HAPPY 75TH BIRTHDAY, ELVIS!

I never got to see Elvis, but I did get to see Paul Burlison.

Paul Burlison was the original guitar player for the Rock’N’Roll Trio, contemporaries of Elvis, also from Memphis. In fact, Burlison worked at Crown Electric at the same time Elvis was driving a truck there.

Whatever moved Elvis at that time was moving Paul Burlison, Johnny Burnette and his brother Dorsey, too. They mined the same grooves. Although Elvis was clearly a better singer, I always thought the Trio had better songs. And they were a little more raw.

Of course, Elvis became the King, while the Trio didn’t have any hits and broke up. Burlison started an electrical subcontracting business and didn’t play music for twenty years, until a version of the Trio reunited in the 1980’s.

I saw Paul play with a reconstituted Trio at an open-air Lincoln Center festival in the summer of ’99. There he was, at the age of 70, laying down the same licks he had in the early 50’s (among Burlison’s contributions was pioneering the use of fuzz tone).

Afterward, he came out and signed autographs. I pushed my way to the front. I asked him if Elvis ever got picked on by his co-workers because of his hairstyle or eye shadow. “No, no,” he said. “Everybody really loved Elvis.”

I asked him if the Rock’n’Roll Trio had ever performed with Elvis. He said that once, around ’53 or so, at a street fair where the Trio was playing on a flatbed truck, that Elvis sang two or three numbers with them.

I was saddened to learn recently that Paul Burlison passed away in 2003.

I love Elvis as an icon, as a rock star, even as the new Reese’s peanut butter and banana cup. But for my money, there is nothing better than his Sun Sessions (my favorite is the slow, haunting “Blue Moon”). Elvis, along with the Rock’n’Roll Trio, captured a sound that has never become dated – a sound both rocking and romantic, that could only come from Memphis, full of hope, promise and possibilities.

I like to think that today Elvis, Paul Burlison, Johnny and Dorsey Burnette are playing on a flatbed truck, ripping through “Baby, Let’s Play House.”

That would truly be heaven.

John Lennon got it wrong – the Beatles were never bigger than Jesus Christ. But Elvis was. If Elvis is our rock-and-roll savior, the impersonators are his priests.

Like the saints of the early Christian church they are followers and not leaders, flawed and human instead of perfect, but their mission on earth is to spread the Good Rockin’ Tonight and try their best to live as he did.

My Elvis is Gregg Peters.

I first saw him perform at a bar in Astoria, Queens back in the late ’80s. To confess my sin, I was there for the laugh, and on that he didn’t disappoint. He had dyed black hair, giant Vegas sideburns and gold “Elvis sunglasses” which couldn’t disguise the fact that he didn’t look much like Elvis at all.

He was short and a little pudgy, and likely went back to his mundane day job when he wasn’t living out his weekend fantasy. But there was something more.

His performance came from the inside, from his own need, and to him that mattered more than pleasing an audience, though well-pleased we were. By the end we were drunk, calling out requests and hoping we’d see him again someday.

Gradually I picked up bits of information about my new hero. He saw Elvis perform at Madison Square Garden in 1972, the event that changed his life, and began doing Elvis in 1975. So Peters was an original impersonator, doing Elvis while Elvis lived.

Once I caught him on the Joe Franklin Show doing an original song, “Sleep Talkin,’” with a real backup band, performing as himself, but the Elvis influence was still there. The song was good – he released it as a single.

I saw him three more times. The first was in a tiny Manhattan bar, with his teenage son on guitar and his mother on backup vocals. Anyone who had to pee had to walk through the stage, passing right by the gyrating Peters – but it affected him not in the slightest.

It was my first indication that he would continue impersonating Elvis through the Apocalypse itself.

The next time, I had spotted one of his home-made signs in the window of Paddy Reilly's Bar on Second Avenue and made plans to attend with two fellow Peterheads.

At that show, attended only by us, our Elvis held nothing back, even offering “A Little Less Conversation,” the remixed Elvis song that was then currently a hit.

“Thank God you guys are here,” he said.

Finally, two years ago, I spotted a sign in Smith’s on Eighth Avenue near Times Square. Gregg Peters was holding court, creating what he called an “Elvis Wonderland” that would last unto eternity.

Then, strangely, Gregg Peters disappeared.

His last known performance was at an outdoor festival in 2006, again in Astoria. But there will always be hope in my heart that I will again experience the miracle of Gregg Peters, New York’s very own unironic Elvis impersonator.

Unless there really is a heaven, it’s the nearest I will ever be to seeing the King himself.

TR: Although you're the King, you've never really been hard rock before.

ER: I like it. I recommend it. As Bob Dylan says, everybody must get stoned.