Jimmy "Orion" Ellis - Biography

Biography

Jimmy was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi on February 26 of 1945, into a single parent home. Coincidentally, like Elvis, his mother's name was Gladys. When he was two, Gladys and Jimmy moved to Birmingham where he was put up for adoption. Young Jimmy was taken in by R.F. Ellis and his wife Mary Faye, where Jimmy's last name was changed to Ellis.

While not much is known of Jimmy's early musical development, he told Goldmine magazine in 1985 that his idols included Elvis, Ray Price and Eddy Arnold and that his first public appearance was at the age of 17 at Orrville High's "Religious Emphasis Week". He sang "Peace In The Valley". Subsequently, Jimmy won the finals of a talent contest in Alabama. The prizes: a trip to the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and a $1,000 savings bond.

Jimmy later settled into an athletic two-year scholarship at Middle Georgia Junior College in the town of Cochran.

Jimmy transferred to Livingston State University where he started playing small clubs. He got a "One Shot Deal" with Challenger Records (MCA) in 1974 before moving to the small Boblo Records label. One of his five singles for Boblo was "I'm Not Trying To Be Elvis".

Now, the music industry is filled with many strange tales of artists whose lives took unexpected turns on the winding road to success, but the saga of singer Jimmy Ellis is perhaps one of the weirdest of them all. He was professionally known as Orion, and his double-edged claim to fame was that his natural speaking and singing voice sounded almost exactly like that of Elvis Presley. Ellis hailed from Orrville, Alabama and began his recording career in 1964.

In 1978 Jimmy signed with the new owner of Sun Records, Shelby Singleton. Earlier, in 1972, Jimmy had recorded a cover of Elvis' first Sun single, "That's Alright, Mama" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky", in Florida. It was offered to Shelby Singleton at Sun by the Florida record producer, Finlay Duncan. That 1972 single was released on the Sun label with a question mark appearing on the record in place of the artist's name. This marketing tactic effectively, and inadvertently, started the whole "Elvis is alive" conspiracy theory, although it would be another six years before other forces conspired to give it lift-off and mainstream prominence.

After his 1978 signing, Jimmy's star was on the ascendancy as he became intertwined in a complex and clever marketing campaign involving books, records, a mysterious cassette tape recording made after Elvis' alleged death and a mask. For a while Jimmy became the "new" Elvis.

Capitalising on Jimmy's close vocal similarity to Elvis, the mask and clever imagery (see "Reborn" album cover), people like Shelby Singleton, Gail Brewer-Giorgio and Gene Arthur enjoyed a financially fruitful time, at least for a few years. Brewer-Giorgio had been made aware of Jimmy and his vocal resemblance to Elvis by her friend, Carol Halupke, in 1980 when they were considering possible lead actors for the proposed but unrealised film based on her fiction novel, "Orion".

In 1980, Cash Box Magazine included Orion’s next two albums, Sunrise and Trio Plus (where his voice was overdubbed on old Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Charlie Rich cuts), in their list of Top 75 albums.

The following year, the magazine rated him one of the three most promising male Country artists. Orion continued to put singles on the Country chart, A Stranger In My Place, Texas Tea and Am I That Easy To Forget which all reached the Top 70 in 1980.

The following year, he had a quartet of chart records, none of which fared any better, although of interest are his versions of U.K. Rockabilly band Matchbox’s hit, Rockabilly Rebel and Queen’s Crazy Little Thing Called Love, both of which, although contemporary, bore a Rockabilly sound.

His final Country chart single was the Top 70 double-sided entrant, Morning, Noon and Night/Honky Tonk Heaven. By 1983, however, the charade had definitely lost its charm for Ellis/Orion. His desire to be taken seriously by the music industry as an artist in his own right caused him to sever his connections with Sun and strip off the mask before a capacity crowd at the Eastern States Exposition, vowing never to wear it again. (When his career subsequently waned, he re-donned the mask in 1987.)

Not a true Elvis impersonator in the sense that he did not make a career of recording and performing Elvis’ material, Orion had always been confronted with the irony that unless he altered his natural vocal intonations, he could not avoid sounding incredibly like the real Presley.

His recording of "I’m Trying Not To Sound Like Elvis", seems like a "cri de coeur."

Since making his debut as a Sun recording artist in 1979, Orion recorded 11 albums and appeared on shows with the Oak Ridge Boys, Jerry Lee Lewis, Reba McEntire, Ricky Skaggs, Lee Greenwood, Ronnie Milsap and Dionne Warwick.