in Tupelo, Miss, (pop. 11,527). His parents gave him a guitar before he was twelve. 'I beat on it for a year or two', he drawls. 'Never did learn much about it.' He learned to sing church hymns with a heavy beat, as Negro revival singers do, but gave no thought to a musical career.

Elvis and his family moved to Memphis when he was about 13. Around the age of 16, he began hanging out around the famed Beale Street. It was during this time that Elvis became interested in the Blues. The Blues was still in it's infancy, and Beale street was known to be it's birthplace.

A couple of years ago, Presley, working as a truck driver, was seized with the urge to hear his own voice, took his guitar with him and made a recording in a public studio. 'It sounded like somebody beatin' on a bucket lid', Presley recalls. 'But the engineer at this studio had a recording company called Sun, and he told me I had an unusual voice, and he might call me up sometime.'

When the call came, Presley was overcome by the stiffness that still bothers him when he sings without an audience. The session was about to fizzle when he started fooling around with a rock-'n-roll beat, the same heavily accented style he uses today. Records started to sell, and Elvis set out to get himself a manager. The manager booked Presley with the words, 'He may not sound like a hillbilly, but he gets the same response.'

It was not long before the response was even better, comparable to Johnnie Ray or Frank Sinatra, with girls snatching Presley's shirt, belt, shoes, and RCA Victor buying out his recording contract for $35,000. Elvis now nets $7,500 a week for personal appearances. (From Time magazine May 1956)