Women still swarm Elvises on stage

"I had a woman holding my jumpsuit," Elvis tribute artist Justin Shandor tells me. "So I'm joking with her, laughing, and she got a death grip on me.

"So security comes. And they take her hands off of me. And she socked the guy in the face. She cold-cocked the security guard, like, boom."

Women have thrown underwear and hotel keys at Shandor, who will headline Saturday's "Elvis, the Vegas Tour Tribute" at M Resort.

"I was sittin', takin a picture with somebody, and my wife was standing right in front of me, and somebody is sliding a hotel key in my pocket," he said, still surprised.

If you've ever wondered how someone becomes an Elvis, Shandor (the 2010 Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Champion) has got a story for you.

"Everything in my life just happened. Nothin' was planned. Know what I mean? Even the Elvis thing wasn't planned, it just fell in my lap," Shandor, 31, said.

Shandor went to jazz class but he was "teased out of high school" in 1990s Detroit, because he didn't fit in.

"I dressed different. I combed my hair different. I liked different music. I grew up listening to Stevie Wonder, Gino Vannelli, Marvin Gaye, even Mario Lanza.

"I grew up with Elvis. I mean, my grandmother used to put Elvis on when she would come over and babysit me. I watched Elvis, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, the Marx Brothers.

"So when I went to school, I had nothin' to talk about with the kids."

As a teen, when his impoverished family moved to Las Vegas, he told his mother he didn't want to go to school.

"My mother is like, 'What are you going to do if you don't go back to school?'

"I was joking, I said, 'I want to be like Elvis Presley.' She said, 'OK.' So she made a phone call and got me an audition at the Elvis-A-Rama Museum. Sixteen years old. The owner heard me sing half of a song, half of 'Don't Be Cruel,' stopped it, said, 'Come in the office.You start today.'"

I asked Shandor, if he had told his mother he wanted to be like Dean Martin, would he be a Dean Martin tribute artist now?

"Whatever I wanted to do, my mother was going to make it happen," he said.

By 17, Shandor was doing nine shows a day — nine — at Elvis-A-Rama.

He was also in love with his childhood sweetheart, Janelle, the now-mother-of-three who answered the door when I went knocking on their big, pretty Southwest Las Vegas home.

"We grew up together," he said. "I've got video of us at 9 years old at Disneyland together, when our families all got together and went on a trip."
(He didn't perform at his own wedding.)

Shandor showed me his Elvis room displaying 13 Elvis belts (exact replicas), an Elvis shoeshining cloth (an authentic Elvis possession), two Sammy Davis shirts, and autographs of Gilda Radner, Gene Wilder, Milton Berle, Mel Torme, Red Skelton, Johnny Mathis, Bob Hope, Sid Caesar, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dudley Moore and Liberace.

"What I have here, this is all done by myself. Stuff I've collected. My cars. Everything. I've never had any help in life, financially. Nothing was ever given to me."

(You can listen to our whole hour conversation on my podcast, the "Doug Elfman Show," on iTunes, podcast apps, or DougElfman.com.)

Shandor regularly stars in the "Million Dollar Quartet" show at Harrah's hotel. He performed on David Letterman's show.

And at the M Resort on Saturday (tickets cost $30-$42), he'll be accompanied by a 12-piece band featuring musical director Vincent Ingala (who this summer has had the number one song, "Coast to Coast," on Billboard's Smooth Jazz National Airplay chart.)

My favorite thing about Shandor is how he doesn't just do Elvis, he also brings his own persona to it, without wrecking the illusion.

"You have to be natural," he told me. "You have to be yourself. Because Elvis was being himself. And if Elvis would be copying something on stage, it would look like a copy."

But Shandor embodies Elvis only on stage.

"As soon as I get that jumpsuit on, I take a look in the mirror, I've got my hair fixed, I close my eyes for a second before I walk out onstage, and I think, 'How would he walk out? What would he do? What would he say? How would he grab the mic?'

"But as soon as I'm off that stage, I'm Justin, you know? You can't take that whicha. It would be nice, but you can't."

Contact Doug Elfman at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman. Find him on Twitter: @VegasAnonymous.