Elvis is leaving the building: After 30 years, Easton's State Theatre's final Elvis Birthday Bash

EASTON, Pa. — It was 1996, and State Theatre President Shelly Brown was looking for shows for the season's lineup when an agent friend proposed offering an Elvis impersonator she represented.

"And I said I had always wanted to do an Elvis thing, ‘cause it’s great music," Brown said. "But I don’t want to do something cheesy. I want it to be really top quality.

“And she said, ‘I’ve got all the Elvises you want.’"

That was the start of State Theatre's Blue Suede: The Premiere Elvis Birthday Bash, which at 4 p.m. today, Feb. 2, again plays the theater.

Tickets, at $39 each, remain available at the State Theatre website, and are expected to be available at the box office at 453 Northampton St., Easton.

The difference is that today's performance of the show, which offers Scot Bruce portraying the young Elvis and Mike Albert performing as the older Vegas Elvis, will be the last, Brown said.

“The agent called me this year and said ‘Mike’s packing it in, it’s gonna end,'" Brown said. "'You wanna be on the end of the thing?'

"And I said, ‘We were the first show, and I said it would be really cool to be the last.'”

A box of Elvises

That show in 1996 was, indeed, the first to present Bruce and Alpert as contrasting Elvis eras.

Brown knows, she said, because she put it together.

Brown said it was "back in the day," when she still worked with a video previewing monitor to review performer tapes, and the agent told her, "I’m going to send you some video tapes, and tell me what you want."

“I get this giant carton of videotapes — they weren’t DVDs, they were videotapes — of Elvises," Brown said.

“I mean, there were male Elvises, female Elvises, white Elvises, Black Elvises, child Elvises, Scottish Elvises. I mean, you name it. This carton must have had a hundred videos of Elvises.

“And I had this thing in my head of an early Elvis, and then a Vegas Elvis. And I thought that would be a cool show.

“So I take these two tapes and I called her and I said, ‘OK, here’s the two.’

“And we put this show together — they had never played together before, they didn’t know each other. And we previewed it at the theater and called it the Elvis Birthday Bash, ‘cause I didn’t want to do it on the anniversary of his death."

Elvis died on Aug. 16, 1977, at age 42.

“And these two guys were so good, and just captured everybody. And it was a hit. We created this show, and it got to be a thing at The State.

"And they started touring together."

'People who have seen them all'

Brown said that the show was a hit from the first year.

“Oh, people came dressed as Elvis — there were a bunch of people the first year," she said. 'There were diehard Elvis fans, people with sweatshirts who saw Elvis in Vegas and were just worshippers of Elvis."

But the reason it has lasted, Brown said, it because, "They’re really good musicians — they’re really good.

"And so they immediately captured the true fans that were there," Brown said. 'And the fans waited in the lobby for an hour plus to get a picture or autograph.

“And it just had legs the minute we did it. It just satisfied something in people.”

For the show's 10th anniversary, Brown said, the agent sent her an embroidered black velour robe like Elvis would wear.

"She and I had such a good time all these years that we made this thing that had so much success all over the place."

The show missed a few years — during COVID-19, and "another year or two weren’t able to get it in, for whatever reason," Brown said.

"The years they didn’t have it, people would call and ask, ‘What happened to Elvis?’" she said. “It was a very loyal audience — there are people who have seen them all.”

As fans age, a younger audience

Over the years, Brown said, the show hasn't changed all that much — because Elvis's music is timeless. (Elvis, who's birthday is actually Jan. 8, would have turned 90 this year.)

That's shown by the fact that the audience has changed, Brown said.

"People who are the true Elvis fans have always embraced this show," she said. "For them, it’s like seeing Elvis again, and it really means something to them.

"Now, people come and bring, like, grandchildren. Over the years, people are bringing younger people — or younger people are coming."

But Brown said that performer Albert "as the Vegas Elvis over the years, he might tell you, ‘I can’t quite do the acrobatics I used to.’"

"I remember at one point he had run up an aisle and was standing on the railing of the balcony," Brown said. "And I was, like, ‘Oh my God.’ He was super physical like that.

"He will tell you he’s slowed down a little bit. I don’t really see it that way.

“They’re terrifically entertaining — they’re top-notch. And the band that Mike uses as the Vegas Elvis, a couple of the guys in that band actually played with Elvis."

'We were able to celebrate that'

Brown said that another indication the Elvis Birthday Bash had caught on was that other venues contacted her about it.

"My friends in the business who called and teased me about it — said, ‘Oh, really?’ later called and said, ‘Can I have the agent's name? I want to play it.'

“There really is a respect for Elvis’s music," she said. "Clearly it connected."

Brown said Scott, who plays the younger Elvis, even has a Martin Guitar designed for him.

"Through the years, it was always there," Brown said. "And so it’s the end of an era."

She said she still had the original scarf that Albert threw out into the audience during his routine.

“People wait in the lobby like they’re Elvis," she said. "They have their own following.

“Through it all, they really respected the music. And that’s what I wanted to do — give it that respect, because he deserved it.

"And so it was just nice to be part of something where people and came loved him and loved the music. I’m happy that we were able to celebrate that.

“We’re all really emotional. It’s a thing we did, and now I’m really glad they gave me this last date and we were able to pull this off.”