Music

Johnny Cash might be the best Elvis impersonator ever

by Mark Teo

While Elvis has his fair share of impersonators—here in Toronto, where AUX is located, there’s a gold-painted faux-Presley who roams the waterfront in the summertime—most pompadoured knockoffs can’t hold a candle to the King. But, as it turns out, there’s one notable exception: Johnny Cash.

We caught wind of this wonderful Vimeo video via The Daily Swarm, which appears to have been filmed in 1959, right around the time when The Fabulous Johnny Cash was first released. During a filming of Vel’s Ford Town Hall Party, Cash asks the crowd who they want him to impersonate.

They, obviously, scream for Elvis, who, at the time, was enlisted in the army—they obviously missed the man.

“Elvis who?” Cash jokes, before eventually giving in. “This is an impersonation of a rock ‘n’ roll singer impersonating Elvis.”

The sweat-soaked Cash then slicks his hair into a sloppy pompadour, arrogantly grabs an acoustic guitar from a stagehand, then absolutely roars into a rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel.” (At one point, he even adds in a sloppy belch, just for authenticity’s sake.) It’s downright magical. And, for reference, here’s Elvis’s original.