Long Live The King: The hoax singer who made people believe Elvis Presley faked his own death
If you think the current phenomenon of 2000s nostalgia is getting a little much, it’s got nothing on the raging hard-on that the 1970s had for the ’50s.
While Grease is the most beloved relic of that time, the fascination goes far beyond that. Happy Days was one of the biggest shows on TV, Sha Na Na were a constant presence on the pop charts, and American Graffiti gave the world George Lucas. However, perhaps the biggest sign that the ’50s were still a draw in the ’70s was the fact that Elvis Presley was still selling tickets like they were nobody’s business.
Admittedly, he wasn’t the phenomenon he was in his prime, but he was still filling arenas, and the performances were surprisingly solid considering his health issues. Naturally, no one saw his death in 1977 at the age of 42 coming. There had been celebrity deaths that rocked the world before, but not since Marilyn Monroe’s passing had the end of an era been so utterly signified before.
Then, the weirdest thing started happening.
A singer called Orion started releasing music, who sounded exactly like Elvis to the point that several verified musicologists claimed that it might well be Presley himself singing on the records.
To make things even stranger, Orion’s image was full of resurrection imagery (case in point, an album called Reborn that showed Orion emerging from a gold coffin). Most of all, who looked exactly like Elvis from the gold lamé outfits and the slicked back, black pompadour, right down to the signature lip curl. The only differences were the name and the most visible difference of all, the Venetian mask he wore over the top half of his face.
Was Orion actually Elvis Presley?
Absolutely not. However, the world wasn’t handling the death of Presley well at all, causing many people to really think that this was The King proving he was still alive.
It’s telling that the Orion hoax was just one of several different conspiracy theories about his death. Some swore blind that the day after he died, a man matching Presley’s description boarded a flight at Memphis International Airport under the name “Jon Burrows”, the name Presley travelled under when touring. It’s not true, either. Presley’s death was easily verifiable.
Orion was something a lot less interesting and a lot more gross. James Hodges Ellis had essentially been an Elvis tribute act for years. In fact, in 1969, Shelby Singleton acquired the rights to a number of early Elvis classics and tapped Ellis up to record several of them. Singleton then released these ersatz versions of ‘That’s All Right (Mama)’ but credited the vocalist as “?”, letting people think these were long-lost Elvis outtakes when they were really the work of a club singer who could do a convincing impression.
Orion was just a version of that, but in even worse taste. Ellis kept up the Orion charade for a number of years, having sporadic hits on the country chart and building up a devoted live following. In fairness to Ellis, the charade finally became too much for him to keep up and in 1983, he finally unmasked on stage and began performing under his own name. Swearing never to take up the stage name again.
After that ploy didn’t work, he took up the mask again in 1987 and began performing as Orion once more. Even a decade after his death, people really weren’t ready to say goodbye to The King.