News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Jamestown’s Justin Miller will showcase his tribute to Elvis this weekend at the Smoky Mountain Elvis Festival.
The Ultimate Elvis Contest will take place over three days in Pigeon Forge starting Friday. Miller said he has been doing a tribute to Elvis sine 1995. He said he feels like those 29 years have been training for this contest.
“I started working at Memory Theater in Pigeon Forge back in June,” Miller said. “They knew I was an Elvis tribute artist. They were like ‘hey maybe you ought to go for this competition. We can help you out a little bit, give you little pointers,’ so I was like okay why not?”
Miller said he is resting his voice in the days leading up to the event. He said the competition at the festival will be fierce.
“There’s a lot of great competitors going to be in this contest, some of them which I know,” Miller said. “So, it’s going to be an awesome experience to compete on this level.”
Miller said win or lose he is excited to continue to share Elvis Presley with an audience.
“Elvis Presley to me and a lot of other people was a staple in the music world,” Miller said. “You know, not only the music world, but outside the music world, his personal life. His generosity he shared with not only his close personal friends but to whoever was out there down on their luck or whatever. Elvis was a great human being in that aspect of things.”
The Ultimate Elvis Contest is part of the Smoky Mountain Elvis Festival that will take place at the Biblical Times Dinner Theater in Pigeon Forge starting on Friday. Proceeds from the event will go to St. Jude’s Children Hospital.
“You’ve got to really watch what Elvis done,” Miller said. “You basically got to dissect every little thing Elvis done on stage whether it be facial expressions, hand movements, the way he stood.”
Elvis would have been 89 on January 8. He died in 1977.
