Big Elvis

Bonus story from “Weird Las Vegas”

Pete Vallee has made a huge career for himself in Las Vegas. Some would say Pete Vallee has an enormous amount of talent. Pete Vallee chuckles at the fact that he has tons of groupies, and that was an ample load of synonyms for the word “overweight” to set-up a story about Pete Vallee - the 600-pound Elvis impersonator.

  Vallee has been performing his homage to Elvis twice daily, every Monday through Thursday at the Barbary Coast since 2002, and the standing room only crowds at each show are a testament to Vallee’s humongous appeal. Women will sometimes flash their breasts at the larger-than-life performer when as he performs his ode to one of Rock-n-Rolls originals. Men have been known to get swept up into the act as well. “We had one guy start stripping in the casino during one of my shows” recalls the rotund troubadour.

   The king-sized King imitator has always been a sizable man, “I’m 6 foot three, and used to weigh about 260-270 – I was built like a football player,” offers Vallee, but large portions of fast food pushed the beefy entertainer to an alarming 900 pounds in just a few years, limiting the entire physical part of his performance to a sitting in a chair on the middle of the stage.

   Vallee’s manager Lucille Star confided that in May of 2006 Vallee missed 2 to 3 weeks of work when her biggest client started to find simple everyday activities like getting out of bed to be much harder than it used to be.

   Vallee maintains, “I’m down under 600 right now, but I’d like to get to 285…I’ve cut out fast food, and now I’m eating chicken and fish and vegetables, and I swim an hour a day.”

   That all sounds like the smart and healthy thing to do, but when you bill yourself as “Big Elvis,” it might concern your employers that by trimming another 300 pounds off your weight, it may also trim the interest in the audience who enjoy the uniqueness of watching such a massive musician.

   According to both the singer and his manager, the Barbary Coast has been very supportive of Vallee’s recent health kick, and even if he drops down to the second or third biggest Elvis in Las Vegas, Pete Vallee may have another hook no other lounge singer in the city has. Vallee may be the biological son of the late Elvis Aaron Presely. 

    Star disclosed that Vallee’s mother, Memphis recording artist Dolores Vallee, revealed to her son on her deathbed that the man Vallee had been told was his biological father was not, and that she had a long-time affair with Elvis Presely which culminated in Vallee’s birth in 1965.

   Star claims there is enough circumstantial evidence to at least give credence to the claim. There are photos of the two, and many of the musicians who appeared on Elvis’ records also appeared on Dolores’.

   “Interesting forms of DNA” have also been presented to Vallee and Star. Some of the supposed samples are Elvis’ tooth, strands of the deceased vocalists’ hair, sweat, spit, and even a bloodstained sheet.

   It turns out that even if Vallee is not legitimately the illegitimate son of his idol, he does share a rare trait with Presely. So far in his life, Vallee has given away three Cadillacs. Some may call that excessive, but Vallee might just call it an appetizer.