I was in Las Vegas last weekend and in the next day or three, I'll tell you about the great time I had even though I spent much of the stay in my room slaving over a hot laptop. One thing we did was to catch a little of the lounge act of Pete Vallee, aka Big Elvis. He does three 40-minute sets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in The Piano Bar in Harrah's hotel-casino and has been working in the town since 1997. That would make him one of the longest-running acts in Vegas history.
You probably want to know what he weighs. Press reports said that at one point, he was up to 960 pounds and yes, I typed that correctly. He's reportedly down to under 500 now. They have a special reinforced throne for him in The Piano Bar and he sits on it and sings to recorded music tracks. The audience, at least when we saw him last Friday, was mostly older white folks who clapped a lot, sang along where appropriate, and enjoyed the heck out of it.
Watch the guy to the left of him in this video singing and dancing along. There were a lot of folks like him last Friday. I think the fellow in the "I ❤ Big Elvis" t-shirt is the gent who sells Big Elvis CDs and photos outside the lounge while Mr. Vallee is performing.
Some articles about him say that he has photos of his mother with the real, not-as-big Elvis and that he is the love child of an affair they had in 1964. Is this so? We report, you decide. He definitely puts on a very good act…and I'm reasonably sure that at one point, there was a Little Elvis also working the Strip. Here's the Big Man in action. If I were the kind of comedy writer to do fat jokes, I'd suggest he conclude each show by having someone announce, "Ladies and gentlemen…Elvis has eaten the building."