Sunday, November 24, 2002
By ASHLEE OWENS
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
IM PENNEY IS A SELF-DESCRIBED normal guy with a wife, two kids, a golden retriever and a comfortable ranch home in a Poland neighborhood. He is a sales trainer with Securian Financial Network and is vice president of his son's high school band.
But when he dons his white, fringed jumpsuit and hops into his cranberry minivan with license plate ELVIS4U, Penney becomes the King of rock 'n' roll. Like most serious Elvis impersonators, Penney prefers to be called an Elvis tribute artist.
"I never used to be much of an Elvis fan," he confessed. "I really kind of stumbled into this job."
How it started
Stumbled, that is, into a fabric store with his wife nine years ago in search of a Halloween costume. They contemplated matching Popeye and Olive Oyl ensembles, then Fred and Wilma Flintstone outfits. But nothing turned Penney into a hunk of burning love until his eye settled on an Elvis costume.
"I said, 'That's it,'" Penney reminisced. "'I want to be Elvis.'"
At the Halloween party, Penney, wearing a $5 wig, black electrical tape sideburns, white thrift-store shoes and homemade costume, received numerous remarks from friends, who told him, "You know, you do kind of look like Elvis."
A seed was planted in his mind that evening. Five months later, that seed would germinate while Penney was preparing for his company's annual sales convention.
Since it was traditional for the sales region of the year to entertain attendees on the final night of the event, Penney had been asked to perform.
Throughout his performance, the room was "deadly quiet." Penney remembered thinking, "I can't believe I'm doing this. They hate this."
When he finished, silence reigned.
Then, the "room just went wild," and Penney received a standing ovation.
"I had worked for the company for 10 years and afterward people were saying, 'Man, do you do this? We didn't know you could sing!'" Penney said.
When Penney replied that he didn't regularly impersonate Elvis, the consensus was that maybe he should.
Not long after, Penney participated in A & amp;W Restaurant's "Elvis Night." His performance left numerous audience members asking for his card. He didn't have any.
"I told them [the fans] I had run out of business cards, and wrote down my name and number for them instead," Penney recalled with a smile.
What he's done
Nine years later, Penney has sung at Jacobs Field several times, before Indians games. Last year he was a semifinalist in Canada's international Collingwood Elvis Festival. He has appeared and sung as Elvis at the Opryland Hotel and, most recently, at Boardman's Oktoberfest.
On a more regular basis, Penney performs for private parties and banquets, charging $250 for the first hour, or $350 for out-of-area shows, and $100 for each additional, consecutive hour. Occasionally while "working the crowds" he encounters overzealous female fans. Penney handles this situation with humor, saying, "Careful, baby. 'Cilla's sitting back there."
Fortunately, "Cilla," Penney's wife, Linda, who sits in the back of the room operating sound equipment, is not a jealous woman. In fact, Linda, who drives a car with license plate ELVISNI, is thrilled about the whole thing.
Linda calls her husband's hobby "an adventure" and his voice a gift from God.
"Jim loves to sing. I never get sick of hearing his songs," Linda, an office assistant at the Mideast Baptist Conference in Poland, says.
Their 10-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, is equally excited about her father's avocation.
"I think it's pretty cool because we get a lot of compliments saying, 'You're really lucky [to have an Elvis impersonator as a dad],'" Jocelyn says. She relates how one of her friends, who is "crazy about Elvis," loves to visit when there is a chance Penney will sing.
While Jocelyn enjoys watching her dad perform at gatherings, her favorite concerts are his practice sessions at home. No one else is around cheering, thus allowing her to better hear his voice. "I sing with him and we goof around and dance," she said.
Jeff, Penney's 15-year-old son, seems more nonchalant about his dad's hobby, joking that he should leave the room to state his opinion about the Elvis impersonating. But his pride shows through in his contemplation of following in his father's footsteps and entering the youth division of the Collingwood Elvis Festival.
Real life
On a late Sunday afternoon, Penney is dressed in navy slacks, a denim shirt with Securian logo embroidered above the pocket and cordovan loafers. The only indication of his beloved hobby is his dyed jet-black pompadour and baby-faced charm.
His pleasant and, at times, self-deprecating humor supports his statement, "I take what I do seriously, but I don't take myself seriously." He states his age without reservation: 43 years old. "So, in Elvis years -- who died at 42 -- I'm dead," Penney chuckles. "And," he adds, "I'm Elvis after he discovered carbohydrates."
Though his house contains relics of Elvis -- a bust of Elvis adorns a secretary and a painted velvet portrait of the King looks down from its perch atop the china cabinet -- Penney's home is more of a shrine to his own family. Family pictures too numerous to count line the walls. Crammed on shelves, alongside books on Elvis' life and career, are rows of Disney movies. His son's trumpet music drifts up from the basement.
This is not Graceland. It's home. Penney wants to keep it that way. He doesn't dream of becoming rich and famous, and he's cautious about letting his avocation become a vocation.
"Impersonating Elvis has allowed me to go places and meet people I wouldn't have been able to as Jim Penney. But Elvis was a complex man. I'm a simple man who loves his wife and kids. I like to be home with them," Penney concludes.