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For 3 days, last January 7/8/9th, Elvis was definitely in the building. In fact, almost 50 Elvi were in the Queens Hotel, Blackpool, England for the Finals of Europe's largest Elvis Presley Tribute Artist Contest and Convention.
This weekend celebration also coincided with celebrating Elvis's 70th birthday.
The special Guest of Honour for this event was Larry Geller and his wife. Larry gave a great talk about life with Elvis, and signed copies of his new book. He and his wife also took part as Judges for the Semi-Final and Finals of the competition.
For the second year running B & K Enterprises were sponsors of the competition and Butch and Kim Polston along with Gene Doucette were also there in person. Gene also gave a short talk to the fans about designing jumpsuits for Elvis.
Around 300 fans took up every room in the Hotel. Some had traveled in from Europe and others from all over the UK to be part of this 2nd and now annually held competition.
The fun started on the Friday with all the ETA's taking part in a group photograph for the National Press, as the National Daily Newspapers on Saturday, January 8th wanted to have a photo of 70 Elvis's for Elvis's 70th birthday.
Friday evening the Contest semi-finals took place with 12 performers in the amateur section, and over 20 performers in the Professional section. Each performer was allowed 2 songs of their own choosing, and what a tough choice the 5 judges had, as they had to choose half the performers to go through to Saturday evening’s final.
On Saturday 8th January, everyone was excited because as well as the finals it was Elvis's birthday. In the afternoon we were treated to a talk by Gene Doucette and Larry Geller, and a chance to visit the merchandise and memorabilia shops.
Saturday evening started early as we had a lot to get through. Once again we were treated to an excellent high standard of performance from both the amateur and professional ETA's, and it was very tough to pick the winners. First place in the amateur section went to Paul Rowse and well deserved it was. In reverse order the 3rd place Professional was Paul Ritchie, 2nd was Neil Duncan, and a great performance of GI Blues and Trouble won Leigh Casling the title of Grand Champion 2005.
The night continued with an Elvis Tribute performance from both Michael King and Martin Fox, who also co-organised this fantastic event, and to finish the evening we had myself Paul Smith (alias PaulShookUp), playing all your favourite Elvis tracks into the early hours. And, as it was Elvis's birthday, we had 3 large Birthday cakes which were cut into by Larry Geller. All I can say is, “It was a night, oh what a night it was...Such A Night.”
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